To a Christian Friend, Oct. 21, 1877.

I have not only no unkind feeling towards them, but have no doubt they have lived near to Christ.  But this I believe to have been their state of mind for years, though perhaps not consciously:  Most Christians are “ordinary.”  Nearly all are a set of miserable doubters.  Most of them believe the Christian life a warfare.  Most of them imagine it is also a state of discipline, and make much of chastening, even going so far as to thank God for His strokes of Fatherly love!  Strange love, to be sure!  They also fancy they can work out their own salvation.

Now we are not “ordinary” Christians.  We understand God’s Word perfectly; and when He says, “Work out your own salvation,” He means nothing by it except this, that He will work it in you to will and to do, and you are to do nothing, but let Him thus work.  And furthermore, we know His mind beyond dispute; we can not err in judgment.  Therefore, if you doubt our doctrine, it is the same as doubting God, and you should fall on your knees and pray to read Scripture as we do.

As to the Christian life being a conflict, why, you “ordinary” Christians are all wrong.  Satan never tempts us, though he tempted our Lord; it comes natural to us to go into Canaan with one bound; the old-fashioned saints were ridiculous in “fighting the good fight of faith.”  Look at the characters in the Bible, “resisting unto blood, striving against sin”; what blunderers they were to do that!...  In our enlightened day nobody is “chastened”; it used to be done to every son the Father received and it was a token of His love.  He knows better now.  He chastens no one; or if He does, we will cover it up and ignore it; religion is all rapture, and this is not a scene of probation.  Still if you insist that you have been smitten, it only shows how very “ordinary” you are, and how angry God is with you.

Now you may ask why I have taken time to write this, since you are not led away by these errors.  Well, they are pleasant and very plausible writers, and it has puzzled me to learn just where they were wrong.  So I have been thinking aloud, or thinking on paper, and perhaps you may find one or more persons entangled in this attractive web, and be able to help them out.  How a good man and a good woman ever fell into such mischievous mistakes, I can not imagine....

As to you and me, I see nothing strange in the weaning from self God is giving us.  It is natural to believe that He weans us from the breast of comfort in which we had delighted, because He has strong meat in store for us.  I know I was awfully selfish about my relation to Christ, and went about for years on tip-toe, as it were, for fear of disturbing and driving Him away; but I do not know that I should dare to live so again.  And how better can He show us our weakness than by making it plain that we, who thought we were so strong in prayer, are almost “dumb before Him”!  My dear friend, I believe more and more in the deep things of God.