Chapter 39—Love Among Brethren
Dear Brethren and Sisters in-----,
My mind has been exceedingly troubled in regard to your condition.
I have not been able to sleep, and I arise at twelve o’clock to write to
J, and to you as a church. I do not know what might have been the
condition of J at the present time had you pursued a righteous, Christian
course toward him—such a course as every child of God should pursue
in such a case. Some of you will not be able to comprehend my words,
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for your own course has placed you where you have not sanctified
discernment. You have allowed strong, hard feelings against him to
come into your hearts, and have justified yourselves in treating him
with indifference and even contempt. You have reasoned that by his
unbelief and his wrong course he was certainly injuring the church
and endangering souls, and you must have no fellowship with him.
But will you, in the light of God’s great standard of righteousness,
critically examine every word and act of your own that you can call
to mind and compare these with the life of Christ? If you have been
doing the will of God, then His light and His approval will second
your efforts, and prosperity will attend you. I wish the members of
this once prosperous church would each begin to build over against his
own house. When they see their course in its true light they will know
that they have made a very great mistake in allowing their own critical,
pharisaical spirit to control their tongues and develop itself in their
treatment of their brethren. This unchristian harshness has excluded
Jesus from the church and has brought in a spirit of dissension. It has
fostered a disposition to judge and condemn, a hatred of those who do
not see things as you see them. Even if your brethren say and do many
things that really injure you, will you push them to one side, and say:
“I am holier than thou”?
“By their fruits ye shall know them.” Christ has not been revealed in
your deportment toward some who were much nearer the kingdom of
heaven than yourselves. The Lord has opened before you your wrong
toward His children—your want of mercy and love, your determination
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