Many of you are lonely: and you think how advantageous and gratifying it would be to be associated with a large ecclesia. If you were within reach of such a body, it would be your duty to associate with them, and take part with them in the work Christ has given to all his servants who have eyes and ears. And doubtless there are advantages in this association. But there is another side from which you may take comfort. In isolation you have an unobstructed vision of the things of the spirit. Your daily readings go home with greater power. Your connection with the truth is more direct and sweet than perhaps it would be if you were in the midst of a large body of professors.

When you are in the midst of such a body, persons and things and questions and agitations of a purely ephemeral character are liable to come between you and the great things of God. It is natural it should be so in the present position of the testimony of God in an evil world.

If an ecclesia were wholly composed of men and women in subjection to the mind of the Spirit, it would be different: connection in that case would be an unmixed good. But the state of an ecclesia never has been such -- not even in the days of the Apostles. There is always a large admixture of the mere secular element, who accept the truth as a theory, but with whom it has no prevailing power in the affections and life. Consequently there is a constant liability to the stirring of influences unfavourable to a godly life in Christ: questions and agitations and strifes, having their origin in personal ambitions and petty interests, which distress and hinder the new man in Christ Jesus. From all these you are safe in the isolation in which the truth has found you; and are able in peace to enrich your minds from the inexhaustible storehouse of the Spirit's teaching.

If God, in His wisdom, change your lot, and end your tranquility by exposing you to the invigorating discipline of ecclesial life, accept the change with resignation, in the resolve, however occupied, to glorify God in your day and generation; but you need not long for it: you have more comfort and joy as you are.

Some other things occur to me: but my letter is already long enough. I may resume another time. Meanwhile, in the afflictions and comforts of the gospel, I subscribe myself - Your fellow-suffering brother and partaker of hope,

Robert Roberts. March, 1885.