Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 15 (1900)

Lt 47, 1900

Baker, Brother and Sister [W. L. H.]

Geelong, Victoria, Australia

March 23, 1900

Previously unpublished.

Dear Brother and Sister Baker:

I send these letters to you to be used as in your prayerful judgment you think best. I feel deeply over the state of things that exists in New Zealand, and I cannot see that the Lord would have His people endorse the work that Brother Steed feels at liberty to do. While he is sustained in the field, the men who have given him credentials are responsible for his management and the kind of work that comes from his service. 15LtMs, Lt 47, 1900, par. 1

If he is sowing seeds of disaffection, as he has done more or less for years, then what can you do but to deal faithfully with him, kindly showing him his injurious course, and then relieve him of being under the necessity of connecting with men who are so faulty as he thinks and represents? 15LtMs, Lt 47, 1900, par. 2

There is most earnest work to be done now in New Zealand to remove, if possible, the mould he has placed on the work. To use the Lord’s money to put disaffected minds into the field who have been educated to become criticizers is supporting a very poor school for the church to learn in. The worst of the matter is there are those who will permit such ones to continue to do this sort of work, which is dishonoring the Master. 15LtMs, Lt 47, 1900, par. 3

Any minister who adapts his powers to criticize his fellow laborers and raise contentions in the church is to be suffered to go no further in that line. It is misapplying the Lord’s money. Shall we pay wages for a man to use his ability to sow dissension and strife because his diseased ideas are all for himself? Let him take care of himself and not have that burden laid upon the church. This matter has gone just as long and as far as it should go. He is neither improving himself or any others, but educating the church in lessons that will prove its ruin unless its members unlearn these things. 15LtMs, Lt 47, 1900, par. 4

I am so sorry to have to devote my time to penning these lines, and I will now stop for I am very weary. 15LtMs, Lt 47, 1900, par. 5

In much love. 15LtMs, Lt 47, 1900, par. 6