Thank you for your good letter, and that you didn’t have any objections to what I wrote in my last letter.

Recently we have had a rich time of battle and victory here in Horten. Under Br. Berg’s leadership, the meetings in Knudsen’s home had become quite unbearable, so that several of the friends felt oppressed and despondent. Personally, I don’t feel suited to provide the outward guidance for the meetings. So I came to an agreement with the most active members of the flock, and we advertised a meeting in my home last Thursday with Br. Isachsen as the leader, among others. Surprisingly, the living room was so packed that we had to bring down more chairs from upstairs. Br. Berg also came and sat by the door. He didn’t say anything, but he did pray. We had one of the best meetings that we have had in a long time.

When the meeting was over, I said to the assembly that experience has shown that leadership is necessary if the meetings are to be a blessing. I said that I was not suited to be the leader, but that several of us had thought of Isachsen and that he was willing to do it. I also spoke a little about the gifts that different ones have and that we are able to serve one another with them, etc.

After the meeting, Br. Berg walked a short way with Isachsen, and he said that he agreed with me completely on this matter.

For now, we have scheduled meetings every Thursday.

I translated an article by Madame Guyon and sent it to Father, but I should not have done that, because he calls the whole thing bondage. I’ll send it to you so you can see for yourself. There is much that is true in what he says, but he does not understand that it is possible to read objectively. If everyone were to reject his own songs and say that they were just a work of man, I believe he would protest. Or if I published all of his letters in a book and called it a work of man, etc., he would not appreciate that. The works of men are not all the same, and we need to test things and learn to understand. As you can see, I put a question mark in the place in Father’s letter where he says, “The blood and life of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, which is in us, cleanses (sanctifies) us from all sin.”

This assertion is very misleading. He reasons that the blood is the life, and now he concludes that the blood is the resurrection life. The water and the blood belong to our earthly life and not our heavenly life.

As you know, we sent a proposal to the corps, and it was passed on to the artillery director for comments. After almost two months, it has finally come back to the corps. The corps commander summoned us and had us look over the artillery director’s letter and keep a copy so that we could respond to it. In the letter, it comes out that he is irate. He says that our suggestions demonstrate minimal understanding of the importance of artillery, that we are overrating our own service and capability, and concludes by saying that our suggestions are unjustified.

In actuality, our proposal is very accurate and quite good, and with all his efforts he has been unable to refute one single sentence. People say that he has put a lot of pressure on the ordnance chief in order to get him to say something that he himself wanted to have said, and that he returned the ordnance chief’s report on the matter about three times to make him rewrite it.

Now we intend to take the artillery’s director letter point by point so that the corps commander can get material for his work.

[The closing part of the letter is missing in the original.]