Letters to Mr. Robert Brown
Anstrutlier, 24th July 1818.
MY DEAR SIR, — I take the liberty of doing now what I should have done during my last excursion from Glasgow, that is, congratulate you on your returning health, and express my earnest wish that all the earnestness inspired by your recent visitation may indeed yield unto you an abundant supply of the peaceable fruits of righteousness. I am quite aware of the consciousness you have of a want of permanent interest and seriousness about these things, and many are those who feel an unsatisfied longing which they know not how to appease; and never do I myself approximate more nearly to a full and settled state of mind in reference to God, than when I feel divested of everything in myself, and am seeking to the offered righteousness of Christ as my hiding-place and my plea be fore Him.
We are apt, from the very frequency of a term, not to extend our attention to its real meaning. The righteousness of Christ imputed to those who believe is a phrase so familiar that it loses its impression. But hearken diligently to this joyful intimation, and your soul shall live. Your sin put to Christ’s account, and His righteousness put to your account, totally alter your relation with God. To this new and delightful relation you are invited. It is unto all and upon all who believe; and not till this be really apprehended by you will the darkness, and the distance, and the enmity of heart, which are between God and the sinner, be done away. Give earnest heed to this word, and the daylight will dawn in your heart. Trust in Christ, and you will be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, * Married to a sister of Mrs. Parker and through the love of God shed abroad in you be a new creature.
My poor father is upon the bed of his last sickness. He was struck with palsy on Friday, and has since been inarticulate. He has an inward peace, of which we all know the cause; and it softens the whole distress of this mournful occasion. He accepted long ago of justification by faith; and the faith that is in him has been the living principle of a life both of prayer and of performance.
May I entreat your zeal and exertion in behalf of my parish. Make no premature exertion in your own person, but you may perhaps help me to some new agents. Let us not at the same time hurry this matter. But I would feel as if my lines had fallen to me in pleasant places, and I had indeed a goodly heritage could I bring St. John’s under a thorough system of moral and spiritual cultivation.
Mrs. Chalmers unites in best compliments to you and Mrs. Brown. Our children are well.
Do give me a letter addressed to Anstruther, Fifeshire. — Yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CXXXVI.
Anstrut7ier, Wth August 1818.
MY DEAR SIR, — I received your most interesting letter, and I can assure you that you mistake the nature of my engagements altogether, if you think I would delay to answer it. Such an interesting topic as it embraces, so far from being extraneous to any business of mine, ought in fact to be incorporated with it, and to constitute its main and favourite article.
It is well that you have all these restless and unsatisfied longings. They will serve, I trust, the salutary object of weaning you from yourself. Be assured that long after the mouth has learned to ascribe all sufficiency to Christ, the heart may still adhere to a remainder of feeling respecting its own sufficiency, and the remainder must be given up, and the whole matter of salvation be given over to Him who is the alone author of it. Even after we profess the righteousness of Christ to be all our justification, there is still a tendency on our part to work for it. Now, the first Christians had peace and joy from the outset. They trusted in Christ, and were then sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Spirit came to them not in the act of their performing the work of the law, but in the act of their hearing with faith.
The question of acceptance is a question between you and the Lawgiver. Roll over this cause upon Him who alone hath magnified the law, and made it honourable by fulfilling it in your stead. Let not any righteousness of your own enter as an element into the solution of it; for this will darken and perplex the solution, and take oif altogether from its clearness and its certainty. There remains another question between you and the Son — “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits?” Doubt not that He has completed for you the benefit of justification, and the less you doubt of this the more powerful and ardent will be the gratitude which prompts this latter question. And 0 how complete is that Gospel which not only inspires a sentiment, but affords power for carrying it into effect, which gives strength as well as the will to render back to our Saviour those mercies which are well-pleasing in His sight, and which, perfumed by the incense of his merits, ascend also as spiritual sacrifices acceptable unto God. — My best compliments to Mrs. Brown, believe me ever, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CXXXVIT.
Dunblane, 9th July 1819.
MY DEAR SIR, — I know that I do not need to urge upon you any attentions that may be right or necessary towards our Sabbath-school teachers. You are fully persuaded of the excellence of the institution and of the importance of extending its interests as far as you can. But I beg leave to suggest to you that while you may carry personal exertion to a degree hurtful to your health, you may without fatigue do as much good by the simple and easy putting forth of your personal influence. In other words, if you are still unwell, I charge you to spare your self as to the work of your own particular school; and I offer the hint, that though you may be apt on that account to regret the diminution of your usefulness, you may in fact more than replace all that you lose in this way by usefulness in another way, even by the stimulus of your occasional intercourse and conversation with those of them who have health for personal fatigue and exertion in the direct work of a teacher.
May I suggest that it were desirable that any attentions which you or Mr. M’Culloch or Mr. Falconer can bestow, should be somewhat equalized by their being a little extended to those of the teachers who have not got in so far within the limits of that organizationship which subsists among the members of our society. At the same time do not overdo. A small party once in the month or two months would be a very full contribution to this object.
I have to entreat an interest in your prayers. I feel a W( ful bereavement of spirituality — an exceeding dimness as any sense or perception of God — no distinct impression of th( evil of sin — and I am sure no adequate thoughts of my Savioui either as to the worth of His sacrifice, or the glories of His character. Many think me profound in the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven: I know myself to be the veriest babe; and that there may be talk and argumentation about these things without the spiritual discernment of them. But let me comfort myself in this, that even to the simple exercise of trusting does God award His promises and encouragements; and they who walk in darkness and have no light may yet trust. I have just been reading Alleine, I hope with profit. There is a closeness, and a pertinency, and a power in the writings of the good old Puritan, of which we fall greatly short in these days of feebleness and degeneracy. — Offer my most respectful compliments to Mrs. Brown, and believe me, my very dear Sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
I desire to be particularly remembered to your brother. I hope that both you and he have had great comfort in your respective surveys. — T. C.
No. CXXXVIII.
St. Andrews, 10*7* April 182G.
MY DEAR SIR, — Both Mrs. Chalmers and I received with deep emotion the distressing intelligence conveyed to us by your letter. We had, indeed, observed it before in a newspaper, and were informed of some further particulars by a gentleman from Glasgow. But we had not learned till we received your letter the very mournful circumstances in which poor Mrs. Francis Brown has been left by the death of her husband — a situation so powerfully fitted to call forth the sympathy of all her friends, and to exercise their faith in the mysterious Providence of that God, who, however dark in His ways, does all things wisely and well.
That, indeed, is a great alleviation which you have specified, even the apparent religious state of your brother previous to his dissolution. And I must confess that I felt a peculiar gratification in your description of the letter which you received upon this subject, both on account of her who wrote it, and of her to whom it was addressed. Theirs is the fellowship of one common suffering. May they partake largely of one com mon consolation, and may the death of a friend so near and dear to both unite their hearts and their hopes in that Gospel, the faith of which can irradiate even the darkest visitation.
I enter fully into the anxieties which you express because of Mrs. Francis Brown, whose situation cannot fail to draw forth the tenderest solicitude of all her friends. I can scarcely imagine anything so painfully and peculiarly interesting as her present situation; and I pray that, in the desolations of her state, she may experience an upholding confidence in Him who bears respect to the stranger in a strange land.
I was much touched and gratified by the last half of your letter, and by the just and striking reflections at the close of it. I feel with you that the world has a sad power of fascination over the heart, and that to wean us therefrom, there are crosses and extremities in life which appear to be indispensable. May your soul prosper more and more under the discipline of God’s providential hand; and let our experience of the vanities of the creature effectually shut us up unto God in Christ as the strength of our heart and our everlasting portion.
Give my affectionate condolence to Mrs. Brown. Assure her? both of my own sympathy and that of Mrs. Chalmers, and of my prayers for her comfort and spiritual improvement in this the hour of her visitation. “We long also to be remembered to your Mrs. Brown; and I entreat you to believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CXXXIX.
Edinburgh, llth April 1832.
MY DEAR SIR, — I can assure you it was not without emotion that I heard of the death of your excellent, steady, consistent, and altogether exemplary mother, whose memory I shall ever cherish as one of the finest specimens I ever knew of cardinal worth, and all those virtues which mark a stedfast and withal a sober-minded Christian, well-grounded in the faith, and thoroughly intelligent both in the doctrines and moralities of the Bible.
Mrs. Chalmers fully participates in the feelings which I now express, and we unite in offering our sincere condolence and sympathy- on this affecting occasion. May it prove a lesson to us all of the evanescence of the passing world, and the wisdom of being followers of those who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.
Nothing brings home more experimentally to my heart the lesson of my native carnality than the constant need which there is of having the doctrine of mortality so repeatedly told to me; and it does shew how prone we are to cleave to the dust of a perishable world, that though told of death over and over again, yet do we persist in living here as if here we were to live for ever.
May we at length learn wisdom, and, living a life of faith on the Son of God, may we, when our last change arrives, be found in readiness for a blessed translation into His presence, where there is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore. With our kindest regards to Mrs. Brown, I ever am, my dear Sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CXL.
Edinburgh, Aforningside, 1st June 1845.
MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I should have responded sooner to the melancholy intelligence of a month back, respecting your daughter Isabella. The intimation was a moving one to us all; and the invariable effect upon myself is, that it makes me feel as if domesticated in the household of mourners by being thus made a partaker in the griefs of so affecting a bereavement.
I have often reflected upon it as a singular mark of the Di vine forbearance to myself, that, though now about thirty-three years a family man, my household has never yet been visited by death. I feel as if this laid upon me a fearful responsibility; nor am I ever more powerfully impressed by the languor and weakness of faith, than when I contrast the vivid interest that we feel in” the temporal good of our children, with the sad practical insensibility of our hearts to the wellbeing of their unperishable souls.
I rejoice to understand that you and your family are at Fairley. I expect to spend a fortnight there soon. It will be to me the scene of many pensive reminiscences; but I shall feel it a comfort, now that the burden and heat of our day are over with us both, to hold fellowship with yourself as one of my old friends and associates through years that have long passed over us.
Offer my kindest regards and sympathies to dear Mrs. Brown, and also to the Misses Brown and your sons. May the bereavement under which you suffer be sanctified both to you and yours. Let our affections be weaned from a world the dearest and nearest objects of which may be so speedily withdrawn from us; and seeking the city which hath foundations, let us be followers of them who, through faith and patience, are now inheriting the promises. — Ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.