I Thought That Faith Was Some Great Fulgor and Glory in the Soul

Hen I was still but an apprentice at the thing myself,’ says Fraser, ‘ I thought that faith was always a great effulgence of heavenly light shining in the soul. I thought that once I had true faith my faith would then be as the shining light, that shineth more and more to the perfect day. Before I was one of them myself, I foolishly thought that the truly regenerate must always live a life of perpetual peace and of un¬ alloyed sweetness. I felt sure that they must perform all their duties, and carry all their crosses, with an absolutely victorious strength. And I looked forward, myself, to have true faith enough, some day, to remove all the mountains that stood in my way. And then, I thought, I would go on from strength to strength, till I appeared perfect before God in Zion. In my salad innocence, I said, give me but true faith and all the promises that are made to true faith, and, then, let all men take what they like: even of what belongs of right to me. Faith, I said, and the promises of God, are patrimony enough for me. Let my litigious relatives go on plundering me: and let the courts in Edinburgh go on giving my enemies the law against me: even so: I will laugh at the shaking of all their spears.

‘ Also, I remember how I learned by heart Habakkuk’s fine doxology, lately set to music in Scotland. And I sang it to the Sheriff’s officer when he came to ray door one day with my summons to Edinburgh in his hand, till I believe the good man thought that I was not in my sober senses. I see it as if it had been but yesterday. I took him into the pantry, and I healthed him there, and I made him health me, while I sang all the time the prophet’s song:

^’God is the Treasure of my soul,

The source of lasting joy:

A joy which want shall not impair.

Nor death itself destroy.”

And at our family worship that night I expounded Habakkuk, and all the servants and retainers joined me in his doxology. And, altogether, I was so carried that night that I broke out aloud in the hearing of the whole house and said — Take away my whole estate of Brea, and all my money that is in the Inverness bank, and leave me but that para¬ phrase, and you are welcome to all the rest. But, alas! how was I mistaken about myself! And how soon was I made to see my mistake! The soft wax that held my young wings together was soon melted, and I came down to the earth with a crash that broke every bone in my body. And my collapse came about in this way. One worldly thing after another went completely against me. Our crops could not be gathered in that winter. Like Habakkuk’s corn they all rotted in the rain and snow. And on the back of that, the long-pending case at last went against me in Edinburgh. And on the back of all that, old family claims were raised by arbitration against me, and they all conspired to make me all but penniless. And almost worse to bear than all that, were the harsh judgments of my neighbours, and even of my most Christian-minded friends. Till, Icarus-like, I fell from my high flight of faith, and lay broken in a thousand pieces. Yes: shame to tell, all my faith in God completely failed me in my extremity. All the promises of God, that had formerly been my song, came back now to my memory only to mock me. But, to the praise of God, and to the comfort of all His tempest-tossed people, let them be told. When all my faith was but a broken reed, and when I was at my very darkest, I took out Thomas Shepard to the fields with me one day, and was trysted with the passages “A soul,” he said, “may most truly come to Christ, and yet may find no change at first. Nay, not only so, but a soul may, on first coming to Christ, have a great fulgor and glory: and yet may so lose all that afterwards as to be darker and sadder than ever.” At that I closed the book, and looked up to heaven, and said, Is that so? Is that indeed so? Because, if that is so, then I will try to have hope and will not wholly despair. If that is so, then I may have had a true faith all the time: and may have it still; even if it is at this moment like so much smoking flax.’ And so on: till he reasoned, and prayed, and believed himself back into the daylight.

With all his insight into divine things, and his insight was not small, Fraser here records the great mistake that he made, and it was a costly mistake to him. He made a great mistake indeed, when he insisted with himself that a true faith must always manifest itself as a great fulgor and glory in the soul. Had he attended to what he read, Isaiah would have told him that instead of a great fulgor in the soul the best faith is often nothing better than a secret spark of fire at the heart of a bundle of scarcely smoking flax. But, no: Fraser in the pride of his heart would not have that. He insisted that unless there was a far-shining blaze of light and heat and power he refused to believe that he had ever had any true faith at all. Fraser had yet to learn that a true, and a genuine, and an evangelical faith is the most modest, the most lowly-minded, and the most low-lying of all the Christian graces. He had yet to learn that the innermost essence and differentia of a true faith, as he afterwards called it, is absolute self-despair: and, then, absolute trust in Another. When true faith ventures on a song at all, her song is always this:

‘Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace
Foul, I to the Fountain fly;
Wash me. Saviour: or I die.’

All her sister graces have some self-confidence; but not faith. They all feel as if they could do some¬ thing that would not be wholly unacceptable before God. But not faith. She never lifts her horn so high as that. All her days on earth, the most absolute self-despair always dwells at the heart of faith: the most absolute self-distrust, self-despair, and self-forsaking. Till, ‘ Trust in the Lord, for ever trust,’ is another of her favourite songs in the house of her pilgrimage. ‘ Why? ’ asks one of Fraser’s spiritual teachers; ‘Why did God choo&e faith of all the graces whereby to save a man? Because, the poorest man in the whole world; the man with the weakest understanding, can still believe and trust. When a poor man hears that God is able and willing to save sinners, that poor man is able to trust God as strongly, and as firmly, as the wisest and the most understanding man in all the world. Nay, your weak man is more apt to believe, than your strong man, your weak man is altogether far more suited for faith.’ And when Fraser had fully learned his lesson, I find him writing thus himself;

‘ Well said I, Lord, since it is so that I must / believe against sense and reason, then, come away, for I do lippen my soul to Thee. I do trust Thou wilt save me from all my sins. Yes, I said with Job, I will die trusting in His grace and goodness, i And, now, since I have sealed this great bargain with Thee, O send strength, not for any merit in me, but because I am now Thy servant and Thou art my Master.’

There was one occasion when young Fraser had fulgor enough to satisfy all his demands in that direction. He had been off and on with God for years about his being a minister. In the providence of God he was a young laird; and did not need to make up his mind as to how he was to make a living. But, from his childhood, God had put it into Fraser’s heart that he was predestined to be a Gospel minister in Scotland. At the same time, the young laird had balanced, and had calculated, and had hesitated in obeying his early vow, and in consenting to the divine call. But all he had been coming through of late had brought back the blessedness of the ministry more and more to his mind; till at last about his twenty-fifth year, he finally determined to follow his conscience and his heart, and the drawing of God’s Spirit, and at once to give himself up to the work of preparation for the Christian ministry. And no sooner had he decided to do that, than a great ‘ ecstasy of joy,’ a great fulgor of glory indeed, took possession of his heart. And that joy of a great decision never again wholly left his heart. And in that chapter of his remarkable life, Fraser reads a lesson to many of our devout young men who are hesitating and halting between two opinions.

‘ There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to foi’tune: Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.’

Didn’t I tell you a moment ago a lesson that one of Fraser’s spiritual teachers taught him to his spiritual understanding in the nature of the operations of true faith? Well here is another lesson from the same master in Israel. ‘ Of all our duties to God under nature and under grace our faith is the easiest.’ Explain that to me, exclaimed Fraser; make that plain and true to me, and I will give you the half of all I possess. Now, what will you give me if I copy out that true lesson for you to-night; give me your full attention, and I will ask for no¬ thing more. Well, this was the lesson set to Fraser by Paul’s best exegete, as Fraser was wont to call him. ‘ Of all works else, if a man once find it out, faith is by far the easiest. It is by far the shortest cut. Go to your duties, I do not say but you should use them as means; but to find life in them, you cannot. Go to your graces, and you will have a great amount of pudder in them without any true comfort. But now, go past all that, and straight up to Jesus Christ, and that is faith, and you then have Him and all you need in Him.’ But Dr. Smellie’s Guthrie comes to my mind at this moment: and on looking him up I find he is even better on the easiness of faith than the author I have given you. Taking a little gilded copy of The Great Interest out of his pocket. Dr. Owen said: ‘ That author I take to be one of the greatest divines that ever wrote. His book is my vade-mecum. I have written several folios, but there is more sound divinity in this little book than in them all.’ Well this is what John Owen’s spiritual master says to Fraser about the easiness of faith. I give you his very words, not alter¬ ing one syllable of them: ‘ Now, I say, this acting of the heart on Christ Jesus is not so difficult a thing as is conceived. Shall that be j udged a mysterious and difficult thing which doth consist much in desire? If men but have an appetite they have faith: for they are blessed that hunger after righteousness. If you wid you are welcome. Is it a matter of such intricacy and insuperable difficulty to look to the exalted Saviour? Look unto Me, and be ye saved. And to receive a thing that is offered, held out, and declared to be mine, if I will take it? Such is faith: if it is not even less.’ So far evangelical Guthrie. In all which he but repeats a few invitations of which the word of God is full. Try to remember what he says about desire, and about will, and about looking, and about receiving: and do it all. And begin to-night. Begin to believe to-night, and then live all the rest of your short and insecure life a believer. And you can have no idea how easy you will find it, and how sweet, and how full of blessings of every kind. And the oftener you perform the act of faith the more will you strengthen and build up the life of faith. For acts produce habits, and habits form character. Believe, then, on the spot, and where you now sit. Sing the last hymn believing. Go home for the first time a believer, taking all the enriching blessings of a believer home with you. Lie down to sleep believing. Rejoice, when you awake, that you were here to-night, and say. When I awake I am still with thee! Open your Bible in your bedroom, and at family worship believing. Open your newspaper believing: ‘ I read my newsletter, said Jonathan Edwards, ‘ in order to see how the king¬ dom of grace is being advanced, myself and others brought into it, and how the kingdom of glory is being hastened.’ So read your newsletter every day; yes, every day. And then go out to make your living, a believing man. Buy believing and sell believing. Build believing, and plant believing, and marry believing, and give in marriage believing. And, then, when all that comes to an end die believing. And

we will write this evangelical writing on your tombstone, and will go out sometimes to read it: ‘ the souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness: and do immediately pass into glory,’ according to His faithful saying; ‘ To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’ ‘ Whom having not seen ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.’