May 16
My very dear Friend: — I could not neglect this opportunity of assuring you howmuch I remember you in the best place. Our Lord knows the needs must of suffering. He loves you too well to deprive you of your portion. He himself went, and all his go, the same way to glory. They drink of the brook in the way; and they drink it out of the cup of salvation. True, it is bitter. I find it very bitter; as unpalatable as you can find it. But I am praying it may prove more salutary to you and to me; and this it cannot do while we murmur and complain. It is sent to stop this working of self-will. The flesh is impatient and frets: the spirit stops its rebellion, and says, Not my will, Lord, but thine be done. Amen! May this be the end of all your trials! May you come out of them like gold out of the fire!
I hear you have a present exercise; viz.: your young and beloved Isaac to be parted from you. There is grace sufficient even for this. You do not love your son more than I did mine. It cannot cross your vrill more than it did mine: but my son went into the army, and I do not repent; it was his choice. He has been kept, as far as I know, from army-sins; and the same good God may also keep your son. Trust him in his loving and careful guidance; and the Lord will do what is best both for him and for you.
Your one business is to trust your all
in the hands of Christ; having received him, then to live upon him. Remember, he is to answer everrj purpose, body and soul; you and yours; earth and heaven. You are not living up to your privilege, if there be any person or thing that you keep back from Christ, and do not leave to his absolute management. The command runs: “Trust in him, at all times, ye people.” Pray him to make you willing to part with your son, as he did Abraham. Pray him to give you more faith to trust him in the Lord’s hand: and then follow him with your daily prayers that the good Lord may keep him from all evil.
When you have done this, the rest must be left. The Lord will do what seemeth him good: yea, he will enable you to say, Come what may, all is w ell.
In a bond never to be broken, I am yours in Christ. My blessing on your dear son, and prayers for him!
W.R.
TO A FRIEND.
ON HUMILITY.
Exlracled iVom “Brown’s (of Whitburne) Colleclion of Letters.”
I HAVE ever had such awful apprehensions of the chai’ge of souls, that I durst not (though often solicited) undertake it, ever since I knew my own heart. I have found myself plagued to death with watching over it: what must it be to watch over two or three thousand? Who is sufficient for this?, I feel myself as unfit for it as to have the government of the world upon my shoulders; but being appointed to this church, not only without my seeking, but also against my will, and having an undoubted call from God, therefore my sufficiency for the work being of God, I dare not stand out. I have been forced to say, “Here am I, send me!”
And though he has enabled me to depend upon him for grace to do his will, both in me and by me, yet I find the flesh resisting, and putting forth a multitude of doubts and fears, in order to discourage me; besides this, I have an enemy whom I do not wish to make my friend, and who hates me with a perfect hatred; but I make the Lord my strength, and go to battle in the power of his might: I am sure all will be well while I am kept humble. O pray that I may be a good soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ! but, above all, ask for me humility. A humble man can come to no harm; he will be ever trusting in the Lord, because he finds nothing in himself to trust in, while he gives great glory to God by trusting much in him. God gives him great grace, and this grace is to keep alive an abiding sense of what he is in himself; to show him his ignorance and helplessness, to open to him daily more of the mystery of iniquity, to discover to him the stirrings of corruption, which others feel not, and make him sensible of these, even in duties and ordinances, that he may loathe himself and his very best works. These are the fruits of true grace; and he that is under the teachings of the Holy Ghost will abound in them. The more God does in the heart, the more he humbles it. The great design of his grace is to bring the proud sinner low, and then to keep him low. When he hath brought us low, we do not like to be kept there, we want to get up again; our foolish desire is, that he may do something in us, for which we may have a good opinion of ourselves; and so with this thought, we are apt to wish, Oh, that I were more holy! Oh, that I could pray better! Oh, that I was more spiritual in my duties! Oh, that I was thankful enough! If you could come to the true nature of these wishes, (specious as they appear,) you would find them spring from the secret workings of a proud, self-righteous spirit; take off their cloak of holiness, and their meaning is this: “I wish God would give me something for which I might be pleased with myself” If this was the case, would not the eye be turned inward upon this venj good self, and be drawn off from looking unto Jesus, and so far as self is made something, Christ is made nothing? You may depend upon this as one of the surest axioms of divinity: “Whatsoever it be.’that makes you pleased with yourself, that is - not true grace; and whatsoever makes you displeased with yourself, is not true gx-ace, unless it bring you humble to Christ, and make you put more trust in him.” The Lord teach you these things practically! I have learned them by long experience. Though I know but little, yet I am getting on in Christ’s school, and hope soon to be in the lowest form, for there we learn most and fastest; we there depend entirely on the teaching of our Divine Master, who reveals his secrets to none but babes. A new-born babe absolutely depends on the care of its parents, so must we depend on God, on Christ, our prophet and teacher; and when we are brought thus humble, he will then make known to us what he hides from the wise and prudent. I would, therefore, wish you the humblest man upon earth; then not only you may know most, but love most. He that feels his sins and miseries, his vileness and unprofitableness, with the deepest loathings of them, is in the fittest way to love Christ. If he is an experienced believer, the feelings of these sins and miseries will make Christ more precious; the more he finds of the exceeding sinfuhiess of sin, the more he will trust in Christ’s righteousness; and the more misery he knows, the more he desires salvation; all will make Jesus more dear and lovely. His own vileness sets forth Christ’s grace; his unworthiness the worthiness of the Lamb, the sufficiency of Jesus,
who is ail in all. When you are going to measure Christ’s high grace, do not get upon a mountain, but go down into a valley — lower still, to the belly of hell, from whence Jonah cried; from thence see the height of Jesus’ grace, and from thence see how lovely he is. When the Spirit of Jesus is humbling you, showing you your deceitful, wicked heart, laying open your ruined nature in all its abominable workings, has not this often discouraged you, my friend, and instead of loving Christ more, and trusting him more, did it not weaken your trust and lessen your love, and, therefore, you counteracted the gracious purposes of Jesus Christ? May he teach you better! that every future sense of sin may greatly endear that Lamb of God to you, whose blood cleanseth from all sin. Depend upon it, that it is the only true humbling for sin which makes his blood more precious. Be faithful to your own heart; stop here a moment; look back and read what, from one thing to another, I have written to you, and examine, if you do not begin to fear for the interest of duty and holy obedience. If the more I feel sin, I may trust the more, and love Christ the more, what place is left for obeying? Is that your thought? To which I answer, The humblest man not only knows most, and loves most, but also obeys most. Is not grace the principle of Gospel obedience? And does not God give grace to the humble, grace to do all things, grace to suffer all things? What says he who was less than the least in his own eyes? Oh! “I can do all things through Christ strengthening me!” The humblest lean most on Christ’s strength; and, therefore, through that strength, which is almighty, he can do most; he is helped best, fights most courageously, conquers most triumphantly. Show me a seemingly humble man, who does not love duty, and I will show you his pride; but let me see a truly humble man, and I am sure to find him walking humbly with his God. He walks with God, and God walks with him. Hear how he declares who are his favorites! not the rich, not the learned, not the Pharisee, not the great and noble; no, but “to this man will I look, who is of an humble and contrite spirit, and who trembleth at my word.” These he honors, they are in his sight of great price; how exalted in his esteem, who is the Fountain of all true honor! and he will exalt them very high. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted to the throne above, where all God’s children are perfectly humble, crying with one voice, “Not worthy we, but worthy is the Lamb!” If there be so great grace, O pray to God to make me more and more humble. I will do the same for you, and remain yours,
W. R.