The Saint and His Saviour

I have no idea of what I am expected to say in a preface, and am of opinion that a book is better without an appendage usually so unmeaning. I will, however, make one or two faithful declarations which may, perhaps, shield me from the reader’s wrath, should he find my work of less value than he expected.

!N”ever was a book written amid more incessant toil. Only the fragments of time could be allotted to it, and intense mental and bodily exertions have often rendered me incapable of turning even those fragments to advantage.

Writing is to me the work of a slave. It is a delight, a joy, a rapture to talk out one’s thoughts in words that flash upon the mind at the instant when they are required; but it is poor drudgery to sit still and groan for thoughts and words without succeeding in obtaining them. “Well may a man’s books be called his “works,” for, if every mind were constituted as mine, it would be work indeed to produce a quarto volume. Nothing but a sense of duty has impelled me to finish this book, which has been more than two years on hand. Yet have I, at times, so enjoyed the meditation which ray writing has induced, that I would not discontinue the laboui’ were it ten times more irksome: and moreover, I have some hopes that it may yet be a pleasure to me to serve God with the pen as well as the lip.

The subject of religious experience is a very wide one, and those points of it upon which I have touched deserve larger notice from a far abler hand than mine. The aged Christian will find very little instruction here; it will not be j)roper for him to expect it when he is reminded of the object of the volume. It has been my aim to deal only with the more common and shallow experiences of beginners, and I have left the great deeps for those who have long done business upon them. To comfort the mourner, to confirm the weak, to guide the wandering, and reassure the doubting has been my great desire. If I may but hear of some trembling sinners led to Jesus by the following pages, or of some distressed believer enabled to rejoice, it will be an ample recompence to me.

I have dedicated the work to God, and I now crave His abundant blessing upon it.

Clapham, September 1857.

It would not be easy for some of us to recall the hour when we first heard the name of Jesns. In very infancy that sweet sound was as familiar to our ear as the hnsh of lullaby. Our earliest recollections are associated with the house of God, the family altar, the Holy Bible, the sacred song, and the fervent prayer. Like young Samuels, we were lighted to our rest by the lamps of the sanctuary, and were awakened by the sound of the morning hymn. Many a time has the man of God, whom a parent’s hospitality has entertained, implored a blessing on our head, desiring in all sincerity that we might early call the Redeemer blessed; and to his petition a mother’s earnest “Amen” has solemnly responded. Ours were happy portions

and goodly heritages; but nevertheless, being ‘’born in sin, and sliapen in iniquity,” these heavenly privileges did not of themselves avail to give us love to Jesus, and pardon by his blood.

We are often compelled to weep over sins aggravated by light as clear as noonday — ordinances undervalued from their very frequency — warnings despised, although accompanied with tears from a parent’s eye — and loathings felt in the heart, if not expressed by the lips, to those very blessings which were the rich benisons of heaven. In our own persons we are witnesses to the fact of innate depravity, the birth-plague of man; and we can testify to the doctrine that grace, and grace alone, can change the heart. The words of Isaiah are ours with an emphasis, notwithstanding all the hallowed influences which surrounded us: and in uttering the confession, “we esteemed him not,” the haunts of our childhood, the companions of our youth, and the sins of our manhood, unanimously confirm our truthfulness.

Starting, then, with our own experience, we are led to infer that those who were denied our advantages will certainly be compelled to adopt the same humble language. If the child of pious parents, wdio by divine power was in youth brought to know the Lord, feels constrained to acknowledge that once he did not esteem the Saviour, shall the man whose education was irreligion, whose childhood was riot, whose yoiitli was license, and whose maturity was crime, be able to adopt language less humiliating? No; we believe that all men of this class, who are now redeemed from the hand of the enemy, will readily acknowledge that they were the blind neglecters of the beauties of our gloriou,s Emmanuel. Aye, more, we venture to challenge the “Church of the first-born” to produce a single saint who did not once pass by the cross with indifference, if not contempt.

“Whether we review the” noble army of martyrs,” “the goodly fellowship of the prophets,” “the glorious company of the apostles,” or “tile holy Church throughout all the world,” we shall not discover a sin2:le lover of the adorable Redeemer who will not join the general confession, ““We esteemed him not.”

Pause, attentive reader, and ask thyself whether thou dost esteem him now for possibly it may happen that thou hast not as yet seen in him any “beauty that thou shouldest desire him,” nor canst thou subscribe to the exclamation of the spouse, “Yea, he is altogether lovely.” Should this be thine unhappy condition, a meditation thereon may,, under the Holy Spirit’s influence, be of much use to thee; and I beseech thee, while we unfold the secrets of what was once our prison-house, be thou intensely anxious that by any means thou also mayest escape a bondage which deprives thee of joy here, and will shut thee out from bliss hereafter.

“We propose to endeavour first of all to bring the fact of our light estimation of Jesus vividly before our eye; then, secondly, we will discuss the causes of this folly; and, thirdly, seek to excite emotions proper to such a mournful contemplation.

I. Let us go to the potter’s house, and view the unshapen clay which we once were; let us remember “the rock whence we were hewn,” and the “hole of the pit from which we were digged,” that we may with deeper feeling repeat the text, “We esteemed him not.” Let us here seriously peruse the diary of memory, for there the witnesses of our guilt have faithfully recorded their names.

We pause, and consider first ou?’ overt acts ofsiii, for these lie like immense boulders on the sides of the hill of life, sure testifiers to the rock within.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography, if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush. “We have all sinned and come short of his glory.” None of us can lay claim to perfection. True, at times a forgetful self-complacency bids us exult in the virtue of our lives; but when faithful memory awakes, how instantly she dispels the illusion? She waves her magic wand, and in he king’s palace, frogs arise in multitudes; the pure rivers at her glance become blood; the whole land is creeping with loathsomeness. Where we imagined purity, lo, imperfection ariseth. The snow-wreath of satisfaction melts before the sun of truth; the nectared bowl of gratulation is embittered by sad remembrances; while, under the glass of honesty, the deformities and irregularities of a life apparently correct are rendered, alas! too visible.

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