Leicester, June, 1840.
. . . Our friends who are fallen asleep are not dead; they still live in our fond remembrance, and appear in and flit before our imagination. You and I often have the bereaved parent’s heartache; we do not wonder at good old Jacob’s pathetic exclamation—”Me ye have bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.” Gen. xvii., 36. You and I are melancholy companions of the halting patriarch, and too often feel as rebellious under our sad bereavements as he did under his. What a sad three years you and I have passed through! God has blighted our gourds, and laid us low . . .
My deceased children1 appear to me to be good company; they wean me from this jading world, and I long for another and better state of existence. Though dead they yet live, and yet speak to me! They often chide, and sometimes counsel me. I sincerely wish never to forget them. There shall always be in my mind and in my affections, a place sacred to their memory. I view them as being my instructors and my monitors. I will not ask you if these thoughts accord with yours—we are both wounded in the same place. Let those censure us who have never felt as we do. On this subject I often try to think as a Christian, whilst I feel as a man. Well, after all, we do not wish them back, but we wish to be with them.
I often think of those Christian friends with whom I have taken sweet counsel, having walked with them to the house of God. In this sense I am almost a broken merchant—I have had many and great losses. In Christian friendship I have become a poor man; many of my best friends have left me to join “the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven.” They are better employed than in conversing with me—a poor, distrustful, dissatisfied, grumbling mortal. I think of them, and they appear to me like angels now! How happy the spirits of the just! “Blessed are the dead that die in the lord. Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours and their works do follow them.” May we ultimately rest among them. But I must now draw the curtain.
You will say—“If I had as good a hope as you have, I think I should hardly grumble as you do, but say with Job, ‘All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my charge come.’” So I have said, and so I would say again, but full often guilt and fear drag me down far below my blessed privileges. I am only one of little faith. I am often in bondage—a helpless captive sold under sin—an alien from my mother’s children—a captive exile—a child of liberty in chains and fetters. I groan, being burdened. I have found those words of Erskine true.
“Before he’ll suffer pride that swells,
He’ll drag thee through the mire
Of sins, temptations, little hells;
Thy husband saves by fire.”
“But,” you will say, “You are not without hope.” No, blessed be the God of hope, I do not know what I should do were that the case. To tell you the truth I nursed that brat unbelief, until I durst nurse it no longer. I would fain leave Satan to nurse his own children himself, or let them pine away and die. I think he is the father of a true believer’s fears.
You tell me you know you are a sinner, whilst afraid you have never been rightly convinced of sin. You think you are not truly humbled, that you do not rightly repent, that your heart is as hard as the flinty rock, and your soul—if it feels anything—feels nothing but death; that you have desired Christ, yet fear you shall not obtain Him, because—as you think—your desires are not right.
Perhaps you will say, “All these things are true: this is in part my case.” But let me tell you, I believe many are now in glory who had these fears when in the wilderness; they were all their lifetime subject to bondage, yet Christ died to deliver them. Heb. ii., 14-15. “Yes,” you will say, “but that is not the worst of my case; for I sometimes seem to think it would have seemed better if God had chosen all men to life eternal, or if he had never suffered man to fall, or if he had never created man at all.” But now I hope you look upon these thoughts as blasphemous.
Again, have you not sometimes thought that grace is not so full and free as ministers in their zeal represent? Have you not sometimes doubted whether Christ is as compassionate to sinners as our ministers represent Him to be? Do you not sometimes entertain hard thoughts of Christ, because He does not graciously reveal Himself to you? Do you not feel out of temper with yourself, the Bible, the Almighty, because you feel so hard, so unhappy, so miserable? Are you not ready to wish you had been a dog, a stone, or anything that had no soul?
Remember that unbelief, like a spider, can suck poison from the sweetest flowers. Christ never shows so much grief at any sin as the sin of unbelief. “And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.” Never does He show such dislike to unbelief in any, as in His own children. As Cæsar, when he fell, said to one “And you too, Brutus!” so Christ may say to you and me “And you too!” Lord, save us from this deadening, soul-damning sin!
Lord, save us from hard thoughts of thee! Christ is the sensible sinners best and only friend. When we harbour hard thoughts of Him, it is to trifle with His sufferings, His wounds, His groans, His cries, His blood, His death, His intercession, His promises, His invitations, His Spirit, since He hath savingly wrought in us. O for a true, strong, living faith, that we might glorify God and enjoy Him for ever. “He is able, he is willing. Doubt no more.”
May the Lord work in you and me all the pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with mighty power! Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus.
ED. BLACKSTOCK.
1There was evidence that they died in the Lord.—Ed.