by Mr A. Docter, Holland
My dear friend,
If all’s well I hope to cross to Scotland next month, and first intend to go to Plockton communion. Mr Donald Campbell invited me to come to his home.
At present the Sinclairs, London, are staying with us. On Wednesday last we went to the Island of Flakkee which was flooded in the late gale. The dikes have been repaired but oh! what a misery there. We visited a village where 300 people were drowned. The farms have been destroyed, the land is covered with clay — no crops this year. I met an old godly man of over eighty. He and his wife awoke in the night and saw the water in their room. They climbed upstairs wet through and sat down on a bed against the wall. Suddenly, their house was swept away by the roaring waves. Only one wall and a small piece of the floor, on which their bed stood, remained. Here, they saw their neighbours’ home being swept away — five were drowned. With death before their eyes, they sat in the open air. The old man said to me: “My heart was as hard as stone, I could not pray, but saw the Lord’s anger in the foaming waves. Then it came to me so sweetly ‘in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength,’ Is. 30, 15. Everything changed within. I said to my wife, ‘Be not afraid, for the Lord shall help us through as He did these fifty years in our married life.'” They were saved after many hours. We have seen his former home, with the bed still there, a monument of the Lord’s power and grace.
Oh! to be found at that Fountain opened to David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. To be washed in the blood of the Lamb! Oh! that I should meet the Elder Brother in Scotland. Christ will in no way cast out all those who are going to a communion to seek Him.
With kindest regards from both of us,
Yours sincerely,
A. Docter
Let the Word be the sun-dial by which you set your life. What are we the better for having the Scriptures if we do not direct all our speeches and actions according to it? What are we the better for the rule of the Word, if we do not make use of it?
Thomas Walson.