(IV.)
LASSWADE, 14th May, 1875.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—Your greatly liked letter I now acknowledge. It did me good to find you asserting so strongly spiritual death. It compels us towards Him who is “the resurrection and the life,” who is the true God and eternal life, the eternal life unsealed to sinners spiritually dead, in and by the glorious sacrifice of Himself. The Lord Jesus approaches dead sinners in these words, “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”—(John xi. 25, 26.) Now, it is not merely that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, but it is that He Himself comes and tells us so, comes and tells us what are the immediate consequences to us in our spiritual death of His being the resurrection and the life, and then taking us by the hand and looking us in the face He says, “Believest thou this?” What a communion with Christ that soul might have who truly realised Him putting the question, and not to be put off with no answer or half an answer. What answer can or dare we give but this, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief?” Thou art the resurrection and the life, and Thou art not any less so because I have to cry, Help mine unbelief. Thou art on that account all the more precious to me, all the more needed by me. In spiritual death, as I am, I need exactly Thee, the resurrection and the life. And O suffer me, Lord, to say it, for it is true that Thou, as the resurrection and the life, needest dead souls. Thou canst not otherwise be the resurrection and the life. And it is to me that Thou hast been pleased to come and say “I am the resurrection and the life.” It is between Thee and me, here and now, that this wondrous word is passing, and it is to me now Thou art saying, “Believest thou this?” Lord, why askest thou this question of me, unless Thou meanest me to know and feel that Thou dost really need dead souls in order that it may be possible for Thee to be truly and actually the resurrection and the life?
Yea, why askest Thou this of me, unless it be that so Thou mayest give me to understand that Thou needest dead and helpless me? It is useless to say, “Lord, I cannot believe, for I am dead,” because if I were not dead, He who is the resurrection and the life needed not to have come to me. Lord, Thou knewest I was dead, and that is why Thou comest as the resurrection and the life, comest that Thou mayest meet my death and do away with it. Lord, if I am dead and Thou hast come to me as the life, what can I say or do, but just break down in wonder, in shame, and in thankfulness that it should be so! Yes, Lord, I break down, an unbelieving dead soul before Thee, and Thou as the resurrection and the life sayest, “Arise, live,” and if Thou willest that I, dead and helpless, should arise and live, what right, what reason have I to say, “Lord, I cannot.” Cannot! even when the Resurrection says, “Rise.” Cannot! even when the Life says, “Live.” The soul that says so and sticks to it thereby says, “Lord, thou art not the resurrection, thou art not the life, I believe not this.”
All the while it remains true, awfully true, that this is just the answer we will give unless the Resurrection and the Life do raise us. He cannot raise us against our will, nor without our will; not that He is limited in power, but because He cannot work self-contradictions and will not work unreasonablenesses. But again, therefore, comes this tender, loving, piercing question, “Believest thou this? Believest thou that I am the resurrection and the life?” And is the response? “Lord, I fain would believe, I dare not say thou art not what thou tellest me thou art.” Then this believing acquiescence in His word is just the Resurrection raising you up, just the Life causing you to live. You rise by breaking down; you are raised by being broken down. He Himself became the Resurrection by dying; He Himself became the Life by rising again from the dead. And His people by breaking down, by dying to themselves, rise in Him. He breaks them down that He may raise them up in and with Himself. O what a life is that! the life that is obtained by dying and rising again, the life that passed through death and resurrection must be eternal life. The life to which entrance is gained by the gates of resurrection is life everlasting. What will all the splendours of the resurrection of dead bodies be at the sound of the archangel’s trump, compared with what my Lord already is as the resurrection of dead souls? And as I hear Him say, “Arise, my love, for the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, death is ended, resurrection is accomplished, life for evermore is entered upon,” does he not thereby cause me to know that a splendour of glory belongs to Him, even now, as the Resurrection and the Life, although I scarcely see the most distant tips of the fringe thereof? Ah! well, I think I see this, my great and overpowering need of Him as my Resurrection and my Life. . . . Yours, &c., HUGH MARTIN.