THE writer of the following letter was esteemed as a man of worth and piety, and died in Aberdeen about 20 years ago:—
72 BONACCORD STREET, ABERDEEN, 4th October, 1873.
MY DEAR — I received your esteemed favour on Saturday morning, and I beg leave to plead guilty to the charge of culpable negligence in not writing you sooner, and throw myself on the leniency of the court of your conscience.
I see you are still mourning sore like a dove, proving clearly that the dove is not dead else it is not possible it could mourn. A mourner in Zion, what is that? It is a living branch of the true vine, a man who makes his companions of all those who fear God. It is good for us always to remember that salvation belongeth to the Lord, and He alone is the sovereign disposer of it. The best saint that ever was on this earth can say truthfully he never had any claim on the blessed God for it. The wages of sin is death, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, therefore all that are saved it must be by grace through faith, and that is the gift of God, free and unmerited by any. He is not a hard master, but full of compassion and tender mercy toward poor sinners. None ever went to Him in this state truly that He cast away. “He filleth the hungry with good things, and sendeth the rich empty away.” It is true He does not always let His own know what He is doing; this perhaps would ruin them. He looks upon them, and sees them writing bitter things against themselves at the very time that He is writing sweet things for them. “What ye know not now ye shall know hereafter.” “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” They have their days of darkness and their days of light, their ups and their downs, their times of adversity and their times of prosperity, they eat the bread of adversity and drink the waters of affliction. The world does not know them and does not understand them. The natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness unto him. Amidst their trials and sore afflictions, Christ the Lord sometimes visits them, and drops a word of comfort into their ear. “Ye now have sorrow, but I will see you again.”
There are very few of this stamp to be found in the present time. I am grieved and afflicted to see multitudes of ungodly professors that swarm over the land like locusts, destroying the green pastures of the living word of the living and true God. And their corruptions and fraud stink in the nostrils of honest men. This applies principally to their leaders. Surely retributive justice cannot be far off. The great golden god is the most popularly worshipped over the nations, specially our own poor guilty land, selling what they call the gospel for money. One was addressed, that attempted this ungodly traffic with the true gospel of the grace of God, in the following words, long ago: “Thy money perish with thee, for thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter.” Oh, my dear friend, these men are making infidels by wholesale. No wonder though popery be rising in our cities and villages, and surrounding our shores. No man of the least discernment could believe the monstrous stuff thought of and publicly taught in the most of the pulpits in poor deluded Scotland, and all this and the Bible in their hands. I see nothing for this nation but the judgments of the righteous and Holy One whom we have grievously offended by our terrible inventions.
All this has come upon us, not for the sins of the world, but for the sins of the people of God. Oh! the wickedness that has been and still is in them, none knows but Him who knows all things. But blessed be His name He hath, in His love and undeserved mercy, resolved to purge out this unholy leaven, for He loves with everlasting love poor sinners, but hates their sins. The Lord Jesus makes His people sensible of His comings and goings at times. I knew a remarkable instance of it this by past summer, and yet cannot get it out of my mind, the light that shone was very visible, not to the natural eye, but to the spiritual. Two brethren were walking on a lonely country road, conversing freely about the great salvation and exclusive sovereignty of God in Christ in saving sinners, when all of a sudden their fellowship became so united and so sweet that they stood and looked on one another with their suffused eyes full of tears, and their hearts as soft as wax. This continued as they walked for miles, and as they drew near their dwelling this subsided in a measure, but returned in the evening at the family altar. I cannot give a proper account of it, neither am I clear on the propriety of speaking of it to everybody. David says, “Come all ye that fear God, and I will tell what He did for my soul.” To lay such things before the present religionists would simply be casting pearls before swine. When Christ comes in His grace He makes the path of duty very plain and clear, and if the spouse be drowsy or sleeping He awakens by a repetition of grace. He arouses to action, and out pours the prayer, praise, and supplication, and they are able to speak with their enemies in the gate, and do battle against the uncircumcised Philistines. The weak become strong, and they put to flight the armies of the aliens. The mother-in-law of John Knox was a godly woman, but she appears to have been much in the furnace of affliction about spiritual matters, and this eminent servant of God, although hunted by wolves and banished his country, expounds in a foreign land the sixth psalm, and sends it to her bit by bit, to try through grace and bind up her broken heart. He was obliged to use another name to conceal himself from these bloody men of his day in doing this work. I would advise you to take a look into this grand exposition, you will find it in the Free Church cheap publications. We will be very glad to receive a visit from you when you come north. My daughter will be in Glasgow in the end of this week if all goes well and nothing occurs to prevent.
With united and kind regards to your circle, I remain, yours sincerely,
ALEXR. MILNE.