BEAUFOY STREET,
WICK, 6th December, 1892.
I got your welcome letter and papers. I have no mind to write anyone since a long time, such spiritual deadness is taking hold of my mind. If it were not for times and ages that are past, I would have nothing to say or write.
The time of youth is the time of activity and progress in spiritual life as well as natural. So young men should use their youth well if the Lord is dealing with them. They should nourish and cherish every grace they would get from Him, and count them precious, and pray that they would be made more and more precious to their souls. A young Christian should be much in secret prayer, and more especially they who are looking forward to the office of the ministry. If they want to be ministers of Christ, their souls should be near Christ by His Spirit who can lead them near to Him in secret prayer. If the Spirit of Christ is leading them to Himself, He will try their spirits. See how the Psalmist was tried in the 73rd psalm; how low he was at the beginning, and how high he was brought up to heaven at the end. The best time for a sinner before the Lord is, when he is giving up hope in himself, and is come to be a lost creature, the word binding him up to wrath, and keeping him bound and afraid he will be bound in time and through eternity, and perhaps doubting all the grace he got before was no saving grace—although he would be many years going through the work of grace, he may be concluding that all was false and that he was only a hypocrite. But when the Holy Spirit comes with the gospel as Noah’s dove came with the olive leaf in her mouth, all the deluge of wrath will flee away, and a new world of redeeming love will open, and there will be no more word about wrath as long as that promise will last. Let it be long or short the soul will have more experience of the work of grace and get more establishment in the work of grace, and more rooted in the faith of Christ, than he would get in a lifetime in the mere outward hearing even of the true gospel. When the Spirit of Christ works in the souls of sinners in secret, He writes the law in their minds and causes them to see His holy covenant, showing plainly before their spiritual eye what was done in eternity for the redeemed, the mysteries of His grace in time, settled in eternity for them. Christ said “All that the Father giveth me shall come unto me; and none of them shall be lost.” But all their life long, they will feel at times without spiritual life and under spiritual death, so that they will be like David when he said, that there was only a step between him and death. Sandy Gair said that was the step of the Covenant.
R. Ross.
BEAUFOY STREET,
WICK, January, 1893.
I got your welcome letter in due time . . . I see little prospect of any change in the Free Church at this time.
You say your sins are like to get the better of you. Could you have a better case for prayer? What says the Psalmist in such a case? He says “Consider these mine enemies, because they many are.” He had enemies without, but he had them often within. “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit; so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live,” Hezekiah was saying when he was in trouble.
“My wand’ring all what they have been,
thou know’st, their number took;
Into thy bottle put my tears;
are they not in thy book?”
Faith will calm all their troubles. There is no place of comfort for a lost creature like the Most High and the promises of the gospel. Very little comfort I ever got in man. The law would bind me under wrath, and I could not move from it, till the promises of the gospel would give me comfort. Look at the one hundred and seventh Psalm. When He sends a storm on them, what trouble and pain they have; they reel and stagger like one drunk; at their wits’ end they be; but the storm is changed to a calm. . . .
R. Ross.
BEAUFOY STREET,
WICK, 9th March, 1894.
I got your letter in due course. I have nothing new to write. My own heart is as old and as cold as it can be in one whom people think got grace, and which sometimes I believe myself. But when spiritual darkness and deadness come in and get all the room in the heart, it puts grace out of sight, and often takes in doubts and fears. When there is no spiritual light to see or know grace, if one will not get a sight of the former light of faith they got, it will be a cold standing; who can stand before such cold? as you can see mentioned in Psalm 147. But the Lord will not leave His people too long in that cold, if it will make them sick and afraid that all the warmth they had was a delusion, and that now there is nothing but death. The Psalmist says in the same Psalm, “He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.” The water of life floweth again, and refreshes the poor cold doubting soul.
I was myself under law work for seven years. At last I got easy and careless; I was thinking I was going right to heaven, and was content with my religion, though I never made any profession of religion all that time. I was only twenty-two years of age at the end of the seven. If the Lord had left me then, I would be only a white hypocrite ripening for hell. But the Lord’s time came,
the time that He had set, and put me through more trouble in a short time than all I went through in seven years. I was now believing it would be in hell I would land. When I found myself sinking down to the pit of destruction, I got deliverance in seeing the glory of the Father in the face of Christ Jesus, which changed my state of mind. I got such a view of the holiness that is in the Three Persons, and was so long under the power of it that I thought I would be in that state as long as I lived. But I got too secure and began to think less of the great privilege I got, so darkness came and great trouble with it, thinking I had committed the unpardonable sin. But since then the Lord gave light and darkness when it was needed. I found the darkness as useful as the light, but not so joyful.
R. Ross.
WICK,
30th August, 1897.
I got your welcome letter, and was glad you were well. . . . It is such ministers as will tell you the truth you should always hear. You will get plenty of ministers who will put you to the heaven they think to go to themselves, but they know not what heaven is, and they do not know what hell is, but they think they are going to a heaven of their own fancy. They never felt need of a Saviour; they never saw the glory of the Father in the face of Christ Jesus; then they were not changed into the same image “as by the Spirit of the Lord.” When any are changed into this image from glory to glory, heaven comes into their souls, although they may not know at the time it is heaven. It is said in the Word: “What I do ye know not now, but ye shall know hereafter.” The love of the Father to them is manifested in Christ taking their nature. As He was the eternal God, He could not show Himself to man; man could not stand such a glorious sight; but He came into the world, born in a stable, laid in a manger; He had not so much comfort as a cradle. How low He humbled Himself! He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He came to save criminals; He took the death they were liable to; He could not descend lower. But it is said that God the Father hath exalted Him very high and given Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess. It is Jesus who was crucified at Jerusalem that will be our judge at the day of judgment. So be praying, “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord; and renew a right spirit within me.”
R. Ross.
Communions.—Inverness, first Sabbath of July; Tain and Moy, second; Halkirk and Rogart, third; North Uist, fourth.
Meeting of Synod.—The half-yearly Meeting of Synod will (D.V.) be held in the Inverness Church on Tuesday, the 8th July. The Moderator (the Rev. Neil Macintyre, Glendale) will preach at 12 noon.