BEAUFOY STREET,
PULTENEY, 5th June, 1898.
DEAR FRIEND,—The Psalmist says, “My trouble is so great that I unable am to speak.” You may say so very often. It’s for the benefit of the Church of God this complaint was left on record, but you will be at times afraid you don’t belong to that Church. They would like to be always singing, but they are oftener mourning. Job was crying, “O that I knew where I might find him,” but instead of mourning, he should have been rejoicing, for his soul was full of Christ. Mary was saying, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour;” but Mary Magdalene could not say that when she came to the grave and found it empty. The sinner finds his heart an empty grave when he cannot find Christ, and is afraid he will not find Him. . . .
With kind regards to all friends,
ROBERT ROSS.
PULTENEY, June, 1898.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—I was glad to get a line or two from you. . . . The Most High has a set time for calling all His children from death to life eternal. Their sins will not stand in the Lord’s way when that set time is come. Before this time they did not know what sin was, but now sin comes to be exceeding sinful and Christ exceeding precious to them. They only knew the name of sin—a small word before this, but when the law of the Lord opened their eyes, He made sin a great word, and put a great cry in their hearts, “For thy name’s sake pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.”
ROBERT ROSS.
PULTENEY, February, 1899.
DEAR FRIEND,—I am not very strong for going about this season. I cannot travel a mile when I will be very tired. My hand in writing is quite steady, although my strength is going away. No wonder when I am nearly 88 years of age, and you are only two years younger. But we may say what the Word says, that we are like the flower of the field which passeth away. If people in general knew what death is and what comes after it, they would be a terror to themselves and others. The world are like people in a dream; every one is expecting to go to heaven; but how unlike they are to those to whom the Lord has given a knowledge of their lost state by nature, and a foretaste of the blessings of the heavenly glory He has provided in His own Son Christ Jesus. Christ took their nature into union with His own divine person, and went through the world bearing their sins and suffering, “the just for the unjust.” It is they who have got through grace a right to Christ that are seeing themselves so unlike Him. It is good for them that they got a knowledge of themselves as sinners. With kind regards,
R. ROSS.
BEAUFOY STREET.
DEAR FRIEND,—I have not much to write as I am dull in my mind, and not going out much. I am hearing that you are getting weak in body, and not strong in mind. The Most High has His own way of dealing with His inheritance. He must cause them to know that there is no good thing in them by nature. He will make them lost sinners, and it is a very heavy burden to be made a lost sinner. Everyone is a sinner by nature, but the Lord will cause His own to feel that they are lost sinners. But what good news He gives them when He says, that He came to seek and to save the lost. It is written that He came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. None will get Christ and reach heaven but those who feel themselves sinners, full of sin and spiritual death. What a good thing it is when He lets them taste of His love! That is what caused the Psalmist to cry, “Remember me with the favour thou bearest to thy people.” He did not feel that love in his heart at the time, but he got a knowledge of the need he had of that love. It’s good for any poor sinner to get a desire after Christ. I will be often myself afraid I did not get Christ yet, but I would not like to lose my hope.
With kind love to you all,
R. ROSS.
PULTENEY.
DEAR FRIEND,—It is written that one thing is needful and that Mary made choice of “the good part” that could not be taken away from her. That good part made choice of her and then she made choice of Him. O the blessedness that falls on those who get an interest in the good part. Often they are afraid they did not get Christ, but it is the best sickness ever a sinner got to be missing Christ from his soul. It is the greatest wonder in the world that ever any sinner got Him. The cry of such often is, “O that I knew where I might find him.” It would be better to have this cry than to have the whole world. The world would leave us, perhaps, when we had the most need of it, but they who get Christ have a hope of glory, and their hope will not leave them when death comes; it’s in good keeping—not in their own hand, and that is good for them—it is in Christ, and He is in them the hope of glory. My health is good, and my hope is good.
With kind regards,
ROBERT ROSS.