BEAUFOY STREET, PULTENEY.
MY DEAR DONALD,—I have not much news to give you. Y— was here to-day and spoke twice. He had many weighty cases. I was asking him if you were coming. He said he did not know, and that you were troubled so much in your mind. It’s not easy to be under a heavy yoke, even the Spirit’s yoke sometimes. Christ says about His own tried people: “What I do ye know not now, but ye shall know hereafter.” The Lord tries His people as if He were in wrath against them, but it is all in love. And the more the Lord tries them, the better for them, as He is proving and trying them till they know what is in their heart; and the Lord says in the Word that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” He tries the reins of the sons of men, and He will try His own to purpose. For the present the trial is not joyous but grievous, but afterwards yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are exercised thereby.
I was many a year under trouble of mind, but at last I got careless. I was praying and reading the Bible and good books all the time. No one could say anything against me outwardly; I kept myself from open sin and sinful company, but yet a little careless in my devotions, thinking I was on the right way to heaven. If the Lord had left me that way, I was on the road to perdition, as I found afterwards when the Lord thundered on me with the law, and made the law a right schoolmaster to bring me Christ. Now it was nothing but the thundering of Sinai, and a terrible pit before me to be lost for ever. But the word came, “Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.” I got a clear view of Christ crucified for me, and His love filled my soul with joy, so that I was rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory. This lasted, I don’t remember how long. Then I thought I would go straight to heaven, and what a heaven on the earth I had for a long time! But I had more to go through in the world, and I would not have been fit for my temporal duties in the world if I had continued in such a case. I got enough of doubts and fears afterwards. I was then twenty-one years of and now I am eighty-six.—With kind love,
ROBERT ROSS.
BEAUFOY STREET.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—I have no news to send you, only the great news, if we knew it aright. I hear you are a little better than you were, but still weak. The Most High has His own way of trying His people. We may be sometimes asking what He did not appoint for us. Grace is a valuable gift that we cannot fully comprehend; it’s a mystery, a free gift from God, the beginning of the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of His own people in the world. It’s altogether a mystery that they cannot comprehend, because in height and depth and length and breadth it is above knowledge; it will be a wonder to the redeemed through all eternity. They will be perfectly satisfied with the will of God; they will be as happy as glory can make them. Seeing we cannot comprehend that grace, how can we comptehend what glory is? But we should be seeking to find the Lord. His people were often saying, “O that I knew where I might find him.” This longing is what is keeping them alive. When they do not know where to find Him, He knows where to find them, lying in spiritual death, darkness, ignorance, unbelief, and wanderings of mind after vanity. But the blessed Psalmist says:
“My wanderings all what they have been
Thou know’st, their number took:
Into Thy bottle put my tears:
Are they not in Thy book?”
May the Lord be giving you strength of body and mind! I hope you will be well in both. ROBERT ROSS.