WE have much pleasure in publishing the following striking letter by an old Dutch Christian, now deceased, an English translation of which has been kindly sent us by Mr. C. B. Van Woerden, Holland, a friend who is known to some of our readers. In this letter Mr. Capelle, the writer, describes various steps of experience in which the Lord led him on from one degree of spiritual knowledge to another, and he shows the danger he was in, at certain stages of his spiritual history, of giving place to a subtle form of self, and of resting in the benefits of redemption apart from the God of redemption—delighting in the gifts more than the Giver. At the same time, we are not to take up from his remarks, though he is apt at times to give the impression, that his first experience was not as certainly saving in its nature as his last. The letter is worthy of study and reflection on the part of all who are concerned about spiritual things, and while all God’s people may not obtain the enlarged discoveries of Mr. Capelle, yet they may derive benefit from contemplating his experience, and observing where the true foundation of their hope and happiness lies. Mr. Capelle is writing to two friends, a Mr. and Mrs. Van den Hoven. The letter, no doubt, suffers by translation, but we think that most of our discerning readers will not only be able to follow it, but be much interested in its (to us) uncommon phraseology, which is in several instances very expressive and suggestive.
Maasluis, July, 1883.
MY DEAR FRIENDS,—A few lines, hoping you may get them, together in good health, as we may enjoy ourselves by the Lord’s free mercy, as far as He judges necessary for us. My wife is not worse at present, but to our sight she is a little better again. You will have probably heard the reason of my writing you, as I passed your house I don’t know how. Having a strong intention to call to see your wife, I was looking, though under some consideration (inward difficulty), where your house was, and did not perceive that I had passed it until I arrived at the station. This led me to different thoughts. I thought it may be the woman has looked too much to the straw,* and expected something particular of it. And O how good is it then to be disappointed in such expectations, and how great is it, if we may be driven by that to the Lord, even with guilt and shame. I certainly passed your house in such meditations. I had called on Cornelius, and was granted to speak some words over that “eternal weight of glory,” and then I thought, “Now I will, in a few moments, meet the wife of Manus,” and said, “Oh, Lord, if I meet that wife, oh, grant me that I may show her that one thing needful to know Thee—how Thou needest to be known unto salvation.” For I thought, “I know this is the one thing needful, as the Holy Spirit declares it in that way—‘This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’”
And this, my dear friends, it has pleased the Lord to teach a little experimentally to me, the most wretched, yea, the blindest, having tarried so long in so many ways and by-paths, thinking so often that I was right. There were several benefits of the Lord toward me, at the administering of which I was deeply humbled in the dust. Being perished in soul under the judgment of God, on account of original and actual sin, the Mediator was revealed in acquittal of my conscience; the peace of God came down, and love, joy, and peace entered my soul. A year afterwards Jesus was revealed and declared to me, with a whole twining-out and excluding of me—poor, foolish creature—as given from the Father for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. About three years afterwards I was led into the decree of God in the never-begun eternity, and was taken up into it and established with these words: “I am God, even thy God, for ever and ever; I will be your guide even unto death”—a blessed state of my soul. But, my dear friends, as long as I (self) was out of it, God was in it; but when that dear Being withdrew a little, I (self) came into it. I did not look at God, but at the benefits; I became the man (proud) before I knew it. I praised the Lord, but getting nearer light, I saw that my own glory was sitting on the throne. I grew on the benefits. I was a good, converted man. I knew very well—being led back by His grace to the forgiveness of my sins—how I had been called; the way the Mediator had been revealed to me; how I, at the end of the law, had put my hand to (signed) my sentence of death, and was perished under God’s judgment, not only in consent but actually (in experience); and so on, as I have written you a little here before. But oh, oh, my dear friends, how I was quite struck with it when all this turned to my guilt—that I had forsaken the Lord and had become the man (proud) by it, and had sought and had my foundation and life in it. What was first brought home to me was the absence of God (my missing God); then the cause—I had forsaken the fountain of living waters; and there I lay down before God in my want, being myself the cause. The Holy Spirit clears up my way from Shittim unto Gilgal, and, behold, there I thought to be saved and to get again into the benefits; but see, my friends, the Lord takes away (hides) the benefits, as if I had never enjoyed them. There, there my cry went up; I missed God; it was my own guilt; I was pained at my very heart. I cried unto God, “I cannot get through it; help me, I perish.” And there, my dear friends, God reveals again the Lord Jesus with these words, “Behold, it is I; behold, it is I.” I am taken up out of my guilt and placed before the Father; the Father accepts again that dear sacrifice, Jesus; again appeased, He speaks to my soul—”My peace I give unto you”; and that peace descends from the Father by the Son, and the Holy Spirit applies it to my conscience under a deep sinking away. Then I got this—that I had “not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” with the actual application of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit to the salvation of my soul. O what an eternal wonder was this to my soul! I would never have been able to form an idea of it or to plan it. O what a clear knowledge I got there of that Triune Being! Ah, I thought again all was finished now, having done such a step in the way of grace. Oh, my friends, our blindness and foolishness are so great; and having lost all by our deep fall, we think if we have some religion and are able to talk a little about the Lord, that we are finished, but “this is eternal life, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” Oh, my dear friends, it would have been hid to me unto all eternity if it had not pleased the Lord Jehovah to reveal it unto me, who am less than the least, for now I did not know anything of the Unity of the Eternal One. But it pleased the Lord to grant me that favour for His dear Son’s sake, when He led me into eternity and from eternity to the beginning of time in the state of innocence, where I was in the loins of Adam, etc., and Adam fell, and I with him, and all the world became guilty before God. The only Mediator between God and men revealed Himself, and took me up out of my deep fall, and led me to His coming into the world, and I was in Him and He in me, and led me from His manger to His Cross, and from the Cross and death to the resurrection, and then He applied to my soul His purchased right by His resurrection, and I got a right in Him to eternal life. This He applied to my soul, and then He ascended and made me a partaker of His holiness—for I was in Him and He in me—and He presented me as a chaste virgin to the Father, who was well pleased with me, saying, “Thou art fair, my love, thou art fair.” And when the Father had revealed that it seemed good in His sight, the Son offered me to the Father, and I passed from the Son to the Father, and then united that Being—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as the God of oath and covenant, and I was included in it, and the covenant established, and God swore, “This is as the waters of Noah unto me, for as I have sworn, so I swear thee, that the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but this covenant of my peace will not be removed to all eternity.” There I—less than the least, dust out of dust—lost all that was without that dear Being, and I got the foundation of my salvation in my God. And when this was applied to me I got back all the benefits of the covenant as fruits of the covenant, also my dear Mediator, for our King is given of the God of Israel.
This all happened very becoming, under the highest devotion, silence and wondering, with an actual supporting of my natural body by His power and grace, unless I would have fainted, having nothing said or spoken but two times: “Oh, God, I cannot bear more,” and I also cried, “Oh, God, and that to dust from dust!” Look ye here, my dear friends, I have touched a little upon the little knowledge given me, poor creature, of that high glorious Being in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. But with all, without denying His grace, I must say I have yet to begin, because I have still the remaining corruption of my nature. O that I was now always nothing, and that my God was always all for and in me! For oh, my dear friends, the experience which it pleased the Lord to give me, who am less than the least, has learned me that, when we may receive a benefit in which the Lord reveals Himself to our souls, we have to be taken by the hand, and taught to use Him so; as it is evident that with every benefit we fall out of it (we are put aside) and as, after all, the foundation of our eternal salvation is that dear, unspeakable, unsearchable, inexhaustible Triune Being, as God, one in being, three in Persons, after the household unto salvation, for us poor, hell-and-curse-worthy sinners. So, it is not our own calling, not our justification, not our sanctification, not our adoption unto children, but it is God from whom all those benefits, so indispensable to be known, flow forth, in and through which that dear Being reveals Himself, in and through that dear Mediator between God and men, to give us again, after His free dispensation in and through Jesus Christ, that knowledge we lost in Adam.
Oh, my dear friends, contrary to my expectation, I have written you much. Might it be that it pleased my God to use it as clay between His fingers, if only for one of His dear children. Oh, my dear friends, a granting has fallen into my soul that I cannot express it. Oh, might it become more with me and you—God, and God alone, for is not He the Father of lights from whom every good gift and perfect gift descends? Oh that we might be granted from him to get and to keep our foundation and life in Him. He is my and your foundation, if He has called you from darkness to light, if He has convinced you of sin and guilt, if He has opened the door of hope for you and in you, that there is help, that there is counsel, that it is yet possible to be healed from your bruising and putrefying sores, and to get your touched conscience at peace with God, for that it is where the true children of God have to do with. Is not that so, that we have to look well at our way, for some talking of Jesus, some speaking of sin, some crying “It was so good here, and it was so good there,” without a real need of a drop of balm from Jesus’ precious blood in a wounded conscience, that is wherewith thousands shall perish? And, therefore, my dear friends, I would point out to you that the one thing needful is “to know Him.” Oh, the Lord give you, not to do as I did, but to have a continual need to know Him, the Lord Jesus, as “the way, the truth, and the life”; to know the Lord Jesus Christ as the only mediator between guilty and accused souls and a holy and righteous God; to learn to know Him in all His beauties, as He is given from His Father to the Church. Oh, we can only use Him just as far as He is revealed to and in us, and in that making use of Him, we are, and remain steep and deep dependent of the influences of that dear Spirit. I have also got that to the rejoicing and comfort of me and you, as far as I, the least and unworthiest, am favoured a little with that knowledge. When I learned to know the Three Persons as I wanted them to my salvation—and the Lord defined and taught me at once that all benefits, from the beginning to the end in our conversion, descend from that one and the same fountain, being applied from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit—then I cried, “Oh, then there are no little things,” upon which the Lord brought home to me that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant though he be lord of all. And also in the last benefit, the Lord Jehovah, who confirmed it by an oath, has spoken for all His Zion. Oh, that is as sure for the least member as God is Himself, but that is at the side of God, and has to be applied to our comfort. I hope the Lord will give you grace not to deny what the Lord has done, but to be granted to look out for to know Him as He needs to be known unto salvation.
When I got home, being in solitariness, I got for some moments a view of the eternal glory in communion with our very dear friend, now in glory. Now and then I feel the bonds with which I am bound to her are not broken by death, but there is a union of that life that is from God; she, in glory, I, still on earth; she, in her home, I travelling in the desert; she, parted from all that is not God, I, enveloped with a nature that is in enmity with God; she, full of all glory and majesty to glorify the Lord, and I, only now and then, seeing through a glass darkly. My dear friends, may the Lord grant that we may have much of Him and little of the world! May He acquaint us with Himself, and give us peace!
With kindest regards to all the Lord’s poor people.
Your very unworthy friend and brother in the Lord,
L. CAPELLE.
The Supreme Authority of Scripture.
When controversy that happens, for the right understanding of any place or sentence of Scripture, or for the reformation of any abuse written the Kirk of God, we ought not so much to look what men before us have said or done, as unto that which the Holy Ghost uniformly speaks within the body of the Scripture, and unto that which Christ Jesus Himself did and commanded to be done. For this is one thing universally granted, that the Spirit of God which is the Spirit of unity is in nothing contrary unto Himself.—Scotch Confession, 1560.