AUCHINGILLS, April, 1865.
DEAR MADAM,—This is the week after your Communion season. Did the Lord bring you to the banqueting house or house of wine? There is always a banquet when a living child is born, for the family, friends, and social neighbours. So in grace. A feast is made for the family to satisfy, refresh, strengthen, encourage, and comfort them, so that they will be helped against all grief, fears, and enemies on their way onward. Christ is in heaven; Christ is love. It is a feast of love; His flesh is love; His blood is love. It is faith that eats and drinks. When in true exercise in the hand of the Spirit, it gets a sweet-smelling savour off Himself through the memorials of His life and death. It is faith working by love that feeds all the family of the inner man.
My dear friend, maybe your feeling is, “That is too high for me.” That is true, but it is not too great for Him, for it is His purpose from eternity for such as you and me. Now, if I touched you with my finger, you would ask me, “What do you want?” Now, if you got the least touch from a word at the singing, at the reading, at the praying, or at the preaching, that you do not understand, do not let it go. Go to your closet and pray for the Spirit that He may reveal the meaning of it to you. Go to your Bible and see if the case to whom it was spoken there is like your case. Now, be faithful to your soul as before the judgment seat of Christ, and if the case is so, take it to be directly to yourself.
You remember that Christ said to His family before He left this world: “Because I live, ye shall live also.” He lives in love to your salvation; see that you live in love to His glory, and in love to God who sent Him. He was God Himself who took our nature and made Himself of no reputation that we would be saved. Love Him in the manger; love Him in all His life of suffering; love Him on the cross. The most in our day are ignorant of that word, “the cross of Christ.” It is the mystery of godliness: God on the cross vailed in natures human and divine. All the wood that ever grew or will ever grow could not bear the weight that was on His human and divine natures. He was God and man in two distinct natures; His human nature was suffering, honouring His own law written on His heart, saying, “O righteous Father, I love Thee, though I am under eternal weight of wrath;” else no soul could be saved. As He was and is the unchangeable God, He did not say, “Take me down; it is too much,” or the covenant would be broken. But rather, “We are one in all; Thy law is within my heart; Thy law is holy; Thy law is love.”
We hear the Spouse calling on the daughters of Jerusalem to tell Him, “I am sick of love” to Him. “Whom is He like that we may know Him?” “Did you ever see Him yourselves?” “O, yes.” “What way were you looking when you saw Him?” “We were looking high, but a sight of Him took down our eyes. He showed us, first, His head, locks black as raven.” How am I to understand this? The unchangeable Saviour turned leaf after leaf showing Himself, until He brought us to His feet, where we see Him altogether lovely, and there we remain crying, “We are black.” He says we are “comely,” but really we hardly can believe Him that we are “comely.” But we believe that sitting at His feet is “comely.” “He giveth grace to the humble,” and more grace to the humble. It is His own grace that makes comeliness. . . . “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.”
Give my sincere love to your dear husband.—I remain, your friend,
HUGH STEWART.
* Hugh Stewart was one of the eminent worthies of the far north, who died about forty years ago. He was a man of God to whom was given in more than ordinary measure “the secret” which is “with them that fear Him.” An outspoken reprever of sin and of what he considered wrong, he was withal of a deeply sympathetic disposition, and proved himself a father in Christ to not a few beginners in the life of faith and godliness.—Ed.