BY THE LATE REV. FRANCIS M’BEAN, FREE CHURCH, FORT-AUGUSTUS.
(Continued from page 155.)
LETTERS FROM BETSY LINDSAY.
“7th August, 1838. DEAR SIR,—. . . Oh if my heart was not so cold, how would I celebrate the praises of a three-one God, and sing forth His wondrous love to me, so unworthy! Yes, I would sing of a Saviour’s love, and tell of a Saviour’s righteousness, as the only foundation for a sinner’s hope. Everything else is but building upon the sand, which, however fair a building it may be in health, will assuredly fail in the hour of trial. Oh may we be kept looking to, and trusting in, the finished work of Christ as all our hope for eternity, that we may be able to hold fast ‘the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end;’ for ‘to them who, by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and immortality,’ our God will certainly render ‘eternal life.’ Still I feel more and more daily, that it is not an easy thing to believe, and hold fast the promise which He hath promised us; nay, more, that I cannot do so for a single moment, but by the Holy Spirit strengthening me.
You will rejoice to hear that the Lord continues to be very gracious to me, and to fill my mind with much of His peace, ‘which passeth all understanding.’ Well may I say, ‘How great is His goodness, how boundless His love!’ ‘Can finite minds this ocean vast explore, Unconscious of a bottom or a shore?’ Love is the element of heaven, and shall be so throughout eternity; love shall endure when faith shall be turned into vision, and hope into fruition. ‘Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’
I trust, sir, the Lord is keeping you near to Himself, and enabling you to draw out of His abounding fulness every grace that you need for the work which He has called you to. His is a fulness which is ever full and ever flowing,—abundantly able to supply all the necessities of His children. Oh, may you be enabled to deal faithfully with the souls that are committed to your care, and find that the Lord Jesus is ‘adding daily to the church such as shall be saved.’ While you are watering others, may He be watering your own soul, that so you may bring forth out of your ‘treasures things new and old.’ He who would be a good soldier of Jesus Christ must ‘not sleep as do others, but watch and be sober;’ putting on ‘the whole armour of God;’ and counting ‘all things but loss’ for the sake of Jesus.
My father and mother send you their sincere thanks for you. kindness to us ‘in the day of adversity.’ May the Lord Himself abundantly reward you for so doing. Give my kind love to Mrsr K.; I desire that her soul may prosper and be in health. ‘The righteous shall flourish as a branch.’ ‘May the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.’—I am, dear sir, your most humble servant,
ELIZABETH LINDSAY.”
“25th June, 1839. MY DEAR MISS G.,—May the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit! I was exceedingly happy at the receipt of your much-esteemed letter; I found it both strengthening and refreshing to my soul. Writing is indeed a precious way of communicating; it is one among the many blessings which God has conferred upon us sinful creatures, and I do heartily unite with you in prayer that our correspondence may be alone for the glory of God. Since in the providence of God I first became acquainted with you, I have been much attached to you, because I found that you had chosen that better part which shall never be taken away from you. Many a sweet hour we have spent together; but how solemn did I feel the hour I was called to part with you; and need you wonder that I feel the want of your visits a great blank? But it is the will of God that it should be so, and therefore it is well; and though we should never meet again in this world, yet how cheering is the hope of meeting in Emmanuel’s land, where parting will be for ever unknown. There we shall no more need to complain to each other of wandering thoughts and cold affections, for we shall be free from all sin, and be made perfect in holiness, for ever blessed in the full enjoyment of God, through a glorious eternity.
My dear Miss G., we have put our hands to the plough, let us not look back to the world again. What are we that we should have been called to enlist under Christ’s glorious banner, and to have found His banner over us to be love, while many are saying, ‘What is thy beloved more than another?’—seeing no beauty in Christ that they should desire Him. But to you who believe He is precious. I hope He is very precious to your soul; that with the Psalmist you are saying, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth I desire beside Thee.’ Go on in the strength of the Captain of your salvation, through Him you shall be enabled to overcome, and be made more than a conqueror through Him that loved you, for ‘the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God.’ ‘Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life,’ live a life of faith and prayer. Our place is to be travelling much between our own emptiness and the rich fulness which is in Christ. Let us be drawing water out of the wells of salvation, while we are travelling through this dry and thirsty land, and meditate much on redeeming love.
‘Stronger than death His love was known,
Which floods of wrath could never drown.’
I greatly rejoice that you are enabled to remember me at a throne of grace. I often wonder that the Lord gives any of His dear children to remember unworthy me; but He is worthy, and this shall be the burden of the song of the redeemed throughout eternity, ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’
May the Lord command a double portion of His spirit upon you, and your dear family, and reward you for all your kindness to me. When you have near access to your heavenly Father, do remember me.—I am, my dear Miss G., with sincere Christian regard, your humble and obedient servant,
ELIZABETH LINDSAY.”
“4th July, 1839. DEAR FELLOW-TRAVELLER TO ZION,—I was favoured with your sweet epistle of the 29th of June. Oh that we were living epistles, known and read of all men! that we were but living near to God, and glorifying Him more; then would the world take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus! What a precious blessing is communion with God! How is it that we value this inestimable privilege so little? Surely it is because we are contented to live at a distance from God, and are so much taken up with the trifles of this vain world, which are not worth a glance. Were we to be admitted into the presence of an earthly king to have communion with him, we should consider ourselves highly honoured; and yet our basely ungrateful and awfully rebellious hearts will slight the company of the King of heaven, who is King of kings and Lord of lords! Oh that our hearts were filled with holy love, and fired with holy zeal to the Redeemer! that we were driven out of ourselves, and made to feel that all our well-springs are in God; then would we be more willing to come as poor beggars with empty pitchers; I think we would not so often grope in the dark, when we might be enjoying the sunshine of noon-day. Let us therefore, my dear Miss G., strive to look away from ourselves, and come daily for fresh supplies of grace.
5th July.—I have often thought of that passage in Genesis where the people are said to have come to Pharaoh to get corn. What did he do? did he give it them? No; he bid them Go unto Joseph; and whatsoever he saith unto you, do. So, Jesus is our New Testament Joseph; and when the poor sinner comes to an absolute God, He says, Go to My Son, and whatsoever He saith unto you, that do; for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell. And does He not complain that we do not ask enough? ‘Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name, ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.’ May your soul be filled daily with that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory; and this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, and in every grace of the Holy Spirit.
8th July.—I trust, my dear friend in Christ, that you experience the Lord to be your Rock and fortress, your God and strength, in whom you trust; your buckler, the horn of your salvation, your high tower and great deliverer. O follow on to know the Lord! Since I wrote last, I have not been so well, and while I now write I have a large blister over my head. Since Monday week I have been frequently threatened with another shock of palsy. This frail tabernacle must come down, and may I not rejoice that the Lord deals so gently with me as to take it down pin by pin. Oh magnify the Lord with me; come, let us exalt His name together. Help me, my dear Miss G., to love and praise Him who is altogether lovely, for His truth, and for the kindness of His love towards me, who deserved less than the least of His mercies. Oh that all created intelligences throughout the universe would unite in one harmonious band, to sound the praises of redeeming love! What a subject! Will a long eternity be sufficient to exhaust it? No; when millions of ages shall have passed away, the redeemed will continually have opened up to their astonished view new wonders respecting this matchless grace. What delight will they take in poring upon the unparalleled excellences combined in the person of Christ! Then, indeed, will He appear the fairest among the sons of men.
‘There we shall see His face
And never, never sin,
And from the rivers of His grace
Drink endless pleasures in.’
10th July.—I trust the Lord will enable you to be of use among the people where you now reside. How awfully lamentable it is to see poor sinners sitting in careless unconcern about their best interests, literally in darkness, and in ‘the shadow of death,’ while the beams of celestial light are darting all around! May the Lord give you grace to speak a word for His own glory. ‘Spend and be spent’ for Christ Jesus; do not be afraid to speak for Him; remember He hath said, ‘Them that honour Me, I will honour.’ Bid them taste and see that the Lord is gracious, and that they only are blessed who trust in Him. Now, my ever dear Miss G., may the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. Pray for me.—I remain, your unworthy servant, and soul’s sincere well-wisher,
ELIZABETH LINDSAY.”
“8th July, 1839. MY DEAR MR. A.,—I was exceedingly happy at the receipt of your much-esteemed letter this morning. What gratitude and praise it ought to excite in me on your account, that the Lord is dealing so kindly with you. Though you have been under the rod, yet it is by the Lord’s goodness upholding and strengthening you with His mighty arm, that you have been brought so far on your journey.
My dear Christian friend, I felt very much at parting with you, not knowing whether it may be the will of God that we shall again meet in this world. But oh how cheering is the thought of meeting those we love in a world where there will be no more parting! Where God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes; where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. How pure will the love of Christians then be! It has been matter of thanksgiving to me that the Lord ever led you to visit me; I feel what a blessing you have been to me. I can indeed say it has not been in vain. Under God, I owe much to you, and have to entreat you, my dear friend, to bear me constantly on your spirit before the throne of grace, as I shall, by the grace of God, remember you. Thus, though absent in the body, we may still be one in spirit, building each other up, and pressing forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, till all conflicts, all trials, all sin is at an end, and we reach our glorious home in heaven, where we shall see Jesus as He is—He who is the chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely—and be for ever with the Lord.
10th July.—The day you left Edinburgh I was again bled in the arm, and from the weak state I was in (which you know), it brought me to the verge of the grave, but it pleased the Lord to restore me a little again. Since then I have had a blister on my head, and another on my chest, time about; yet, amidst these accumulated sufferings, the Lord has been giving me many blinks of His sweet countenance, and enabled me to say, ‘He doeth all things well.’ Yes; He has often granted me so much of His presence as to make me say,
‘If such the sweetness of the stream,
What must the fountain be?’
What we know not now, we shall know hereafter. The world does seem ‘vanity and vexation of spirit’ to us, but oh how insignificant and worthless would it appear were we continually to have our eyes fixed on the glorious inheritance which is above!
‘Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years,
And all that life is love.’
Now, my dear Mr. A., may the Lord keep His everlasting arms around you, and be with you to strengthen you for the rest of your journey, and for the multiplicity of difficulties which may be before you; may He hide you in His pavilion. Pray for me.—I remain, dear sir, in the best of bonds, your unworthy servant,
ELIZABETH LINDSAY.”
“LOANHEAD, 21st July, 1839. DEAR BELOVED IN OUR LORD JESUS,—I was indeed cheered by the receipt of your kind letter. Oh how many sources of comfort the Lord has opened up for unworthy me! Oh for a well-tuned harp to show forth His praise continually, and sing forth His wondrous love! How I long for every faculty to be filled with God, and every power of my soul to be centred in God, who is the centre of eternal blessedness. I am sure you will rejoice with me, and unite with me in ascribing praise to our God, that He has brought me here in safety. I may well say, ‘Jehovah Jireh,’ for the Lord has taken and set me down in a most comfortable and pleasant habitation. ‘What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits?’ Notwithstanding all my unbelief and misgivings, the Lord strengthened me for the journey, and upheld my soul in peace by these words, ‘Fear not, I will strengthen thee.’ How delightful it was for me once more to behold the wonderful power of God in the works of nature. Oh how loudly does everything show forth the praise of God, but man—sinful and rebellious man! Glorify God, my dear Miss G., on my account, for as my day so hath He made my strength to be; good cause have I to set my Ebenezer here and say, Hitherto hath the Lord helped me. Surely God has some very gracious design in bringing me here at this time. He Himself sought out and provided the means, and to Him the glory is due. And to you, my dear Christian friend, I owe a debt of gratitude as the chief instrument in the hand of God of my being here: may the Lord abundantly bless and reward you. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto Me.’ Oh may you be enabled to go up through the wilderness of this world, leaning on the Beloved of your soul! Resting and relying on His finished work and complete righteousness as the sure ground of your acceptance with God, leaning on His all-sufficient grace, and trusting in His promises, may you be filled daily ‘with all joy and peace in believing.’ Oh my dear friend, let the Lord be glorified, and He will appear to your joy, in the midst of all trials and difficulties. E. desires to be very affectionately remembered to you. We find it very delightful to remember you at the throne of God’s grace. The candle of the Lord is at present shining on our tabernacle; pray that He may continue His presence with us. ‘Think upon me when it shall be well with thee.’
Now, my dear Miss G., I remain, your unworthy servant and soul’s sincere well-wisher,
ELIZABETH LINDSAY.”
(To be Continued.)