Written by herself some years before her death, and now taken from her original Copy with great care and diligence.
“Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.”—PSALM lxxvi. 16.
“As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts.”—PSALM xlvi. 8.
“Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”—2 COR. iii. 18.
(Continued from page 380, vol. xxvi.)
ANOTHER lamentable fruit of this division is, some of the really godly are put upon the rack when they see brother persecuting brother, and division both of practice and doctrine among preachers; also, many of the indifferent sorts of hearers undervalue the precious truths of the Gospel on this account. Oh! how are the profane and graceless hardened. There are also many inward plagues on the souls and consciences of people. Oh, what hardness of heart, unbelief, and atheism do prevail. And that which is the crowning stroke in my weak up-taking is a hiding God, and that both in secret, public, and private, and few laying it to heart. “Oh! how hath the Spirit been grieved, quenched, and resisted, so that He is justly retired and withholds His operations—such as His convincing, converting, quickening, and comforting influences, together with that wonted zeal and love for God’s glorious work of reformation and covenanted truths, that sometime a-day were the privileges of our land and church.” All these things, together with my own case, were so exercising unto me that many times my sleep went from me, and I was filled with terror that God would pour out some immediate judgment on the generation and myself also. Yet the Lord pitied me, and allowed me to come to mercy’s footstool and throne of His grace, and there to spread out the libel of my own and the generation’s sins, and to wrestle for sparing and pardoning mercy.
As to Gospel truths I was hearing, the Lord made them to my soul as my daily food, by which I was confirmed of my union to Christ, my covenanted and living head, and secured as to my perseverance in this union and communion with the Father, Son, and blessed Spirit.
Also, by this Gospel I was confirmed in the faith of all the promises made to glorious Christ, and in and through Him to His covenanted members, all to take effect and be accomplished in due time; but ah! I have it to lament that for the most part I want the exercise of that faith and patience that ought to quiet my soul until they shall all have their accomplishment, which makes me many a time cry out, “Oh! distance is a torment, absence is as a hell, and makes me long for a dissolution of this body of sin and death, of flesh and blood, and to be clothed upon with that house from heaven not made with hands, according to His promise, made like unto Him, and put in a capacity of seeing Him as He is, and so made perfectly able to serve Him and enjoy Him without hazard of offending Him, or any mixed clouds to hide His blessed and gracious face.” Thus passed the thirty-and-sixth year of my life.
EIGHTH PERIOD.
Concerning an account of my parents coming to live with me in Stirling, of the great affliction they came under, and of the out-gate by a comfortable death, together with my own particular exercises under this trial of my faith.
This year my parents came to abide with me, who were both of them a great age and full of trouble; my father eighty-four and my mother above seventy, wanting the use of one of her hands. I therefore thought it my duty to wait on them in their old age, and as a part of my generation-work I had to do in the world, the impression of which had been on my mind for several years ago, and now it comes to be put in my hand. My father continued in sore afflictions, one of which was a great agony of pain in passing gravel-stones; yet he was helped to bear all with great patience and submission. The ordinary word he had in his greatest trouble was, “Oh! to be ready for death.” He was at the time under a dark cloud of desertion and great fears of death, under which he had continued for several months, all which were very exercising to me; yet the Lord pitied me with support both of body and mind.
In this case I was led out to reason in this manner: I thought if he should die under this cloud, he being a professor of religion from his youth, and had continued therein through the late times of persecution, and for that cause had lost his all he had in the world except his life—oh, I thought if he died in this case it would harden carnal onlookers, and make them think God a hard Master, and His service to get but a poor reward; as also, I thought it would be discouraging to some of the Lord’s own people. Under the consideration of this and some other things I forbear to name, I was like to break in pieces, and could not bear up under. In this condition I plied the throne of grace, and there was helped to lay all out before the Lord, pleading after this manner: “Oh thou gracious prayer-hearing God, if thou see it for thine own glory and the honour of those truths thou helped him formerly to own, and as a confirmation of thy people’s faith, and the conviction of carnal onlookers, thou wouldst remove this cloud from off his soul, and open his mouth to the commendation of thy name and way.”
There was one great mercy he enjoyed that is sometimes rare to one of his age, namely, he had the use of all his natural senses, and particularly his judgment, notwithstanding the complex troubles he was under for so long a time, which was the mercy and goodness of God to him and me. He had now and then some revivings as to his soul’s case, but did not long continue; but it pleased the Lord two days before his death to remove the dark cloud of desertion from off his soul, and opened his mouth to the praise of God that was much shut before, for when he spoke it was in a way of complaint; but now for the space of six hours he spoke, to the great satisfaction and surprise of all that heard him, in which time he got a view through his life, and told many passages with great distinctness what God had done for him and had brought himself and family through, namely, when called to suffer for the truth, saying to them that were present that God was a good Master and worthy the serving, for He rewards His servants double, and that godliness is great gain, having the promise of this life and that which is to come. Oh, that I could tell you all what a good God He is! and called if any young folk were there; he exhorted them to engage in God’s service, for He would reward them double; and came over that word many times, “I shall see Him as He is, and be made like unto Him.” He said, “Christ has always kept glooms within doors between Him and me, but praise, praise to free grace.” He said to my mother, “That champion Unbelief will be up upon you, but knock it in the head; do not believe a word that it says.” The last word that I could understand was, with his eyes lifted up, “Now my hope is fixed within the veil.” Thus ended his long life, which was full of trouble and sore affliction.
I might have given a more large account of my father’s life and death, but I design no more but what answers my own exercises, and shall only remark the goodness and sovereignty of a gracious God in removing the dark cloud he was under, and allowing him a gale of His gracious Spirit and a blink of His reconciled face that removed the terror of death and opened his mouth to the commendation of Christ and His way to all that were about him, in which I got a renewed display of that gracious title the Lord hath taken to Himself, that He is both a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God.
“Oh, that I had my heart enlarged and my tongue loosed to proclaim the praises of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost while I live; that all along my life hath been a present help in time of need, and given me cause to set up my Ebenezers, and say, ‘Hitherto hath the Lord helped.’ The Lord is my witness, I had no selfish design in asking that request for my father, as above mentioned, but my gracious sympathising High Priest knows it was what I could not well bear, on the reasons formerly mentioned: 1. The glory of God and the honour of those truths he formerly had owned. 2. The confirmation of His people’s faith. 3. The preventing of carnal onlookers from having hard thoughts of God, as if He were an hard Master.
Here I desire to remark—1. That one in a gracious state may die safely, and yet not comfortably. 2. As the exercise of faith on Christ in the promises makes a believer’s life comfortable, so it must be the lively exercise of the same grace on unseen things that can make death desirable and comfortable. So I desire to live all my days a needy and dependent life, and as a beggar about God’s gracious and liberal hand for fresh supplies of grace to carry me through my wilderness life, and for immediate gales of His Spirit to fill my soul and clear my way through the dark trance of death. So much for the thirty-and-seventh year of my wilderness life.
The next year began with some composure of mind and sweet reflections on what God had brought me through the last year; as also I got daily support by the preaching of the Gospel, in which I saw my state confirmed, and the way of maintaining my spiritual life, by improving Christ in the promises from day to day, held forth. Yet when I compare my present life with the former, or my days of youth, it is but like starlight in comparison of the light of the sun. Nevertheless, though I be denied of those bright blinks of divine light and life and sensible income of grace, yet I am enabled to believe that those my former experiences were no delusions, but an earnest of the promised inheritance; and so I believe, that as sure as I got those first fruits, so shall I be put in the full possession in God’s own time, and though now I am, as it were, set to my shift, and by faith to glean in the field of the promises, yet I desire to fight through the field of temptations and desertions under the banner of Christ the Captain of my salvation; and though I should be obliged to meet the whole way home to my Father’s house on my knees, and though I should wear my tongue to the roots and my knees to the bones, yet I am resolved, through grace, never to give it over till my glorious Captain call me off the field and crown me with victory.
As to the case of the generation and present state of the Church, I remain under the same exercise and concern I was in, as is formerly marked, in the thirty-and-sixth year of my life; and besides the spiritual plagues we lie under, the Lord this year is threatening a famine, for all this summer there has been a great drought, yet the Lord in sovereignty opened the clouds and gave showers of rain, which prevented the fears of that justly-deserved stroke. Oh, were the voice of this dispensation heard by the generation, what good fruits might it bring forth? But alas! how many were murmuring under the apprehensions of a threatened temporal stroke, who in the meantime seemed to have their senses altogether stupefied as to the feeling of spiritual plagues. Few eyes opened to see our sin written on our judgment; for because of barrenness under the waterings of Gospel ordinances and other ways, the Lord hath taken in the dispensations of His providence with this generation—He has been causing the earth answer us as we have answered Him and His pains both in His ordinances and providences; and however easy dispensations of this nature be to others, it is not so with me.
The rest of this year passed by with much composure of mind and a kind of satisfaction with reflection on what God had brought me through, and was making me to share of in an ordinary way, although sense was denied. So much for a hint of the thirty-and-eighth year of my life.
The next year my mother’s trouble did seize her whole body, being a disease which physicians called an universal gout. This great affliction was very exercising to me, and I fell under a quarrelling as to my soul’s case, and ere I was aware I was plunged in the depth of unbelief, and quarrelling with God’s ways of dealing, which issued in a cloud of atheism, the like of which I had never met with through the former periods of my life. But I have often remarked that outward afflictions and inward desertions have been mixed together in my cup, and no doubt the devil is not wanting in this case to throw in his fiery darts. This trial continued for about the time of three months, and so extraordinary was it that sometimes when I had bowed my knees in prayer there would have fallen such a cloud on my spirits that cast me in such disorder that I could not pray any. But when this disorder went off, then I would have begun to meditate on fundamental truths. But then I found two parties, as it were, fighting within me. The devil and unbelief said that God was not omniscient and everywhere present; though the other party—namely, enlightened reason, laboured to silence unbelief by viewing of God in His works of creation and providence, and how His divine perfections were displayed in them all. But I found not so much difficulty in opposing these suggestions as to grapple with the dark cloud of affliction and contradicting-like providences that trysted with my present case and lot. This brought forth daily provision for unbelief, for when I cried to God and was not heard, the devil and unbelief said that God neither heard nor yet regarded me. In this sad condition it pleased a merciful and gracious God to restrain those suggestions by shining into my soul with such light, and gave such power of faith, so as I could have begun at Genesis and gone through the whole Scriptures to the end of the Revelation, and argued the being of God and His perfections more distinctly than in all my life formerly. “Oh, glory be to God! who only knows how to outwit the devil and break the power of unbelief, and so bring glory to Himself out of seemingly contradicting providences.”
(To be continued.)