To a Friend in Soul Distress.
I DESIRE to sympathise with you in your present distress, and would be happy to be in any measure instrumental in establishing and comforting your soul in the truth as it is in Christ. I am happy to learn that you have seen such a beauty in the eighty-eighth Psalm; none but exercised souls can understand or relish it, and the most of Christian professors are entire strangers to what it contains. There is only one way to heaven, and we may see from the Word of God how Old and New Testament saints were led. If our exercises and experiences coincide with these, we may conclude that we are on the road to heaven; but if otherwise we are on the way to hell.
*Rev. William Stewart was the Disruption Minister of Lochee in the Presbytery of Dundee. He was ordained there in 1832, and died on 13th October, 1852.—J.C.
There are many in the present day who grasp at the privileges of God’s children, though they do not possess the character of such; but a sincere soul will not take the privilege without the character. They who are taught by the Holy Spirit, are made sensible that they are by nature children of wrath, like to the devil, and meet for hell, and that they can do nothing to recover themselves; although Christ is freely offered to them in the preaching of the Gospel, yet they cannot embrace Him till the Spirit enables them. They know experimentally the redemption which Christ purchased will be but a sealed fountain to them in time and eternity, unless the Spirit apply it. The faith which unites the soul to Christ, is the fruit of the Spirit of God—the result of His regenerating grace. See John i., 12, 13. Christ by His Spirit takes the first hold of the soul, and when the Spirit enters into the dead soul, He imparts life to it by enlightening the understanding, and renewing the will, and the first act in the quickened soul, is to apprehend the Lord Jesus Christ for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Christ apprehends the sinner, and then the sinner apprehends Him. Phil. iii., 12. He keeps hold of the soul by His Spirit, and then the result is that the soul keeps hold of Him. It is not the carnal mind that closes with Christ, but the heaven-born principle implanted in the moment of regeneration. That principle turns to God, Christ, and holiness, as the needle to the North Pole. Its language is, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, and regard everything but dung that I may win Christ, and be found in Him so as to obtain pardon through His blood, acceptance through His righteousness and Spirit, grace here, and glory hereafter.
There is and must be something like a progressive effectual calling going on in the true believer from the day of conversion to the moment of death. The Holy Spirit convinces him more and more of his sin and misery, so as to make him feel himself getting worse and worse every day; thus He gives him new discoveries of the Person, offices, and fulness of Christ, and enables him to take a new hold of Him for life and salvation, as if he had never come to Christ before. This is what I understand by living a life of faith on the Son of God, and entering into the spirit of these words, “As ye have, therefore, received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith.” The first act of saving faith is to receive and rest upon Christ, then by a repetition of the act faith grows (for faith grows by exercise) and the believer becomes more firmly rooted in Christ and the things of God. This is the secret of inward, real and experimental religion. The Holy Spirit keeps the saint ever alive to his guilt and depravity, then He glorifies Christ in taking of His blood, righteousness, and grace, and shows them to the soul; and in this way the real Christian is kept travelling between his own emptiness and Christ’s fulness, until he is prepared as a vessel of mercy for glory. They are either hypocrites or formalists, or backsliding Christians, who have not a daily and growing sense of their need of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His offices, and of the Holy Spirit in His illuminating, quickening, and sanctifying influences. See Phil. iii., 8, 14. Paul, when thirty years in Christ, felt as much, and perhaps more, his need of Christ than the first time he closed with Him. They who are really in Christ come daily to Him in the exercise of humble and believing prayer. They come for a present salvation, for a new heart, for new intimations of pardon, for true faith, true love to God, true repentance unto life, true zeal for the divine glory, true indignation against sin, and victory over it, and for a true meetness for the heavenly world.
The true people of God are desirous that the devil and hell may be cast out of their souls in this life, and that the kingdom of glory, which consists in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, may be established within them. They who are exercised about these things, and cannot be content without them, have a true and lively faith, and they who say or think that they rest upon Christ, and are not exercised about these things, whatever appearance of holiness, comfort, joy, and assurance they possess, they, in their present state, are but the devil’s lambs, and going quietly and comfortably to hell. They who can live quietly with the hell of indwelling sin in their souls in this world, shall be shut up in the hell of sin and misery in the next; for sin must and will go to its own place, if not destroyed. Let professors say what they please, if they are not seeking above all things the glorious work of regeneration and sanctification on their souls, they are growing like devils, and ripening for hell; and on the other hand, they who are tortured and tormented with sin, and are desirous above all things to be made new creatures in Christ, and perfectly holy, are preparing as vessels of mercy for heaven and glory. We have many professors of religion, but few new creatures. Indeed, it is a rare thing to meet with a person really seeking after a change of nature; the most of professors are in very good terms with themselves, and this is a sure evidence that the Holy Spirit is not dealing savagely with their souls. When the Spirit commences to destroy the works of the devil, there is an uproar in the soul; then the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, because they are contrary to each other. The warfare gets hotter and hotter as the work of grace advances. Satan and sin say, If we are forced out of this soul at last, we will do all that we can against the Holy Spirit and the new creature while we remain. If we are not able to destroy the new creature, we will at least make it groan, and weep, and cry. The Holy Spirit put it here to disturb our rest and repose. Now, the devil and sin outwit themselves here, for the new creature runs and tells God what sin and Satan are doing against Him. “Lord thou seest how vile I am, like and worse than a devil, and a picture of hell; O Lord, I am sore oppressed, undertake for me, O destroy the devil’s work within me; If thou wilt not destroy sin in me, it will destroy me in time and eternity. Lord give me a holy nature to hate sin, and to strive successfully against it. Write thy lovely law upon my heart, that I may delight in it after the inward man; O Lord, save me, or I must perish, for I know that I can do nothing but destroy myself; convert, humble, quicken, and sanctify me in spite of myself (the carnal mind). Take hold of my soul by thy Spirit and grace, as the angel took hold of Lot and pulled him out of Sodom. Lord, pull me out of myself, and every refuge of lies, for I feel Sodom within me. Pull me unto Christ, and pull me on in a progressive sanctification, and never let me go, but make me like thy blessed self, and meet for glory.” Now, if you are really exercised about these things, your soul is in health, and prospering before God.