LETTER by REV. JOHN BROWN.
Haddington, August 20th, 1765.
Sir,—Despise not the day of small things—I might say of good things. When you consider yourself as one of the first-rate deserters of damnation, how you may admire the great kindness of God! Compare your mercies, your visits, not with the wishes of your soul, but with the desert of your sin; and then a “little one will become a thousand, and a small one as a strong nation” of astonishing favours. Though we should get but one smile of his countenance, and hear but one word from His blessed lips, in a whole year—what a mercy to those who deserve all the year throughout to be tormented in the lowest hell! Bless God for any transient blinks you enjoy; but let the unchangeable Saviour be the only confidence of your soul. Frames as well as heart and flesh do fail; but He will never fail you, nor forsake you.
You ask me concerning marks of fellowship with our Lord Jesus. Alas! that I should know so little about that happiness. How easy to talk about spiritual things, when we feel not their power; but, without doubt, our communion with Christ is real, if it makes us lie in the dust before him, and cause us to loathe and abhor ourselves, before Him. Isa. vi. 5: “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Oh! what a kindly, a heart-humbling, a soul-shaming, and paining view of sin, particularly of inward enmity and unbelief, does the smile and the voice of God produce! We cannot look on a God of redeeming love, without thinking ourselves unclean—outrageous beasts and devils (Ps. lxxiii. 21, 22 and Rom. vii. 24). Real communion, too, melts our hearts with love to God, and to His laws, ordinances, and people, and renders us vexed and ashamed that we cannot love Him to purpose (II Cor. v. 14). But it is one thing to know these matters in our head, and another thing to feel them in our heart. Ah! how many of us called Christians are led like beasts by the head, and how few, like saints indeed, are led by the heart! Oh, to hear His heart-drawing voice! Oh, to see His soul-attracting countenance! Oh, to be fast bound by the cords of His love, so that neither strong lusts within us, nor numerous devils, nor an evil world, may ever be able to loose us! Wishing that the eternal God—the dying Redeemer—may be your all and in all, and the all and in all of your seed.—I am, yours,
John Brown.
There was an angel to keep Paradise when Adam was shut out, but there is none to keep us out of heaven, nay the angels are ready to convey our souls to heaven, as they did Lazarus.—Sibbes.