MONTROSE, 12th February, 1830.
MY DEAR FRIEND.—I wrote you very briefly last time, and have not heard from you since the Dingwall Communion. I therefore do not know how it fared with you in your attempt to join the dear people there in spirit at that time, but I shall tell you how it fared with myself.
You will remember that I told you I had sent a card for the mantel-piece, with the words, “A brother cast down but not destroyed desires an interest in your supplications;” and I believe the card was placed where I directed, and was observed by the assembled friends. Well, on that Sabbath forenoon (the 1st inst.) as I went out at the house door to go to church, I suddenly felt
a strange giddiness come over me, such as I never felt before, and my head reeled and my sight seemed to fail, and I would have fallen with all my weight to the ground had it not mercifully occurred to me to seize hold of an iron chain that was on the gravel walk, and letting myself down gradually I lay for some minutes in a half-conscious state. By-and-bye, feeling a little better, I got up and staggered back into the house, but was sufficiently ill to have to go to bed, where I had to remain for a day or two. The doctor attributed it to something wrong with my stomach, but I myself accounted for it very differently. I considered that it was sent for daring to call myself “A brother cast down but not destroyed,” for one who truly is such is one who bears about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus, and if I took the title presumptuously the Lord was to teach me otherwise. For, my dear friend, it is no light matter to take to oneself any of the characteristics of the humbled, emptied children of God. The Scripture cannot be broken, and he who is “A brother cast down but not destroyed” is one that has been brought low in soul as deserving the wrath of God due to him for sin; he is “cast down” because he sees no hope or help in himself whereby he can be delivered from the just consequences of his apostacy from God, and he feels that if he is not utterly “destroyed” it is because a possibility of deliverance has been opened for such as he is, through the casting down even unto death of God’s Eternal Son, who was “sent forth, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons.” Therefore, the Lord saw fit that I should be cast down literally that I might learn that there is but a step between me and death, and that I might also examine and see to it, that my life is a living in the fellowship of the humiliation of the Lord Jesus, “bearing about in my body his dying that I may become conformable unto his death,” and which means a seeking and cherishing by grace, somewhat of that spirit of lowliness, of meekness, of self denial, of hatred of sin, and of zeal for righteousness and truth, which animated the holy Jesus in all that he did and suffered. Moreover, the Lord by this incident showed me that the prayers of His dear people were not to be offered for me on a misunderstanding, but that I should in spirit, in soul, and in body, be in the very case indicated. “By terrible things in righteousness dost Thou answer us, O God of our salvation.” And if God shows me that I am not to take His words and apply them to myself, except in their true connection, for the Scripture cannot be broken, may I not with adoring prostrate reverence say to Him that therefore I expect that He will not either apply
them except in their true connection?—that if He gives me in answer to prayer terrible things in righteousness, I expect He will give them to me in the connection in which He Himself has put them in His own word, when He says of those to whom these “terrible things in righteousness” are given: “Blessed are they whom thou choosest and caused to approach unto thee, they shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.”
I heard from Dingwall that Dr. Kennedy’s subject on the Sabbath was, “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Would it not have been a feast to have heard him? Dr. Aird’s text on Monday was, “As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, etc.” I would like to have heard that too, for that passage of Scripture has long been a favourite one with me, although too good for me ever to have tried to preach upon. How exceedingly rich and gracious, and encouraging, that there should be in Christ for the poor, weak believer the advantages to be derived from both a foundation and a root. “Rooted and built up in him.” Their state and standing is laid or built on Christ as the foundation, and He is also the root from whence they draw all the life and nourishment needed for their being established in the faith, and enabled to offer that thanksgiving which is the dutiful form in which their adherence to Him ought to be expressed—“abounding therein with thanksgiving.” Still, Dingwall is not heaven, and preaching is not Christ, although, after all, the chief desire of my soul is to be enabled so to preach Christ as that by the power of the Holy Spirit He would be received and welcomed into the hearts of some sinful men and women who should be to me a crown of rejoicing in the day when I shall have to give account of my stewardship. And if this will be the “glory and joy” (as Paul says) of the poor earthen vessels, what will it be, my dear friend, to behold the King Himself in that day, to see Him, ay, and to share in “the joy that was set before him”—the joy of wearing the crown where-with His mother crowned Him in the day of His espousals and in the day of the gladness of His heart!
HUGH MARTIN.