Lasswade, 2nd April, 1875
My Dear Friend,—First of all, please accept the accompanying copy of those most precious remains of Dr. John Duncan in token of the affectionate remembrance I bear towards you, “being mindful,” if not “of thy tears,” yet of that blessed and holy question you asked me at ——— “How can I serve Christ or His Church while I have an unpurged conscience?” Yes, it is a holy question, and an honourable, because a holy one. “Guilt (says Dr. Duncan, page 40) is the relation between disobedience and punishment.” It is a relation constituted by God Himself in His holiness and righteousness, and is, therefore, a holy and righteous thing. And to feel it is, therefore, to feel a holy thing pressing on the soul, and to accept the burden with a resolution to acquiesce in no removal of it, with which God is not well pleased, is a holy feeling, the beginning of truest holiness.
And how can we ever praise God enough that the relief is so holy. Holy, holy, holy! The Holy One Himself made sin. The Holy One holily made liable to bear the guilt of all the sins of a people whom no man can number. Emmanuel holily slain, holily giving Himself in death, holily accepted, holily rewarded for becoming in His holy self the balm, the cure, the comfort, the peace, the all-sufficient and everlasting relief of a guilty conscience. Isaiah heard the seraphim exclaim when they saw the Lord’s holiness, “the whole earth is full of His glory”. Scientific men tell us that the sun is a dark body with a photosphere or atmosphere of light surrounding it. Is not this more certainly true concerning the earth as filled with the Lord’s glory, for what is the spiritual photosphere of this dark earth, if it be not a holily slain Christ? So that from those “habitable parts of the earth” where He had His eternal delights, there comes, when in this glorious photosphere of a crucified Christ, is seen the forgiveness of sins, the echo of His song, “My delights were with the sons of men.” And when a holy, righteous and real forgiveness penetrates its way into the burning fibres of a guilty conscience, pacifying, cooling, cleansing, then they are given the exact tension for the time which the Spirit of God teaches them, as on shining silver harp strings to sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,” “the whole earth is full of His glory,” aye, and the whole heaven too! For really federally, all those fibres of conscience were gathered up into Christ when He died, and then and there they discharged their venom. When Christ, the Head died, His body, which is the Church, died. Head He could not be, nor as Head die, without His body. And when the blessed Spirit of God unites actually to Christ the soul that was federally in Him when He died, all the venom of the guilty conscience actually runs up into Him and is in Him eternally and righteously annihilated; and from Him, yea, from His shed blood, there runs down into the fibres of conscience, and into the poor soul’s heart’s core, the holy peace, purity, love and grace that had their triumph in the cry, “It is finished.” And we dare not say, “This cannot be to me;” we are rather bound to say, “This must be to me.” Surely here, if anywhere, “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”
Thou knowest, O Christ, what this guilty conscience of mine will grow into to all eternity, if not purged and cleansed and healed by Thee! It will be O Lamb of God, an eternal blasphemer of Thee and of Thy Father and of Thy Spirit. Is that any wish of Thine? Thou art its Creator, Creator of this same conscience which I by transgression have made guilty. Hast Thou not a desire to the work of Thine own hands? A conscience is a more wonderful creature of Thine than all suns and stars, with all their photospheres that baffle the search of the sciences. Very glorious art Thou as Creator of a conscience! But Lord, Thou art more glorious far as the balm of a wounded conscience. Father, glorify Thy Son by making Him the balm of my conscience; and the day will not be far distant when, with those who already sing in the land where they say not “I am sick,” being forgiven their iniquities, I, too, shall sing to my own heart’s solacement and to Thy praise the song of my salvation, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, for He was slain for us.”
How near did our blessed Lord come to knowing the agony of having a guilty conscience? That is a wonderful question. We cannot answer it. This only we know, He had a conscience and He had guilt. Holy He was, inviolably holy. “Such an high priest became us, who was holy and undefiled” even by the sin that He bore, and “separate from sinners” even when, “numbered with the transgressors.” But He was numbered with the transgressors and sin he did bear. And the sin which He bore was the procuring cause of His sufferings. And He justified the sword that smote Him by an acquiescing reference to the sin that He was answerable for. And to what faculty of His human soul, to what created principle of His nature, if not to conscience, did the Father make appeal when He appealed to Him willingly to bear the stroke of the sword which he awoke to smite Him? Did the blessed Lamb of God not conscientiously suffer the punishment due to His people’s sins? “I do always the things that please the Father.” Oh, how holy and pure and bright as a burnished mirror was His conscience in all His sufferings! Yet was it not suffering? Yea, its sufferings were infinitely acute because of its perfect holiness. “The bush burned”, and surely we may here hear the voice, “Take off thy shoes from off thy feet for this place is holy ground.” O how little do we know of Christ crucified! The Lord give us the only state of heart that can dare to think of Him, the broken and the contrite spirit. Had we more of that we would understand more of Him. This, however, we do know, that in His soul agony in Gethsemane and on Calvary, He came so near to the agony of a sin-convicted conscience as that of a hair’s breadth, less would have disqualified Him for that sympathy which He has experimentally attained by coming to that point and not a hair’s breadth further. Surely this is a guilty sinner’s friend, and this is her Beloved, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. The answer then to your question, “How can I serve Christ or His Church while I have an unpurged conscience?” is just this. He who is the Lord of thy conscience is also the balm, the cure, the peace, yea the everlasting relief and health of it.
Well, I was to have told you of my wanderings and preachings these last three weeks. But what matters it? They are in Christ’s hands, there let them rest to bring forth fruit to His glory. I go to Glasgow communion next Wednesday.
Yours, &c.,
HUGH MARTIN.