by Rev. Hugh Martin, D.D.
Montrose, 30th January, 1877.
My Dear Friend, — I was purposing this morning to devote the afternoon to letter-writing, and you were the fourth on my list. But since then your welcome letter has come in, giving you a double claim, and therefore I begin with you.
So it seems, I have not yet earned the right to be called “a brother indeed.” Now to think of that! For you say, “If you could help me in at the strait gate you would be a brother indeed.” Well, I give it up! Because if you were once in, and were questioned as to your mode of entrance you would be in a sorry plight; for were you asked “How came you here?” Did you “enter in” according to the command? and you were to answer “No, Dr. Martin, shoved me in,” you see yourself that such an answer would not do, you would be condemned in your own eyes. But suppose you answered, “Yes, I entered in,” and the questioner were to add, “Then what means this twist that I see?” and you should say, “Oh! that came from Dr. Martin shoving me in.” Would you not then be very properly told, “He must be a great fool that man who would presume to put his hand to the work of the Holy Ghost.” Ah, dear friend, do you not rejoice that the bringing in at the strait gate of regeneration is inseparably bound up with the nature and provisions of the everlasting covenant? Do you not rejoice also, that it follows inevitably from the essential nature and intrinsic value as well as designed effect of the death of Christ? He died “the just for the unjust that He might bring us unto God.” The “He died for” secures the “He will bring,” because He, the Just One “died for the unjust that He might bring them.” If He died for every human being as some allege, then the “He died for” does not involve the “He will bring.” What then does it involve? We may well ask that! It involves something foreign to the revelation of Holy Scripture, something new, something which is a figment of proud human reason. An indefinite Atonement may satisfy superficial enquirers, but the belief of it indicates a decline in vital religion, and marks a shallow age as to personal piety. But a definite Atonement satisfies souls taught of God, because such souls seek the glory of Christ, and could not endure the thought that Christ’s death should have been for those not one whit the better of it. The U.P. Church is wrong on this doctrine, and too many in the Free Church would compromise it also, although they may defer openly avowing it until I am dead, or unable again to speak out in its defence.
There is a thought — as you ask me for help — that has sometimes helped my own faith — it is this — Christ’s death is meritorious of its own application. I have, and perhaps you have, a miserably hesitating habit, which treats Christ and His salvation very unworthily. Godly jealousy of ourselves is very right and proper, but to jalouse away Christ out of the place which is His in the Covenant of Grace, as the performer of all its conditions, and the administrator of all its provisions, this is very wrong. Paul desired that believers should not only be rooted and built up in the faith of Christ, but should abound therein with thanksgiving. They were to “abound” because of the abundance that was in Christ. Abundance of grace there was in Him, leading Him to take up the case of sinners and to go through with the work of their redemption, and abundance of merit there was in Him to bespeak the fulfilment of the Father’s covenant engagement, that His work when finished and accepted, should be placed to the account of all those on whose behalf it was accomplished. And is there not abundant declaration made in the Word of God of this wondrously gracious arrangement? “This is the name whereby he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness.” “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” And have we not abundant presentations of Christ made to us in the Gospel by Himself, by His Father, and by the Holy Spirit, as a Saviour not only able and willing to save all who come unto God through Him, but to save them with a complete and perfect and everlasting salvation! And is not He in the Gospel made over to you and to me if we have no objections (and I am sure we have none), to be indebted to Him for an out-and-out, an absolute and unconditional salvation? And since, therefore, Christ is exhibiting and offering Himself to us in the Word of the Gospel as the “Living Bread” and the “Living Water” that can alone refresh and satisfy our souls, let us have done with our miserable questionings — may we eat? can we drink? have we ever drunk? Let us rather seek to rejoice that in Him there is ever a fountain of grace for all our need, and let us ask Him to enable us to drink, and to drink copiously, out of “the wells of salvation.” It is little I can say to help you for I am but a child, but I would desire that through the riches of infinite, free, and ever faithful mercy, our intercourse may not prove altogether indifferent to Him who hath the name that is above every name, and that while we must not be too dependent on one another, or even on our dearest Christian friends, we yet may obtain upon our friendship some glint of blessing from the Well-beloved, enabling us to say with increasing heart truth —
“Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power
Till all the ransom’d Church of God
Be sav’d to sin no more.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream,
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love hath been my theme
And shall be till I die.”
Yours, &c.,
Hugh Martin