A Moody Stuart
1An extract, written in 1888, from Moody Stuart’s Memoir, by his son. By far the best part of this volume is the first, largely autobiographical, section. Moody Stuart (1809-1898), was minister of Free St Luke’s, Edinburgh; his writings include The Three Marys and The Life of John Duncan, both republished by the Banner of Truth Trust. These and the books mentioned in the next two footnotes are available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
After a good deal of thought I decided for the ministry, but not without a struggle. I took the step with a clear conscience, having a steadfast religious persuasion for myself and a conscientious desire for the salvation of others. After serious self-examination I had become a communicant and firmly believed in the necessity of conversion, which I trusted to have passed through by a gradual transformation. In this state I entered the Divinity Hall and, after giving my name to be enrolled, my mind was lifted up with a buoyancy and joy of a kind never known before. The fact of having engaged myself to be “a servant of the God of heaven” I felt to be so high a privilege and honour that I could hardly restrain myself and took a back lane on my way to college to give free scope to my exultation by running along it; it could not be called “the joy of the hypocrite”; it lasted for 10 days. Yet I was a stranger to the covenant of promise and to the new birth by the Holy Spirit, had never known forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb, and had not the spirit of adoption to be “as a son that serveth” his heavenly Father.
After two years in the Hall at Glasgow I went to Edinburgh to study under Dr Chalmers. My eldest sister, whom we looked up to as the most religious in the family, had recently come under deep convictions and warned us faithfully that she had never undergone a saving change. And although we thought it too severe a judgement on herself, we knew that if this were true of her, our case must be still worse. For myself, I was constrained to conclude that any apparent tokens of grace might be accounted for by moral training and religious teaching, combined with the dictates of natural conscience, without any saving work of the Holy Spirit in the heart. But these doubts were quieted by evading the question.
One night I had a deeply solemn dream. The dream took the form of thinking that I was dead, but not yet buried; that my life was past and irrevocable, but my eternal state not yet begun. I sat down on my bed beside my coffin to examine myself and to ask if my soul was lost or saved, and I knelt down to cry for mercy although the time for prayer was for ever past. Surprised at my folly in making the attempt, I rose from my knees and sat down to force myself to examine the question: Lost or saved? The effort was in vain, and I knelt again to cry for mercy, only to rise again and renew the hopeless inquest. When I awoke in the morning, this frightful dream had gone from my memory; but whilst sitting in my room in the course of the day, I dreamed it all over again with the waking consciousness that it was a dream, yet only to recall it as a stern reality. Of course there was no thought of any revelation in this vision of the night; yet “in a dream, in a vision of the night, in slumberings upon the bed, He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction”. The sealed instruction was to consider my state for eternity and to ask if my soul were lost or saved. Accordingly I made the attempt, but with the very same result as in my dream. The great question I asked but could not answer. My judgement was against myself, but I feared to pronounce it, and still hoped that I was not utterly without “part or lot in this matter”.
At this time I sat under an esteemed minister in the New Town [of Edinburgh] whose preaching I admired and valued, but when awakened to my own want of spiritual life I longed to hear some truth not yet learned, or of some path in the soul’s history not yet trodden. At the close of the sermon, the familiar words would recur to my memory: “All these things have I kept from my youth; what lack I yet?” And I would have been grateful to be told my lack, but it was not disclosed to me. One day on going over to the Old Town to hear Dr Gordon,2 he told, to an unwilling ear, of conversion as a process, not of building up, such as I had earnestly desired, but of breaking down, by one stroke after another, till the whole gave way. The preacher’s meaning was very clear, and it was equally clear that I had never known what he described, and was most averse to receive it. His words, however, by the grace of God, reached my heart as no words had ever done before; and I resolved not to forget them. Dark as they were, it was a new light in the soul’s path for which I have ever thanked the Lord.
2Robert Gordon, whose four-volume set, Christ in the Old Testament, has been republished by Free Presbyterian Publications.
About this time I took up Marshall on Sanctification,3 which I had put into my trunk on leaving home, but had never read. And to this book, under the Spirit’s teaching, I owed my instruction in the doctrines of grace. The two great lessons I learned from it were: the entire sinfulness of fallen man, the utter worthlessness of all that he can do, and over against this the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ given for all and to all who believe on Him “without even a peppercorn of acknowledgment” from anything of ours. More than all this, this provision of a complete righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ for us by His work and by His sacrifice convinced me of my own worthlessness and nakedness in the sight of God. I now thoroughly understood and believed these truths, although the conviction of guilt was not in the definite and agonising sense of sin as often since, but in a profound sense of the absolute want of all good and of the guilt of unbelief.
3The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, by the Puritan writer Walter Marshall; it has been reprinted by Reformation Heritage Books.
These discoveries cast me to an infinite and helpless distance from God and from Christ. I was lost and dead, without any power either to pray or to believe; there was free salvation in Jesus Christ for the chief of sinners in believing on Him, but in Him I never had believed, and could not now believe. Standing stripped and ashamed, with no power to put on the clothing of the Lord Jesus Christ, I could do nothing, and made no attempt. Morning and night the Bible was read and the knee bowed as before, but only as a duty, and not supposing that I could read or pray to any saving effect, for I was dead. I looked out from my window to the lofty and distant sky, and by such a distance felt myself to be “a great way off” from God, from Christ, from heaven.
It was the time of the Spring Communion in Edinburgh in 1829, and on the Fast Day, my cousin, along with whom I then lodged, in receiving a token for himself, asked one also for me. It was taken without my knowledge and vexed me when put in my hand, but I had no thought of using it because I had no part in Christ. Next day found me downcast and sad, but with a fixed resolution to care for nothing till I should find salvation, although it might not be for years. As I sat musing sorrowfully, my Bible caught my eye, and I wondered if there could be anything in it for me. Taking it up listlessly, I held it in my hand and it was a dark sight, for I thought I had known it, but now it was a sealed book from beginning to end. It was all one to me where to read, for all was equally dark, and I opened it without looking where; but as I read I came to these words in Ephesians 5:14: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light”. They came to me like a flash of lightning in the sudden awakening, but with infinite sweetness of light in Christ; they were spoken to me, of whom I supposed no one could be thinking. They were addressed to the sleeper, and if any one in the whole world was sleeping, it was myself.
I was lost and dead, yet was not in agony, was not praying, was not even anxious, but was sleeping sadly in death. Can this be the Bible? Can this be the book I have been reading from childhood? Having turned it over to make sure that it was my own very Bible, I rejoiced in the sight of the well-known volume, read again to make sure of the words, then closed the book in wonder and peace and joy. I had been darkness, but now was light in the Lord, the darkness past and the true light now shining, the saving righteousness of Christ now my own. From that hour I could say, “Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever, for they are the rejoicing of my heart”. His word had quickened me, and I trust that He has never taken it “utterly out of my mouth”.
By God’s own gift the word must have been “mixed with faith” in reading, but it awoke and enlightened me with resistless power, as if previous to any consent on my part. The token received with sorrow was now used with joy, and for the first time I sat down at the Lord’s table with faith, truly partaking of those signs and seals of the Lord’s dying love, for which I often ardently long, since I have been laid aside. This day I have entered upon my eightieth year; it is 59 years since the Lord spoke to me in saving grace and power. And of His gift on that day He has now been saying: “Behold I come quickly; hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown”.