4. Further Progress
Alexander Stewart
I must bear my renewed testimony to the power and grace of God, manifested in behalf of His people in this part of the country. The experience of years has now confirmed the favourable hopes which were entertained about many. Their humble, inoffensive, affectionate behaviour toward their connections, their neighbours and each other has shown that the grace of God which was bestowed on them was not in vain; that the views they had received of divine truth were neither delusive nor unfruitful and did not issue in barren speculations or mystical fancies or transient raptures, but in sound, permanent principles of conduct.
The desire of obtaining religious knowledge and the attention paid to religious instruction, which had begun to spread a few years ago, have now become prevalent. A persuasion of the necessity of possessing vital godliness, having an interest in Christ and living a life of faith has become pretty general. Among the numbers who come to the ordinances of religion with some degree
1Reprinted, with editing, from The Free Presbyterian Magazine for 1913. The first three articles in this series were written in 1800 in the form of a letter to David Black of Edinburgh and were printed as a pamphlet; this final article in the series was written in 1802 and printed as an appendix to a reprint of that pamphlet. Stewart was then the parish minister of Moulin in Perthshire.
of seriousness, there is reason to fear that many still satisfy themselves with performing the outward service, without attentively considering whether they are accepted in it by God, or have profited by their attendance. They seem to be contented with hearing of God by the hearing of the ear, without their eye seeing Him (Job 42:5). Still it is ground of encouragement and thankfulness that they continue to listen to the truth, because they are thus placed the oftener within its reach, and in the way of receiving it so as to feel its power (Rom 10:17).
A considerable number, however, seem to have “received the truth in the love of it”, to have devoted themselves heartily to the Lord, and to enjoy communion with Him in His ordinances. The number of these has been evidently increasing since the date of the preceding account. Most of them are found, as before, among the younger sort. Several ministers and pious persons who have occasionally visited us have witnessed the beauties of holiness shining in their behaviour, their language and their very looks. While they were “helpers of our joy”, they have freely testified their delight in what they beheld, and how they were glad when they saw the grace of God bestowed on such unworthy sinners.
There are also some who appear to be in a kind of intermediate state, who seem to be enquiring and feeling their way; but from some obstructions, either in their temper or in their worldly circumstances or in their family relationships, they are making little or no perceptible progress. Of such, however, we have good hopes that they may be already under divine teaching, and that the Lord may, in His wisdom, be conducting them by a different course from what we might have recommended – just as He led His people of old about, through the way of the wilderness, and not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near, lest peradventure they should repent when they should see war and return to Egypt (Ex 13:17,18).
We have been permitted to accompany a few of the Lord’s children to the border of the unseen world. Here we have received from them the last and, in some respects, the most unequivocal testimony to the energy of the truth which they believed, by witnessing their peaceful, and even triumphant, departure. The avowed infidel or the practical unbeliever, with affected levity or forced composure or foolish indifference, quits this world for another, which is to him an undiscovered country; yet the disciple of Christ, according to the clearness of his views of divine truth, knows whom he has believed, whither he is going, and how he is to fare. He knows that he is not to be banished to a strange land, but to be welcomed home to his Father’s house. We have accordingly seen such believers on their deathbeds “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer”. And what is likewise
a striking evidence of the triumph of faith, we have seen a surviving widow and sisters not sorrowing as those which have no hope, but unfeignedly rejoicing in the well-grounded persuasion that their departed husband and friend was now in glory.
While journeying through a world full of snares and bearing about with us much remaining corruption, we would request the continuance of our dear brethren’s prayers that we may be kept from the evil which is in the world, and that our peace and brotherly love may be preserved unbroken. And we would join them in earnestly praying that God would be pleased to pour out His Spirit yet more and more, and gather increasing numbers into the Redeemer’s kingdom till the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord.