I am sending a copy of this pastoral letter to each household in the congregation. As the year draws to a close, we tend to review its events and take stock, as it were. Perhaps we also wonder what the year before us has in store. Each person will look at last year in his own way. The businessman will be concerned about the state of trade; the farmer will think of the prices of livestock and crops.
But I would suggest that the most important aspect of review is the very one that, because of our fallen nature, we are apt to consider least and also least carefully. I refer to our spiritual condition. You will not be surprised that a pastoral letter should dwell on such a subject. I would be unfaithful to the charge given me and to you whose souls are involved in it, if I did not, in writing you, mention those things that matter most.
Can we say then, at the end of another year, that we have grown in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ? Has it been for you a period in which your knowledge of God, as the God of glory, grew alongside a knowledge of yourselves as full of demerit, unworthiness and sinfulness? This would surely have been the case if you have been saved. But perhaps in your consciences you know that you are still unsaved! In that case, what do you recall in your review?
You will be bound to admit that God has been kind in giving you a measure of health and providing for your bodily needs so that you have not lacked. Has His goodness in these ways led you to repentance? You can also say that you have had access to some or all of the means of grace. You can either read God’s Word or have it read to you. It contains many invitations to taste and see that God is good, and assures you that who “trusts in Him is blessed”.
Why then are you still of an unbelieving heart? The throne of grace is open to you. Have you sought, asked for and found Christ for your soul? Evidently not! It may also be that you were in a position to go to God’s house when you chose. Have you always done so, and gone prayerfully, looking for a blessing? Perhaps also the voice of death has spoken to you loudly of the eternal world awaiting you beyond the borders of time. Have you determined to flee from the wrath to come? Maybe too you have experienced strivings of the Spirit urging you to discharge the duties which you most owe to your immortal soul. Finally let me put this to you who are still without Christ: you have not found in the world that fragrant herb called “heartsease”. You never will.
If, on the other hand, you to whom this letter comes are a soul saved by grace and thus bound to the Saviour by ties of love and gratitude and likeness of spirit, you will see in the past year what causes you mixed feelings. Like Paul you will say, “I count not myself to have apprehended”. There is much that you can only regret, mourn over and repent of. Opportunities were not fully used, privileges were not as highly appreciated as they ought to have been, the world was given an undue place, the corruptions of your heart were not mortified, and Satan not always resisted so that he would retreat.
But, on the other hand, there will be progress to note in some directions at least. You have increased in the knowledge of God’s great name as revealed in His works of creation and providence, but especially in His grace, mercy and love. Christ is more precious to you than ever He was. Your deepened views of sin have taken you sorrowfully to His throne of grace over and over again, and you have ever found Him to be the same merciful, pitying, compassionate Redeemer, “Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today and for ever”. You can say also, today more than ever, that you feel your complete dependence upon the blessed Holy Spirit for every religious duty. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” His spiritual comforts afford greater pleasure than anything earthly. Afflictions have not come and gone unnoticed and unimproved, and the world is a more barren place than last year.
Now friends, whatever your case may be spiritually, and whatever your review brings to light, I commend to you the use of the means of grace, public and private, more and more. Application to this duty is the surest method you can use to ensure that the year 1962, or whatever part of it you may see, will be happy and prosperous in the highest sense of the words. Read your Bible much and pray over what you read. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together in God’s house on Sabbath and weekday. If there are two Sabbath services, attend them both, praying for speaker and hearers. The prayer meeting is held alternate Wednesdays at Evelix and Rogart and we are engaged in a series of “Studies in the Gospels”, systematically working through the events in the Gospel histories. If you are not attending and could, please resolve to do so. Your eternal salvation depends upon knowing Jesus Christ, whom God has sent (Jn 17:3).
I wish you well in every way, but especially thus: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Num 6:24-26).
1This pastoral letter is dated 27 December 1961, the year in which the writer was ordained and inducted to the Dornoch and Rogart congregation.