I am deep in your debt for a train of favours for which I have often thanked you and still remember them gratefully. I cannot give a greater proof of my confidence in you than by committing to your trust brief details of my extraordinary case and cure. This I promised to do in a former letter, saying that my main intention was by it to give you a still greater capacity for speaking to the case of distressed, disturbed minds as they come in your way. My motive has not altered.
I am not very anxious whether my friends judge I was a believer or not, before my furnace-state; but I have no freedom myself in calling it in question. If not a believer, I was greatly mistaken indeed; surely I ate bread of which the people of the world are ignorant – at least I think so. I was awakened by the testimony of Jesus; after a time of terror, I was comforted by the doctrine of a Saviour.
My knowledge of downright believing was exceedingly scanty; my hopes were too easily raised or sunk, in proportion to the fineness or agreeableness of my inward feelings on the one hand, and their dullness or disagreeableness on the other. I was not fully instructed in the unchangeableness of God’s truth and love. I mean no reflection against my teachers, but only against my own perception of the truths revealed and taught. I read the Bible, but my mind was not sufficiently opened simply to receive what it taught me without intermixing fancied trash of my own. I knew some of my contemporary brethren were in the same predicament; they spoke like me, so I suppose they felt like me. But leaving this aside, the length I afterwards went in secret departure from the God of Abraham was great. As a singular monument of the superabounding riches of saving, sovereign, redeeming mercy, I say what follows.
1This letter was written to John Newton on 1 July 1795 and is taken, with editing, from The Free Presbyterian Magazine for December 1902. The rest of this footnote is the substance of the introductory note supplied by the then editor, Rev J S Sinclair. John Campbell was, in Newton’s old age, his chief correspondent. He was born and brought up in Edinburgh and, from his youth, mixed with the most serious circles there. He was much attached to John Erskine, John Colquhoun, and the other godly ministers about Edinburgh. He was early brought under the influences of the gospel. He was foremost in every good enterprise in Edinburgh in his day and, after the severe and sweet discipline he underwent, as recorded in this letter, he felt directed to enter the ministry. He became one of James Haldane’s companions in his gospel tours through Scotland, and finally settled as a minister in London. The London Missionary Society, in its early and great days, when John Love was its secretary, found one of its warmest friends in John Campbell. He repeatedly visited its mission stations in South Africa, and at home he advocated its claims throughout Britain. Born in 1766, he died in 1842.
My falling away was gradual, like the declension from noon to night. I think the decay of comfort in secret prayer was the first bad symptom which made its appearance. This ruffled me for a while, but it soon became familiar as a companion and caused little uneasiness. I had pleasure in attending the administration of the Word for a long time after this took place; and when this abated in a great degree, my profession dwindled into formality. All along I had a regard for the truly godly and associated with none else; these were the men of my counsels. For a considerable time I had little heart for attending private societies of Christians and was pleased when apparently there was a good excuse for non-attendance; though, upon the whole, I was one of the most regular attendants on the meetings of which I was a member. I am relating facts, so I must not accuse myself except where I was guilty. At this time I knew I was doing wrong, and lazily wished I had a heart to do better but had no resolution to carry out my desire.
In my worst situation I had a keen desire to be useful to others; and I cannot say it was wholly from selfish motives. I often had an opportunity to visit the sick and the dying, but seldom possessed a proper spirit or frame for talking to them in a way suited to their case. Though the poor creatures might seem on the frontiers of eternity, no sympathising emotions would arise; dumbness would seize me; I could not speak; I could not pray. I lost much of my reverence for the Sabbath; I found the commandment to sanctify it exerted no internal restraint upon my mind. I began to use freedoms with it – to talk about news or some occurrence which my judgement told me was unsuitable conversation for such an occasion. This did me great injury, defacing all that the Word had effected, and throwing me open to a thousand temptations through the week. I always had a value for real religion, judging those alone happy who possessed it, and would have given a world to be like-minded with them. But the influences of the Spirit are not to be bought with money. For a long time I only considered myself a Christian under backsliding; indeed I had partial recoveries. But I had a secret sin which easily beset me and, in process of time, I became its humble servant. I often opposed it, but oftener complied with it. I pleaded in favour of it at the bar of my mind, endeavouring to silence every witness which appeared against it. Something would say, Will you commit this sin and risk heaven? Another thought would start up and say, Do it, please do it; you know that you can repent of it at a future time; it is as easy to repent of many sins as of one; do comply. So I complied. Then Satan would suggest, Now you have eaten the forbidden fruit like Adam; you are a lost man; you have gone too far for repentance to have any weight. This affair would create a bustle for a while, but it was soon over. However, the memory of it was never effaced when I was on my own, but it often filled me with uneasiness and anxious concern, although it was long in reaching the conscience.
I often omitted prayer when I was away from home, without much uneasiness, and was always conscious that I was unprepared to die. I became afraid at the thought of death, but some glimmering hope continued for years. I thought I saw hypocrisy written upon all my actions, but had some hope that I was not a hypocrite. I often desired that self would not interfere with my actions, but it always had a large share in them. I often groaned after performing a generous action. My natural temper led me to be helpful to everybody, and I was universally esteemed and spoken well of, but I was seldom commended without a gloom overspreading my mind.
I sometimes pitied mankind, who could be easily imposed on, who could only judge from the external appearance. Though my relish for spiritual converse was often so flat as to incapacitate me for promoting it, I mostly desired that it should be the chief topic of discourse among the Lord’s people and I had most satisfaction when it was. I often tempted to lay a little stress upon my having a name to live but was conscious that I was dead, and this stung me to the heart. To reflect on my conduct was not pleasant during any day. When I turned my eye to the offers of the gospel, my mind was always dark and full of embarrassment. I confessed them all to be true, but none of them pointed at me directly; consequently the most explicit gospel offer yielded me only a perhaps.
I think it was about the beginning of 1794 my conscience began to harass me. This, for a considerable period, happened only about bedtime, or when I awoke during the night; but ordinarily this passed unnoticed during daytime, and then I was cheerful, secretly hoping things would turn out, by and by, better than my fears. O my deceitful and desperately wicked heart!
At this period I was continually harassed by invitations to suppers. At these I generally remained too long, the company being always agreeable. May the Lord ever deliver me from supping in strange houses! They almost ruined my soul. Family duty was neglected at home, a bad example set to others, secret duty hurried over, and the mind totally dissipated! About the beginning of November 1794, I officially attended a company for three or four nights, to a late hour. Several serious young people were part of the company; this stared me in the face as a most destructive example to them, and this conduct was the first thing, as far as I recollect, that mightily roused my conscience. Then all my guilt rushed into my mind like a mighty torrent, so that I thought I should have perished in my affliction. By night I could not sleep for the horrible anguish which gnawed upon my guilty soul; the horrors of hell took hold of me, and I did not know what to do, feeling that my day of grace was gone, my damnation just and sure. I was filled with a fearful looking for judgement, and fiery indignation to consume me as God’s adversary.
I looked into the Bible, and always stinging texts looked me in the face. I often tried to find comfort from that precious word, “Though your sins be as scarlet . . .” (Is 1:18), but I could not reason myself into receiving it. That word, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man”, pierced me to the quick; as did that other, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”. The flames of hell seemed beginning to take hold on me. I shrank; I moaned; I cried. For all this, my heart was as hard as the nether millstone. A sight of the horrors into which sin has plunged us may terrify, but can never melt, the sinner’s heart. Indeed, indeed, I was brought very low, as much as Satan could well bring a guilty soul on this side of death.
Glad would I have been to have been metamorphosed, not almost, like Nebuchadnezzar, but altogether into a beast, that I might avoid the awful, but righteous, indignation of Jehovah. Day and night was I tortured; nor had I freedom to reveal my case to any man. I was often on the eve of doing so; but the Lord had determined that flesh and blood were not to be the means of my relief. During many sermons that I heard, I sat as a condemned criminal, believing that others were fed while I was hungry – no food for me. Some people desire to have what is called a law work, but had they an hour of what I have faintly described above, they would wish they had never been born.
The arrows of the Almighty stuck faster and deeper as days and hours moved on. The comforting testimonies of Jesus all flew past me, or rather were all rejected by me. Judas, Julian,2 and such rejecters of the gospel were viewed as the men who were to be my eternal associates. I often wished I had never known the gospel – envying the situation of the most abandoned debauchee who remained unawakened, untormented before the time. And though I am now relieved, I feel horror in committing it to paper. But I have this reason, among others, for doing so: that it may prove a means to humble and stir me up in a day of pride or unwatchfulness, and that I may never forget gratitude to my great Deliverer, who snatched me from the gaping mouth of such a horrible pit. My dear Saviour, let me never forget this hour and power of darkness, and never think of my darkness without wondering at Thine. Mine was but a drop, Thine an ocean. Mine I deserved, Thine was for me.
2Roman emperor from 361 to 363, he was known as Julian the Apostate because he forsook Christianity for paganism and became a persecutor.
It is a most mournful proof of the dead hardness of the impenitent heart of man when he can smile while deliverance from wrath remains an uncertainty. It is no less wonderful to think that the redeemed of the Lord are not always filled with rapturous triumph while on earth. O the patience, the kindness, the love and the forbearance of the Almighty! What a plague sin has introduced into the world! What glorious grace God has manifested! I have to praise the Lord this day that my life and reason were both preserved.
I just now recollect that, in the midst of my anguish of soul, I thought I should be under the necessity of applying to strong drink for relief from my tormented mind, but I was preserved from putting this into execution, except one time about midnight, being so tormented that I feared my bowels would rend with the burning and boiling of my fired conscience. I rose and took one glass of spirits, but ah, this was but poor relief. It had no effect, but rather sharpened my anguish. I then lit a candle and pored, with extreme horror, over Psalm 88 from verse 14. I perceived my case worded there, but my hour not yet being come, it afforded no alleviation. This to me was indeed the hour and power of darkness.
All the invention of Popish tormentors could not have caused such agony as I then felt. I thought many of my friends should look for me in heaven and not find me. This thought also stung me to the quick. I believed God would make me the butt of His vengeance. When I felt the smallest impediment in a simple breath, I trembled as if a harbinger of death had appeared. The fidelity of God in the execution of His threatening was a tremendous truth. This moment my flesh shrinks on identifying to my mind my most amazing horror.
I had as strong impressions of the fidelity of heaven in the midst of this distress as ever I had; this deepened and enlarged my wound. I beheld the glories of heaven as the rich man may be supposed to have viewed the happiness of Lazarus from the centre of hell. The state of infants, and such as had not lived long enough to reject the gospel, appeared happiness; there was a possibility of their being recovered and pardoned, but all this was over with me.
I thought that I believed the Bible was a true revelation from God, but I soberly believed it was the highest presumption for me to receive any comfort from the truths recorded in it because, having tasted of the powers of the world to come, I afterwards fed upon sin as if I was preferring it to the chief good. I called this atrocious, and so it was, but ah that I should have admitted the thought that my sin overtopped the merit of the Mediator’s righteousness! But I was led captive by, and bound under, the sin of unbelief.
I believed Christ was once friendly to me in months past, but His friendship I had disregarded and neglected – so that now He would make me an example of His vengeance and vindicate His injured goodness by making me, on the Judgement Day, a spectacle of horror, shame and dismay. To express the inward gnawing anguish which uniformly succeeded those dismal apprehensions is beyond the power of a human pen. I rejoice I now relate it as a past event.
Fierce as my chastisement was, it was short and slight compared with what I justly merited. Three months was about the length of time when it was sharpest, and even during that period I had often intervals of quiet throughout the day. But in general I trembled when darkness overspread the heavens; the return of the evening, sweet to the husbandman, was like the shock of an earthquake to me. A person who never waded these deep waters can have no more conception of them than of the glory of the third heaven. No wonder that the multitude of the heavenly hosts made the air resound with their songs at the incarnation of the Great Deliverer of sinners from all this wrath. They felt for man, but the natural man does not pity himself. Saints are mourning for him when he is laughing at them. May I ever recoil from offending such a God – such a Saviour! May I ever possess such a deep sense of the magnitude of God’s mercy!