Ralph Erskine
Your letter came into my hand a considerable time after the date of it, and also at a time when I was obliged to lay it aside unanswered. But lately, having again taken it into my hand, I thought it my duty to gratify your desire by giving some answer. I am glad that the Lord has made any poor writings of mine refreshing to you. Meantime, I see by your letter that you are afraid lest, notwithstanding the advantages you have enjoyed, you have no more than a head knowledge of religion. And you express several other grounds of jealousy about yourself, in which you desire I may deal plainly with you.
Though it is hard for me to write on this head to one that I know no more of than just what your letter relates; yet there are some things mentioned in it which, if they are told me from an upright, ingenuous heart, they may give some handle to show that the seed of grace may really be sown there, and that the Lord is humbling you in order to heal you in due time.
First. You state that you lack the sealing testimonies of the Lord’s grace, which you judge you would have if you belonged to him. As to this, it may be in mercy that the Lord is withholding the seals of His love, and the comfortable feelings of it, until you are brought to find it, in an easier way of believing His love. It is said in Ephesians 1:13, “After that ye believed, ye were sealed”. The only sure ground of faith is the word of grace and truth spoken of there, and not our feeling. The felt sealing of the Spirit of promise is not to be expected before we believe the word of promise. If we should have anything like a feeling of His love before we believe His love, we would be ready to build our faith upon transient feelings and frames and influences, and not on the sure word of promise.
Though the revealing work of the Spirit opening the Word is prior to faith,
1An edited extract from a letter to Sarah Fisher, dated 19 January 1742 and taken from The Life and Diary of Ralph Erskine by Donald Fraser (Edinburgh, 1834).
yet the sealing work of the Spirit is after it. Many are deluded that rest on feelings and build their faith of God’s love, not on what God has said, but merely on what they have felt; and as these feelings are up and down, so is their faith. It will therefore be a mercy if the Lord is withholding what you call the sealing testimonies of His love, till you are made to give Him the glory of His truth by believing His love as revealed to you in His Word. Then you may expect the comfort of it to be sealed to you in your heart. The woman with the issue of blood was not conscious of virtue coming from Christ till she touched the hem of His garment by faith (Lk 8:43-48). If you expect and wait for feelings to be the foundation of your faith, they are mercifully denied you, that you may build upon a surer foundation, namely, Christ speaking in the Word as the ground of your faith, before you have any feeling of Him in your heart for the encouragement of faith.
Second. You tell me you can hear others talk of sweet communion with the Lord, and of their longing to die and to be with Christ, while the thoughts of death are terrible to you. At the same time you complain of deadness, coldness and carnality, fearing you lack love to Christ and that these things are not the spots of God’s children.
If you have a view of the plagues of your own heart and are indeed kept poor, needy and empty, and humbled under a sense of your need of all grace and goodness in yourself, desiring that Christ and His fulness may be more precious and acceptable to you; you have the advantage over those who are enriched with greater enjoyments if they are lifted up with them (Mt 5:3-6, Is 66:2). I hope this is the case with you, because of what you also say in your letter: that sometimes you can rejoice at the doctrine of God’s everlasting love to His chosen ones, though you cannot see your own interest in it; and are sure that, if ever you are saved, the crown must be upon the head of Christ. This looks like the language of one whom God is humbling in order to exalt her, and emptying in order to fill her in due time (Pss 9:18, 10:17, 113:5-7).
Third. You speak of having been under many temptations, but that you do not remember any promise to have come with power for your deliverance. Dear friend, if deliverance has come to you from time to time according to the promise, even powerful and merciful deliverance, whether sudden or gradual – though the promise itself has not come to you with such power, or in such a manner, as you think it has come to others – you should be thankful. The Lord’s way of bringing home the promise to the heart varies. However, I know little difference between a promise poured in sweetly upon the heart, and a heart poured out sweetly upon the promise. The latter may be as sure and safe as the former.
If the promise has, in holy providence, only come to your mind – whether by hearing, reading, or musing – so that you have been helped to make it a matter of prayer and pleading before the throne of grace, be content and bless God for it. Many are ready to depend more upon the felt power and sweet influence, by which the promise comes to them, than upon the promise itself. And hence, when the power and influence are withdrawn, faith has to be sought. They cannot rest upon the bare word of God, the bread on which the soul should live, unless, like little children, they get the butter and honey of some sweet influence spread upon it.
This disposition, in any godly soul, is much due to the sad remains of a legal temper that makes them seek for a ground of faith and hope, more in themselves, and in what is done by them, and wrought or felt in them, than by going out of themselves to what the Lord is in Himself, and has wrought for them and spoken to them. Faith is strongest, when it can live on a bare promise, without the supports of sight. Endeavour, through grace, to trust on a promising God, giving credit to His truth; and you shall find Him, in His own time, to be a performing God, giving comfort to your heart. Seek rest – not in streams of blessings and comforts only, that come from Him and take various turns – but in Himself, the fountain, who is still the same.
But I fear I have said too much. If you want, I will further explain anything written here; you may let me know by another letter. I have not in the least tried to flatter you; I have no temptation to do so, as I am quite ignorant of you, beyond what you have told me. If you wish to let me know your outward situation in life, whether it is high or low, it will be agreeable to me. I shall wish I may be able to serve your soul; and if what I have written here is in any way useful to you, and suits the case you wrote to me about, I will be glad if you let me know that you have received this letter. If it comes in time to answer any difficulties you may yet be under, you will the more readily pardon and excuse my having been so long in sending it. May the Lord bless all His means of grace, and make your soul prosper!