There is less danger in wounding us when we are innocent, than in healing our deadly wounds slightly. A faithful ministry puts both the innocent and the guilty to a trial, and hath been many times made the blessed means of letting both see where they are, or where they were.

But though I was wounded by many things which have been brought out of late [in your preaching], yet in another text you chose after this, you brought out many healing things indeed, some of which I was allowed to take hold of. It was in the book of Jonah, the words are these: — "I said I am cast out of thy sight, but I will look again towards thy holy temple." In handling these words, you found me out, and touched the very case I was in. For a long time before I came under your ministry, the very words of this text were my continual outcry — "I am cast out of thy sight"; and you were led to bring out the very grounds and reasons of this heavy complaint in a more clear manner than I could have told you, though I had let it be known to you; but I believe you were told it from the Lord. I cannot record what you brought forth, so as to do it justice; but I think the comfort of it still remains. I shall note a few remarks that you had upon these words, which I could not well forget, they came so near the case I was in. First, you remarked that some poor souls might think they were cast out of God's sight when they did not enjoy the means of spiritual life in that fullness in which they had formerly enjoyed them. And again, they might think they were cast out of His sight when they did not come home to them with that life, light, and clearness of evidence with which they had formerly found them come. These things were the main parts of my trouble under this dark cloud, from which Satan took great advantage to work upon the atheism and unbelief of my heart, by which a fearful havoc was made in the soul, much to the Lord's dishonor, after all the appearances he had formerly made for me. Oh! With what patience hath he borne with the fearful workings of unbelief, atheism, enmity, and rebellion of my heart against him; for which I have cause to wonder that he did not thrust me out of the world in some awful manner! But he still acts like himself, and like none else.

But further, when you came to speak of looking again by faith towards his holy temple, you observed that when the Lord was drawing souls to himself, either at first, or after desertion, he gave them realizing views of the object of faith, made things clear to the soul as they really were; and then the heart was attracted and drawn out after those things which were so seen, and so cleared to them, and then they were allowed to draw all in again in the exercise of faith and love. This is as near to the words you spoke as I can remember, and near to any experience that I ever had of these things. Dear Sir, no words can express the majesty of grace that I thought I saw in these words as they proceeded from your mouth. I thought my soul was running along with these words, and setting my seal to them. This was a sweet day to me after a long night of desertion. Oh! What a blessing is a faithful gospel ministry, when the Lord is pleased to bless it to his church in general, or to souls in particular. Well may those words in the Song [of Solomon] be applied to a faithful minister — "Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honey-comb; honey and milk are under thy tongue." Faithful ministers are the lips of Christ's spouse in a most eminent manner. Under their tongue is that honey and milk by which he feeds his young and weak ones, and also that strong meat for the young men and fathers of his church; as Solomon says by the Spirit — "The lips of the righteous feed many"; and whatever be their dishonors and their hard labors now, their rest at last will be glorious, and their honor great. As Daniel speaks — "They that be wise shall shine as the sun, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

I remark one instance of my childish weakness in my young days. I formed a high esteem of ministers before I had any judgment to understand the nature of their office, their usefulness, and the need of them, and their value upon that account. I thought if they were ministers they deserved a high esteem, and much reverence; and if I heard any person speak lightly of a minister, that person seemed worthless in my esteem. But ever since He allowed me to look into His holy Word with any understanding, and to discern both by word and experience between faithful and unfaithful ministers, the weight of them both has been made to lie heavy upon my spirit. When I was made to see the danger of their being unfaithful, the wrath that was threatened against them, and their very persons held as an abomination to the Lord — He calling them sleepy dogs, lying down, loving to slumber, dumb dogs that cannot bark, with much more of the like nature, all which have been made to appear awful things to me, I never got that nearness to the Lord in prayer for such as for those who gave evidence of their being called and qualified and sent out by himself, and were endeavoring in his own strength to be faithful to the trust he had committed to their charge.

Oh! what am I, that I should be allowed to come before him, for any thing at all, and specially in behalf of his faithful servants in the ministry! But my own interest is deeply concerned in this matter, except I be a castaway. But oh! to get the same end in seeking salvation, and in the means of it, that the Lord has in giving salvation, and also in the means. His own glory — the glory of his love, grace, and mercy; and also in the glory of his holiness, justice, goodness, truth, and faithfulness! All these perfections, although daringly insulted by the fall, and by the actual transgression of all the fallen race, yet are richly glorified by the obedience and death of his eternal Son. O! upon what a sure footing is the salvation of his elect! As you have been sweetly describing from these words in the eighth of the Romans — "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," that they "might be made the righteousness of God in him, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Oh! what love, what grace and mercy are sounding in these words! And, dear Sir, what matter of praise to Him, who has enabled you to go through this text with such clearness, and to conclude it with such faithfulness!

I have this still to remark, that ever since I came under your ministry, whatever passage of the Lord's Word you are led to speak upon, besides what you are enabled to bring forth from the words, I find greater light cast upon the words after, and I am made to see things in them which I never saw before; so that every declaration of His love and good-will that you make hath something of this tendency — to lead beyond you to Him who thus loved; and in this I find him working with you. You send us away to Him by every declaration of his love, and he is drawing us away from you, and letting us see more and more into that adorable deep of everlasting love. And, as was hinted to you before, this is one of the strongest evidences that worthless I could desire of the Divine commission you have, to speak of those things you are led to every Sabbath; this is what puts the savor in it, and maketh it as ointment poured forth. But, dear Sir, we cannot express, neither are there words to utter, what we feel of this; but oh! may He have the glory to whom it belongs. At the same time, I never was allowed a more just esteem of any of the ministers of his word, nor did I ever feel such a concern for any of them laid upon my spirit, as for you.

My allowances to pray for you are sometimes so very great that they overcome me, so as that I cannot utter them in words, but must breathe and sigh them out before the Lord; not only for what you need for the public work of the ministry, but also in an especial manner for personal and family sanctification, that as you stand as a son of Levi in His house, your offering may be more and more pure before him, being still performed with the incense of the suffering of the Great High Priest of your profession.

The week before this paper book was sent to me, I was under such a weight of this kind for you, as rendered me unfit for any outward action. I wondered what it could mean, that there was such a weight laid upon the spirit of such a weak and worthless one. The book was a very desirable present, whatever may be done with it; but a living character savingly under conviction by means of your ministry was no less desirable; this was like an answer to what I was led to desire for yourself and family.

But still, dear Sir, there is much need to join trembling with our mirth, and to be concerned for the happy issue, that this work may end in union with Christ. You were long in our hearing upon that fiery combat, between flesh and Spirit, from these words — "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." You justly observed that persons in this case would neither do the good nor yet the evil that they would; because, by the workings of the Holy Spirit, they were kept from the evil that flesh would draw them into, and by the sinful workings of the flesh, they were kept from the good the Spirit was leading them to. Oh! what a blessing would it be to have this warfare rightly begun, and carried on by lawful means; for we are not crowned unless we strive lawfully. Alas! The deceitful party in our own land giveth the foreign enemy great advantage against us! As for me, there is such a strength of indwelling sin in me, that when Satan comes with the least of his subtleties, I am suddenly overcome. This keeps me in continual doubt as to my state. For all the pains that the Lord hath been at with me, and for all the discoveries he hath made of himself unto me, in the methods of providence and grace, I have never attained to the unshaken, unclouded persuasion of my eternal salvation; but I can say this far, as in His own sight, and I desire to do it with the deepest humility, that in my lowest cases, I would not part with the smallest hope of it for thousands of worlds, though they did exist, and were in my offer. I would think it a far sweeter lot, indeed, to creep through the world upon my hands and my feet, seeking my bit of bread, with the least hair of the hope of eternal life, before I would sit upon a throne without it, small though a hair be, and proud although my heart be; and alas! it is too much so. Thus far I can say upon this matter, and this I could not keep back. But it may be, some that have much of the good things of this world might be ready to suspect the truth of this, because I have them not; but let them not do that. These are things that have been laid in the balance by me in my best and worst times ever since He made any discoveries of my lost and undone state by nature, the evil and danger of sin, and the dishonors done to God thereby, or any discovery of himself in his glorious perfections.

But further, with respect to the strength of sin that I feel in me, when I try to wrestle and cry for strength to resist them, it is seldom that my foes turn back. It is almost ever the case with me, that the more I cry against them, the more powerful they appear, and the more fiercely they run upon me, until some of the plagues of my heart prevail, and I fall before them. O! how often hath this made me cry out, "O wretched one that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" I am given up into the hands of sin and Satan, and it is to no purpose to cry for deliverance any more. I see nothing but that I must live and die, and spend a miserable eternity, under the power and defilement of sin. Dear Sir, these are not only deeps I was naturally in and under, in the day that the Lord began to deal with me, which was at an early period, in which he made many wonderful appearances to me, many of which I have told you already, but they are deeps into which I have been still falling ever since that time, through the strength of sin in me, and through my sinful compliance with its motions and deeps which I am naturally in, as far as I am still unrenewed, if I can say that I am in any degree renewed; for though I should be mercifully drawn up out of the deep of miry clay that is in the bottom, I am not yet above these waters.

But, dear Sir, I will yet tell you strange things; they have been many times wonderfully strange to me — it is not by my fighting with my spiritual enemies, but by my falling before them, that I obtain any victory over them — we must overcome by faith, for "every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood"; but it is "the Child that was born," and "the Son that was given" for that very end — to destroy the works of the devil — it is He that gains all the victories — to Him belongs victory and honor, power and might. He will have the honor of all the victories which are obtained over sin, Satan, death, hell, and the grave. When I have been so foiled and defeated by my spiritual enemies, that I could neither act, nor think, nor speak against them, then it was that He made the most wonderful appearances for me.

I think the Lord had holy and wise ends in letting me fall so low before he delivered me. I think he hath taught me these things from his dealing thus with me, — first, to let me see how just he would have been to have left me under the power of sin and Satan, according to the state I was in by nature; and, secondly, to let me see how dreadful a thing it will be to be under the power and dominion and defilement of sin, throughout an endless eternity, and under his avenging wrath and curse on that account; and thirdly, to teach me to lay no stress upon my prayers, tears, wrestlings, and cries for deliverance from the power of sin, and that there was no saving efficacy in them as they came from me, but were rather provoking to the eyes of his holiness, but in as far as I had an eye to the saving grace that was treasured up in the Captain of Salvation to enable me to overcome. Dear Sir, agreeably to his way of dealing with me was that which you brought forth when you were [preaching] upon the spiritual warfare. You had it thus, — you said that the Spirit sometimes suffered himself to be overcome and foiled, as it were, that more glory might redound to the riches of his grace in delivering his poor people when brought to the lowest. These are nearly the words you spoke, and they did tend much to cast light upon the Lord's way with me, for I many times could not believe that the strength of sin that I found in me could consist with the indwellings of the Spirit.

But still further, in pleading for deliverance from the power and defilement of sin, I used wrong pleas before the Lord. I have pleaded that he would pity me, because I was his own creature, a creature of the human race. But he let me see from his holy Word that this was no just plea, but rather would condemn me before him, if I had not the saving knowledge of him as a God reconciled in Christ. He says of all such, "They are a people of no understanding; therefore he that made them will not have mercy upon them, and he that formed them will show them no favor." I have pleaded that he would pity me as a miserable creature; but it is clear from the word that this also is a wrong plea. Indeed, my misery was of myself, both originally and actually. Man, in making himself miserable, did all that in him lay to rob God of his glory, by trampling upon his authority, for which cause his wrath is gone out against all the human race. This was dealing with God in an unsuitable way, ignorantly eyeing his mercy, without eyeing his justice and holiness; and by my own legal inventions, contrary to the wonderful way his own infinite wisdom had devised, have I, times without number, been desiring deliverance from the power and guilt of sin, without a direct eye to that wonderful Name who saves his people from their sins. Alas, the sad legal ties of my heart! I do not find my soul like a chaste virgin to Christ. It is a sad complaint that the Lord hath against his professing Israel of old. He saith, "I am broken with their whorish hearts." This is wonderful, to hear the Lord of Glory thus complaining of the dust of his feet; this is a charge I take to myself — a change I am many times like to faint under.

It is no wonder, indeed, that He plunges me often into the deeps of desertion and darkness. Dear Sir, as it was said of the darkness in Egypt, it was "darkness that was felt"; so it has been the Lord's way with me to keep me in these deeps of darkness and desertion, until he made me see all their terror as far as he gave strength to bear them; I was made sensibly to sink deeper and deeper, and yet kept alive, until he made me to see and acknowledge how just he would have been in leaving me there according to the state I was naturally in by the fall, under his wrath and curse, held forth in the threat, and sunk deeper and deeper by my own actual transgressions; so that I was condemned by God's holy law — condemned by my own conscience; so that I was made to see him just in his procedures towards me, and to acquiesce, as it were, in his procedure towards sinning men and sinning angels, and that he would lose none of his glory by their fall, but he would establish his throne in righteousness upon their ruins. And he also made me to see how fearful a thing it is to lie under his wrath and curse in time, and to be left under the power and defilement of sin, but unspeakably more so to be under or in the unfathomable deep of it through an endless eternity — even sinning to the highest degree against the Fountain of life, and love, and purity. But further, he taught me, by his thus dealing with me, to have my eye and my heart continually set on him for deliverance, upon whom the eternal Father's heart and eye is continually, being well pleased for his righteousness's sake. Although the work of redemption was finished from the foundation of the world, yea even from eternity, in purpose and decree, and was actually finished as to purchase by the appearance of the eternal Son of God in the world, and by his obedience unto death; yet, as to application, it is still a-finishing.

We think, according to the nature of things, although the elect were justified in purpose and decree from eternity, considered as in Christ before any of them did exist; yet, from his word, and from his way of dealing with souls, that they could not be actually justified, nor actually sanctified, until they did actually exist. Nor could their sins be pardoned until they were actually committed, either in thought, word, or deed; and until they be brought to a sight and sense of the evil and danger of sin, and, in some measure of gospel sincerity, to hate and abhor it, and, by the grace of the gospel, determined to turn from it in heart and life. Repentance and remission of sin must go together; they are both treasured up in the same wonderful Name, who is exalted a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance and remission of sins. And when once he quickens and awakens a soul out of a state of spiritual death, he keeps it awake with a sight and a sense of its sin and misery, and holds it continually traveling, as it were, between its own sin and guilt, and his pardoning mercy in a Mediator, and between its own defilement, and the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and between its own emptiness and infinite fullness; and so exerciseth it continually by means of that abominable thing, sin, which his righteous soul hateth, and which is in itself unspeakably dishonorable to him, and ruinous to the soul; yet, in his infinite wisdom, power, love, and grace, he so overruleth it, that by means of it he promotes his own glory, and the eternal salvation of his elect.

Oh! what need of the deepest humiliation, and, at the same time, what matter of wonder and praise! O how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! O, what wonder that sin should be one of the "all things" He maketh to work together for the good of his chosen!

Dear Sir, I hope you will bear with me, and excuse me for insisting so much upon these things, for we cannot speak but what we have heard and seen. You know, in common life, things that persons are continually conversant about are most upon their minds.

Go to the next installment:
Isobel Hood's Letter to Her Pastor: Part II