Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

LETTER XVIII.

MY DEAR

I Do tremble for you, and I would have you tremble for yourself! With subtlety the enemy of souls has prevailed against you. Blinded by his enchantments, you discern neither the path in which you are walking, nor the precipice to which it leads. In spirit you are alienated from God; you have forsaken the fountain of life; you have forgotten your resting-place; your heart is full of idols, your mind of vain fancies; you delight no longer in holy contemplations, or useful exertions; if you continue in duty, it is coldly, cautiously, grudgingly; the eye of your soul is dim, and the pulse of your

soul scarcely beats. How know you that you live? Only by this-you are filled with wretchedness and remorse; for this be thankful. It were a double woe to be at once sinful and happy. My friend, you have deceived yourself; yet in thus saying, I do not impeach your sincerity, for you were in earnest, (oh! grief that you are not so now,) but, ignorant of the depths of your own heart, and of the deeper depths of Satan, you expected the first onset to gain the victory. You ceased to look to your Captain; carelessness induced a surprise, surprise surrender; you are now wounded and a captive; your sword is broken, your banner is torn, your strength is gone from you; and your hope, where is it? You forgot that he who girdeth on his harness should not boast like him that putteth it off. You forgot that the Christian race and warfare are to be run and fought every day, and all day, unto the end of life. You dreamed of rest here; you exulted in the past; you over-enjoyed the present; you heeded not the future: one earthly delight after another

(all I grant refined) stole into the secret place of your soul, and by little and little, circumscribed the dominion of God ;-his throne is yet there, but where is he, the King? You have not openly renounced your allegiance to Him, but where is your loyal service? You call him Master, so did one who was a betrayer; nay, you call yourself a child—should you not rather say a hireling? Alas, alas! a Christian when bereft of the quickening influence of grace, is the most mournful of all earth's ruins.! The loss of reason ranks man with the broken column, and the deserted city; but the absence of God's Spirit after it has once been imparted, renders him far more desolate and degraded. He has "a name to live, and yet is dead;" he is an altar without an offering; a temple without a priest; a victim without a heart; a censer without incense; a lamp extinguished; a tree hiding its fruitlessness with fair leaves; he is the deceptive image, instead of the living David! You know this statement to be true; but it is only yourself, and the very few who, because

they love, have studied you, that know it. Yet of those few scarcely one would dare to tell it you. Therefore I do so. May God point, nay, barb the arrow, that it may enter so abidingly into your soul, that no hand, save his, may avail to draw it forth; no balm but his, heal the wound it leaves.

My friend, what matters it that your present path is a primrose one, if by leading as it does from God, it issue at length in everlasting destruction? What matters it that the objects which engross your supreme regard are lovely? That your idols are of the purest gold? I know you would not barter your birth ke 0

ш for a mess of pottago: own had you been Judas, you would not have sold your Master for money; nothing coarse or common would tempt you to endanger your soul's welfare; you do compliment God by superseding him with the choicest goods earth can offer. They are all glittering and glorious, the things for which you are risking heaven—the triumph and the enjoyment of affection; (oh! the universe of snares hid in that single word!) the stirrings

of internal power; the longings after intellectual distinctions; the seductions of literature, its prohibited ground, that on which the tree of life may not grow; those gay companionships and excitements, of which pride and vanity are the base and capital, the foundation and the top-stone-Yes, I know them all well, too well. You have looked

back upon your old world, looked upon it through the enchanter's mist, and Olivet, Lebanon, and Calvary, appear in comparison, sombre and insipid. Abana and Pharpar seem more lucid streams than Cedron and Siloah. But you have not yet (you may suggest) abandoned the garden of the church, for the high places of the world— no, you are only gliding towards the boundary; only tampering with the restraints which prevent your egress. Your pursuits, your habits, your friends, your sentimentsyes, I know they are all Christian ;—the poison is at work silently, deeply; but does it work the less surely? Your cheek has not the hue of death-no, it has attacked

« FöregåendeFortsätt »