Letters to an anxious inquirer : designed to relieve the difficulties of a friend under serious impressions

Front matter

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V

Letter II

Mistaken views — Danger of reliance on feeling — The duty of avoiding unnecessary association with the "World — Counting the cost — On the opposition of others — A melancholy instance — Advice — An instance of the happy effects of Christian prudence — Discouragements from luke-warm Christians — The folly of relinquishing the subject in consequence of external difficulties — Encouragement.

XXV111 CONTENTS.

Letter III

Those difficulties which are of least importance most generally discouraging 1 — Impatience arising from disappointed expectations — A complaint — Its causes — The dread of increasing anxiety — A false conclusion — Evils arising from natural buoyancy of feeling — Difficulty in the doctrine of Election — Inclination and despair aid each other — "I am seeking," a false plea — "I am waiting for a day of power" — "I am waiting for God to do his part."

Letter IV

Previous misconceptions — Cause of delay — Any delay or suffering the fault of the sinner — Mistake relating to the necessity of a certain preparatory process — Scripture examples — Error relating to prayer — " I am not prepared" — "I am not holy enough" — The inconsistency of the complainer — On insensibility — Want of clear views of sin — Degrees of conviction not necessary to be observed — Why conviction is more difficult to be effected in a man of strict morality — The Gospel invites without reference to the degree of conviction.

Letter V

Complaint of irresolution — Nature of unstable resolutions — Peculiarity of situation— The folly of speculating on the expected change — Vain fancies — (t God will not pardon me." — "I do not see how the promises can be fulfilled in myself"— -The sufficiency of pardon— Advice.

CONTENTS. XXIX

Letter VI

Our propension to extremes — Unpardonable sin — Explanation of passages relating to it — An example of the danger of error on this subject.

Letter VII

The disposition to discouragement — Discouraging texts in the Bible — An explanation of Luke, xiii. 24 — Prov. i. 28 — Hebrew, xii. 17 — Hosea, iv. 17.

Letter VIII

Perplexity in reading the word of God — Complaint of the want of personal application — Natural aversion to the Bible — Mistaken expectations — An impious practice — Failure arising from listjessness in reading — Want of consideration — Forgetting that God is the author — Looking for an extraneous something — How the Spirit imparts the right meaning — Duty of becoming familiar with the plan of salvation —Caution relative to reading other books — Concluding advice.

Letter IX

The folly of spending time in attempting to reconcile difficult passages — The duty of diligence in examining the proper application of the truth — The question, " what part of the Bible shall I read?" — Quotations — Application of a Parable — A personal appeal to Christ directed in Scripture — Conclusion.

Letter X

On right desires — The Young Man in the Gospel— A complaint of the Inquirer — One of the marks of right C2

XXX CONTENTS.

desires— A misinterpretation of Romans, ix. 3 — Right desires not a mere fear of Hell — The breathings of an awakened sinner — Reformation of life connected with sincerity — And the spirit of forgiveness on our part — Right desires not fitful — Trials — Advice,

LETTER XL

Difficulties in prayer — Causes — Mistake respecting the nature of prayer — Confusion in the mind of the Inquirer — False anticipations in prayer — Perplexity from an ignorance of the person addressed — Directions in prayer — The duty of describing personal trials — Habit of attention — Remedy for wandering thoughts — Application of special promises — Scriptural examples — Seasons for prayer — Ejaculatory desires — Forms — Does God " ever withhold his Grace, for a season, to try the sinner?" — Answered.

Letter XII

A common error adverted to again— An evil from Theological distinctions — Different kinds of repentance — The Scriptural distinction — Sorrow does not constitute repentance — The perversion of legal sorrow to a false hope — Examples — The error reproved in Scripture — Its cause — Causes leading to repentance — The process — Evangelical sorrow follows — Difference between counterfeit and true repentance — Conclusion.

Letter XIII

An Inquirer reviewing his past cares — A remarkable period in his life — The simplicity of faith — A temptation

CONTENTS. XXXI

to hold back from Christ — Natural incredulousness— - The afflicted Father's application to Christ — The case -applied to the Inquirer — The working's of the Inquirer's mind — His surrender to Christ — The change — Difference in different cases — The act in which relief most commonly arrives — Not always the same- Valedictory.

LETTERS

TO AN

ANXIOUS INQUIRER.

Letter I

Feelings of privacy commonly accompanying serious impressions— The critical state of an awakened Sinner— An instance of abandoned convictions — Advice.

How shall we account for that secrecy of feeling which you have found it so difficult to infringe, and which is so common to the experience of awakened sinners? That delicacy which guards the threshold of religion, and restricts the conversation of intimate friends to its exterior and general matters ? Shall we attribute it to a greater degree of refinement, or to a nicer sense of decorum? But it is as prevalent among the ruder, as among the more polished classes of society. Shall we ascribe it to an unwillingness to obtrude our griefs upon the sympathy of friends ? This would be an apology in which fact would not sustain us; for he to whom we unbosom our sorrow, is supposed to take a deep and unaffected interest in our spiritual welfare. And, moreover, this privacy is discoverable in the very man, who, instead of comprehending the sentiment of a Christian poet, that

"with the soul who ever felt the sting

"Of sorrow, sorrow is a sacred thing,"

would, at other times, drag you rudely through all the minutiae of his private woes. Nor is a want of confidence the cause of this restraint — for every other feeling may be imparted with freedom. Nor can it be wholly, if at all, owing to the confessed etiquette of irreligious society, which proscribes the subject of evangelical truth, much as a law of Athens prohibited the name of Death: Nor to that disgust which arises from a familiar and ill-timed use of scriptural terms: Nor to any thing else which could furnish an excuse, while it implies a compliment to our refinement, our taste, or understanding.

These questions and answers, if they serve no other purpose, may at least lead you- to the conclusion that you are not alone: numberless other voices utter the same complaint; and the subject, in its different shapes, has given rise to a thousand discussions; and has led to a variety of artificial rules of Christian conduct. Professors of religion who sincerely desire to promote the weal of their friends, have frequently proposed such queries as the following: — How shall I express my concern for one who is prepared at all times to interrupt me, by saying — " this, is a private matter between God and myself;" and who feels that he has reason for offence in a rude invasion of his tranquillity? How shall I introduce the subject of religion in a circle where it may be received with symptoms of impatience, or with that listless silence which hints its dismission? And after all that can be said, there is an art in the successful introduction of a religious topic, which is less easily attained than zeal — a happy tact, which even the profane often admire, but which requires qualities that long experience and fervent piety may not be able to confer.

But this delicacy of feeling — we will give it its current title, although it belongs to that class of things which have wrong names, and which are embraced in the forbidden practice of calling evil good and good evil — this delicacy of feeling, which, while it forbids the obtrusion of religious views, lest they create offence, and shuts the lips of the awakened sinner, is not a rare ingredient in the characters of many who entertain a trust that they have been the subjects of saving grace. There are those who have sustained a long and tedious struggle in their hearts — who, possessing a faint hope that they have passed from death unto life, relinquish the ordinary pleasures of the world, and engage in all the duties which are fulfilled by a lukewarm professor of religion — except the duty of profession itself — and who, while they lead a cheerless life, seem not to consider that what they deem an apology for neglect, is the very sin which keeps them suspended between heaven and earth, unfit fop the enjoyment of either.

And even after a public profession of faith has been made, evils are multiplied from the same cause: Not only when the Christian and the Worldling, in their ordinary interviews, consider the topic of religion forbidden ground to both, but in the discharge of many of those obligations which both reason and revelation enjoin. A valued friend once told me, that one of the most painful trials he had ever known, was in founding the domestic altar. On other matters he could speak freely; and private devotion occupied a due proportion of his time. But the conflict in his bosom was long and severe before he could persuade himself to become " the minister to his family." And can it be doubted that thousands of the rising generation retire unblessed from the restraint of parental prayer ? Or can it be doubted that this single neglect has checked the influence of many a parental example, which might have led the offspring to serious thought, if not to salvation?

There is another modification of this delicacy, which attaches suspicion to it in all its forms; social intimacy is often seriously injurious to that Christian fellowship on which the prosperity, if not the life, of personal piety depends. This may seem a singular position, and it would be so but for the very matter now before us. The truth is one of every day's observation, that husbands and wives often converse more freely on the experimental points of piety, with those who are comparatively strangers, than with each other. The bond which nature has formed between relatives,

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6 LETTERS TO Atf

and which time has riveted, appears too frequently loosened, when we find that incongruous reluctance to converse together on matters of piety; and when we have seen even children more ready to open their minds on this subject, to friends less nearly allied, than to the parent who has watched over them with prayerful solicitude. How is all this? Is there something defective in Christianity itself? or something that changes the nature of our mutual relations? Not at all. There may be different causes which produce different degrees of influence towards these effects, but still the mover of all this mischief is that most secret of agents — pride. There is no need of defining, no need of explaining the operation of this principle; and it is wholly useless to quarrel with terms. Let him who speaks of this delicacy, and continues to foster it, examine the first feelings to which it gives rise: let him compare these feelings together, and note well their selfishness; and see if it be possible to escape our conclusion. Yes, pride has its retired habits as well as modesty, its seemly aspect, and its very diffidence of manner. And it is hence, that among the children of God, the consciousness that their mutual infirmities are known to each other, and the corresponding fear that they might generate a distrust of their sincerity, very often stand in the way of a fulfilment of that prophecy which the latter days shall complete — "then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another."

You have sometimes seen the mind which nature had rendered ingenuous and frank, drooping under cherished woes — bending beneath a weight it strove to conceal— mingling bitterness with domestic peace, and discontent with outward prosperity — until the hand that was about to set the spirit free from its tabernacle, laid bare to the sight the wounds that festered within; and the nearing terrors of a death-hour broke the spell of restraint — and for the first time, the sufferer could ask, " what shall 1 do to be saved ?"

Or where the mind dared not brood over its disquietudes, and was equally unwilling to divulge them, how often have religious impressions which seemed nigh to some good hope, left place to a spurious peace, which continued unbroken through life!

"But there are moments/' — you say, — 66 when you are not only anxious to hear all that can be said on this subject, but almost willing to inquire of those around you." A more intense feeling of danger would certainly produce this effect. Even pride gives way in a season of peril. A greater passion usurps the seat of a lesser, when the two can not reign together. And you have, perhaps, witnessed in another, that hardly-reprqssed anxiety of manner, which solicited an inquiry into its cause — that distant hinting at a subject there was not quite boldness enough to introduce; and you saw, plainly, the cause of all this, through the miserable efforts to conceal it. But because that hint was not taken, and that exposed anxiety was not reached by a single question, • — and the theme of religion was still kept back — the half awakened inquirer suppressed a murmur, at the disappointment, and, in the petulance of a mortified child, gave up the whole matter, with the self-consoling thought — " It is partly the fault of others, if I perish." Here is pride acted out. And puerile as it may appear, it is a case of no uncommon occurrence. I am persuaded that if the inquirer will take pains to examine the ground he is treading, he will find a scriptural admonition meeting him at every step, and fitting the very disposition of mind which he then entertains.

And it were well if, in the outset, he pondered the meaning of the Saviour's admonition — an admonition which strikes at a latent, but dangerous principle of the heart — "whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels."

It imports nothing to the purpose to say, that we would be willing to endure any public dishonour for the sake of Jesus Christ. There is a kind of heroism in this, which has its attractions. And it is more than possible that the very man who would give his body to be burned, rather than abjure Christianity, may be kept back far from salvation, by the petty consideration of shame: While it is equally certain, that thousands who now retire from the blessings of the Gospel, — dreading the first disclosure of their feelings, — would be willing to enter, if they could, into a confidential contract, with the Redeemer.

How important it is, my dear friend, to begin aright in any undertaking! And no where is it as much so as in the great concerns of the soul. An error here will follow us on; and

may effectually preclude all discovery of the d2 truth. There is an ingenuousness and candour, for which the present state of your mind is well prepared, and the exercise of which will always furnish some relief. I have often thought there was something touching in your remark on an interview with W. — "his appearance at that moment, was like that of the angel to Hagar, as she sat in the wilderness mourning over her dying hope." And 1 do admit that at such a season as this, we have our personal preferences of those to whom w T e w T ould present the burden of our minds. Where there is good sense and piety in the object of our choice, the interview may be blessed. And 1 see no necessary reason, as others profess to do, w r hy such a choice should produce an undue leaning on human means: For we entertain, with little apprehension, our preferences in the ministrations of the Word: And we are certainly bound to adopt those measures which most directly reach our wants; as well as to seek those instructions, which most immediately meet the circumstances of our particular cases.

And yet, after all, it is rather a principle than & practice, to which I would direct your attention. Whether we express our difficulties to another, or adopt only those more direct means which are prescribed in the Word of God, is of secondary importance in many cases, judicious as the former may be, in most instances. But it is of primary importance to know whether we are attempting to commence this great concern, with a subdued temper, or with fostered feelings of pride.

It is a question which has more than once occurred to me, when I have reflected on your inquiries, whether 1 shall congratulate my friend on his present state of mind, or how far I should sympathize with him in this new species of sorrow ? But how could I do either, alone ? This is a most critical era in his life. It may look forward to the enjoyment of Heaven; or it may produce an issue as positive on the side of despair. Let us pause together for one moment and examine the ground on which you are standing.

The prejudices which you once carefully guarded, and which seemed as a retreat when conscience approached too near — how they have dwindled away ! The objections to evangelical truth, which possessed shape and magnitude, with the very appearance of solidity, have vanished as the light grew brighter around you. Difficulties which you thought deserving of serious investigation; and petty objections, which furnished an excuse for indifference to the whole matter of salvation — have receded without awaiting your scrutiny. Whence all this? It was no mere deduction of reason. You have arrived at a conclusion more irresistible, and by a process more rapid, than that of argument. This is none other than the work of the Spirit, whatever its end may be. You are surrounded by a new and powerful exhibition of divine truth. You look far enough, perhaps, into the doctrines of the gospel, to see that they contain an energy, and a fullness of meaning, of which you thought little before. You discover more nearly, the worth of the Christian's hope. You feel, in some measure, as if awakening from a dream, to a sense of want and danger. How will you account for all this? "It is God that worketh in you." You can look back with some surprise on the past; while you compare it with your present sense of conviction. The thoughtlessness of your associates darkens your prospect by the contrast it furnishes: and you are half disposed to say,

I see a hand you can not see : I hear a voice you can not hear.

There are moments, too, when you feel isolated in the midst of the world; and all its joys, and its cares, are merged in the vast consideration of your eternal fate; and your sensations seem as the shadow of Eternity thrown over your soul.

Now, whatever the degree of your feelings, all this is an operation of divine power; and — let me add — an effort of divine grace. But still it presents only part of the scene in which an awakened soul is the active or passive object. There is much which that soul does not see; and much of which it may seldom think. Angels, who minister to heirs of salvation, rejoice in the conversion of the sinner. Are angels, then, listless spectators of a scene whose result may gladden Heaven ? Hell never loses a victim without a malignant effort to retain it. And are these lost spirits idle in such an hour? Do not imagine that these are the mere suggestions of fancy. The value of an immortal soul is not too small to deserve this interest.

Nor is this all. There are two other considerations which attach importance to this state of mind, beyond that of any former period of life. The light which shines so clearly from the Law and the Gospel, not only aggravates the guilt of every sin committed in it, but renders every hour's delay more criminal in the sight of God. This is an awful truth, however little it may have occupied our thoughts. The sins of other hours, their neglects and follies, are committed under less restraint, and with less compunctions of conscience. And sad as is the record they bear against us, they are comparatively small. But when the Spirit of God has flung his brightness around duty and sin, and rendered them both unequivocal in our sight — when we are feelingly sensible that we are arrested in a career of danger — even the unchecked sin of thought has a power to blind the understanding, and to sear the conscience, beyond the act of iniquity, on another occasion.

The other consideration is this: Every trifle in your circumstances is likely to produce some positive effect upon your condition as an Inquirer. At other times, the influence of little events may reach but a little way. But at this period, when the heart receives an impression from every thing that can reach it — when tendencies of good or evil supplant each other so easily — it is not impossible that the eternal doom of the soul may be suspended by an apparently negative matter.

There are political moments when the fate of an empire hangs on a trifle, and the welfare of its millions is to be secured or lost. It is so, too, in the struggle of an awakened sinner; when hope may be won or abandoned, even without the interference of a ruling passion. Here, then, 1 can not omit saying, that there is no idea more erroneous than that which is sometimes held by the friends of one who has been aroused to a sense of danger, and led to some seriousness of thought: I mean the idea that all is now well; that the convicted is "in a good way:" as if piety had already commenced its reign in the bosom, or a credible assurance were given of its future influence.

And are all these things really so? Are you singled out from the rest of the world, and placed on a spot which is soon to witness a change of infinite magnitude, in your present and future being? Yes; and your own mind meets these realities as they approach. There are hours when you feel as if every thing depended upon an immediate decision: when the conflict is plainly perceptible within you. And you sometimes ask yourself, " what will the end be ?" You testify to the truth of all this. You are to yourself a witness of the doubts, fears, hopes, and painful suspense, which agitate the bosom of one whose heart is contending with the Spirit of God. Other events may be of little value, even if they completely change your temporal condition. But all that is transpiring in this period of your history, will possess a mighty influence, and may give an unalterable tone to your future character.

I admit that there is something fearful in the reflection, that so much may depend upon matters, which, at other times, produce a less alarming influence: or that there should be a critical period of life, in which our future destiny is likely to be fixed : or that a present unhappy decision may possibly be final. But it is not indispensably necessary to appeal to any special doctrine of Scripture, in order to substantiate this truth. Every one who is acquainted with the human mind under the convictions of conscience, must have noticed the increased insensibility which succeeds a fruitless struggle; and the loss of moral power, after a violation of serious resolves. But this insensibility, and this loss, increase in a melancholy ratio, in the once-awakened sinner, who returns to the world.

Nor is it an extraordinary case, when we find a man whose mind has been the field of this conflict, utterly unsusceptible of serious thought, under the most alarming providences: Or even passing into the extreme of bitter practical hostility, against all that is evangelical. And it is even possible for him, in the midst of all this, to review his steps, and to remember the very goal at which present help and hope were abandoned together.

Such an instance occurs to my thoughts this moment; and I shall do you no wrong if I frequently attempt to illustrate my remarks by examples taken from life. The one to which I now refer, was that of an acquaintance, in whom a disposition naturally volatile, and feelings always impetuous, rendered the struggle more visible and marked. His unrepressed anxiety, and his impassioned resolutions, were known to his friends around him, and they awakened a general solicitude in his favour. It was impossible to be indifferent to the spectacle. Hopes and fears occupied the hearts of a prayerful circle. Expectations were raised and baffled, again and again. There was something fright-

E ful in the operations of his mind, and in the earnestness of his manner. It almost reminded us of what we should have fancied in the days of evil-possession. But, even from this, we gathered some encouragement, to hope that this change would be as marked as his convictions. The result appeared at last: And it might have been foretold by the workings of wavering thought, as if the light of divine truth, that had shone so full, was now dimly flickering. The world laid a less disputed claim to his affections than ever. The voice of prayer was hushed: And the concern of many gave way to indifference.

Let me digress for a moment to say — this is all w T e usually know of such a case. In sight of the world he would stand just where he was before. Pious friends would sigh and hope for the best hereafter. But, in the meanwhile, a work is going on in his own bosom, part of which he may not understand; while another part plainly communicates a secret ominous of the future: for there is ever something, in this condition of the once-awakened sinner, which tells a foreboding tale. That brief and thoughtless prayer, contrasted with the aroused energies, w r hich so lately directed every petition to the throne of grace — that satisfaction when it is over, betokening the reluctance of the offering, and contrasted, in its turn, with the cry into which the whole soul had once been infused, " God have mercy on me a sinner!" — that change of meaning and of character, which appears in the services of the sanctuary — that — what shall I call it? — that conscious and renewed deadness to all that is sacred or spiritual — that feeling of one*s own weight again, on returning to the world, until the world has taken part of the burden on itself — that halfdesperate, half-hopeful self-communion with the soul — or that u dash of the die," which indicates a spirit hazarding all, in almost conscious infatuation — no matter what the sensations or signs may be, there is an obvious sense of a dealing between God and himself, in the breast of the apostate Inquirer, on his first return to the world. And although he take his rank among those around him, only as one of the impenitent of the earth, he is not insensible, himself, that his past experience has rendered his situation peculiar, and that it is possible to call a testimony against him, whenever events may awaken his conscience from its slumbers. In the instance now before me, I question whether the light of conviction ever went out altogether. There was a witness within his own bosom which continued to prophecy, although it was clothed in sackcloth. But his cavils were frequent and many, whenever evangelical truth was named: and they were always tempered with that acrimony of expression, which displays the unsatisfied condition of the utterer; and which reminds us of the desperate state of a fallen combatant, who flings the dust at his antagonist, in the vexation of his spirit, before he bites it in the agonies of death.

The subject of these remarks would converse, with all the eagerness of one who held an interest in the prosperity of the kingdom of darkness, — on the uncharitableness of Christians, on the discrepancy of sects — or on the unhallowed example of professors of religion. How wide a field! And he seemed to have left behind him all his personal cares, whenever he traversed it. But why should I detail? — A voice arrested the caviller. It was not that which confounded Saul on his way to the Christians of Damascus. It was that of Death; death, too, at a juncture in his temporal affairs. This, however, was of least importance. The crisis of an eternal fate he considered as past. But what of that ?— Survivors put the best construction on the remorse of the deceased. Besides — there is a natural disposition to identify remorse and evangelical repentance. And there is something revolting to the minds of most of us, in scrutinizing evidences on the bed of suffering. We are prone to reflect on what Almighty power can do, in an hour of extremity; and we willingly take the possibility for a hope. Who, then, would not have looked for the best? It was what he called " these illusions," which he endeavoured to dispel. "X have always believed," said he, " that there was a horrible thought in dating the possible departure of the spirit of God from the soul. We shudder at the idea of desertion, without reflecting on its particulars. But it is tolerable while wrapt in the mystery of ignorance — ignorance of its manner, its cause, and its time. And yet, at this very hour, 1 can look back to the turning point of my hopes. I can remember my struggles under conviction. 1 can recall the weariness of effort — the distaste — the compunctions, which preceded the first bold act of worldliness; and which, in their departure, declared the issue decisive. In all the confusion of my thoughts here is an