1.A 07. LETTER VII

LETTER VII.

Deep interest in the subject Union of those who enjoy perfect love Their holy fellowship Prayer for steadfastness Convinced of its necessity Piercing sense of inbred sin How produced This an evidence of the necessity of sanctification Not a mere opinion, but a heart-felt sense of its necessity Produces self-abhorrence The object of writing. MY DEAR M : The kind Christian spirit you have exemplified, since my acquaintance with you, has endeared you to my heart, and created an interest in your welfare, temporal and spiritual, present and future, of an indescribable character; and this has been heightened by every interview I have had the pleasure of having with you. And as you profess, and, I have no doubt, enjoy, the unspeakable blessing of " perfect love," and have frequently requested ray views on that subject, I have concluded to examine it as thoroughly as may be, that you, and others similarly situated, should any thing I can say be of any use, may be benefited by my remarks.

Among those who are possessed of this jewel of the Gospel, this " pearl of great price," for so it may be termed, by way of eminence there exists a union of spirit, a con geniality of heart, an interlocking of the affections, which binds them together " in the bundle of life," creating a sameness of feeling, views, and purposes, which characterize them as the holy followers of Him who prayed that they may be " made perfect in one." And I feel this with you in a very peculiar manner, so much so that I am constrained thus to avow it, though it may subject me to the charge of weakness, by those who do not understand the nature and effects of Divine love, or perhaps by others to vanity, in supposing myself entitled to a friendship of so hallowed a character a friendship with one so entirely devoted to God. Be it so. I will not disguise the truth for fear of giving offence to the carnal-minded, by saying that there exists between us, as well as between all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, with a perfect heart and willing mind, an inexplicable union of spirit, which remains the same, whether present or absent; which could be cemented only by having the " love of God spread abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost," and which is kept up by a reciprocal flow of that love which results from the communion of saints of that fellowship of which St. John speaks, when he says, " If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have FELLOW SHIP ONE WITH ANOTHER, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

Let then the world scoff, if it will, and the mere formal professor of religion ridicule this sacred fellowship; but let you and I, and all who profess the inestimable blessing of " perfect love," exemplify the purity of its source, the delicate and refined nature of its effects upon the heart and affections, the innocence with which its possessors have intercourse one with another, by " doing righteousness, even as he is righteous." That you, my dear M., may steadily persevere in the path of holiness, in which the Lord has placed your feet, is my most fervent prayer; and I can assure you that it is no small encouragement to me to hear you say that you delight to remember me at the throne of your heavenly Father; but it is still a great er encouragement to us all to know that our great High Priest " ever LIVETH to make intercession for us." But how were you brought into the possession of this blessing? In the first place, you were deeply convinced of inbred sin of heart- sin of the stirrings of anger when provoked, of pride when insulted, of impatience when crossed or disappointed, and a thousand name less evils which you felt at times, rankling in your heart, and which sometimes threatened to gain the dominion over you, though by constant watchfulness, prayer, and the exercise of faith in the Son of God, you obtained grace to enable you to resist their influence, and to prevent you from " being brought into bondage again." These evils you saw much more clearly than you did before you were justified, and, consequently, you had a more piercing and abiding sense of your native vileness than you ever had before. Not indeed because you were more vile, but merely because you saw yourself more clearly than you had done or could do before. And this piercing sense of your inward impurity was a certain evidence that the light of Divine truth was shining on your heart, revealing to your inmost soul all the latent evils of your nature.

Like the rays of the sun darting through the window, which reveal numberless motes that cannot be discovered elsewhere, not because there are more of these small particles there than there are in other parts of the room, but because the rays of the sun reveal them; this light of the Divine Spirit, shining into the windows of your heart, disclosed to your interior eye those numerous evils before alluded to, so piercingly indeed as to make you inwardly groan out, "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" This penetrating sense of your native impurity caused you to doubt, sometimes, whether you had ever been made a partaker of the pardoning love of God; but yet, on recurring to the happy moment when Jesus spoke in accents of love to your soul, and whispered to your heart, "Thy sins are for given thee," you could not question the reality of that act of Divine grace; and as you steadily persevered, according to the light you had, you did not lose the consciousness of pardon, even amidst the conflicts you underwent arising from that inward feeling of inbred sin. You were enabled, therefore, notwithstanding those " fightings without and fears within," to hold fast your confidence in God, your faith in Jesus Christ, and to retain an evidence of your acceptance "in the Beloved." This indeed you must have done, or you could not have been sanctified by the " blood of the everlasting covenant;" for in order to be sanctified, we must retain our justification, otherwise we backslide, and need to be reclaimed before we can be entirely renewed in the image of God.

Well, this consciousness of inward impurity was a plain conviction of the necessity of being inwardly "cleansed from all" this "unrighteousness " this internal pollution; for I have no faith in a mere ideal thing of sanctification, a mere floating notion of something that is pleasant, delightful, and pretty, very pleasing to the imagination, unaccompanied by a piercing sense of its absolute necessity in order for the purification of the heart from the contamination of sin. But the sanctification for which I plead, on Scriptural ground, presupposes a self-loathing, arising from a heart-felt conviction of the native impurity of the heart; and this conviction is as evident, as piercing, deep, and genuine, as was the conviction for actual sin before we were pardoned or justified; with this difference, the latter was accompanied with a consciousness of condemnation, arising from a sense of guilt for our actual sins; the former creating a sweet distress of soul unaccompanied with guilt, but attended with self-abhorrence, on account of the deep stains of sin which we saw and felt in the depths of the soul, and which convinced us of the absolute necessity of an inward, thorough cleansing to fit us for the holy service of God here, and for the enjoyment of heaven hereafter.

Whence, I ask, is the necessity of sanctification? Its necessity arises from our impurity. It implies an inward cleansing. A cleansing from what? From what! From impurity. Unless, therefore, we are thoroughly convinced of this "inward dire disease," we cannot feel the necessity of being cleansed.

I have dwelt the longer upon this, because I fear there are many that deceive themselves upon this point. They have heard much upon the subject of sanctification, that it is a state of holiness greatly to be desired to make one hap py, and have pictured to themselves an idea of its superlative excellence, and with a view to obtain it have, as they thought, consecrated themselves to God, and claimed the blessing, without feeling its necessity arising from a consciousness of that impurity of heart which I have endeavoured to depict. This will not do. We must seek it because we need it. We need it because we are unholy. We are unholy be cause we have sinned. We have sinned, and thereby contracted not only a load of actual guilt, but also much increased our inherent depravity, so that impurity has interwoven itself into every fibre of the soul. And when the character of God is revealed to us in all the holiness of His immaculate nature, by which we are led to contrast ourselves with Him, we view such an awful disparity between Him and ourselves, that we are constrained to cry out, " I abhor myself, and repent as in dust and ashes." This self-abhorrence arises, as I have before remarked and I wish to press ibis point, my dear M., upon your heart with all the weight I can bring to bear upon it, because I consider it of the first importance that it should be clearly understood and fully felt from the light of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ upon the believing soul, by which it is led to see itself "exceeding sinful." The same light that disclosed this sinfulness this impurity this inbred defilement, points, at the same time, to the " Fountain that was opened in the house of David for sin and uncleanness," and we hear the voice of God saying, Arise, come to the flowing fountain : and the heart replies, " I cannot wash my heart, But by believing thee, And waiting for thy blood t impart The spotless purity."

I shall endeavour to fortify these views from undisputed authority in my next. In the mean time, permit me to remark, to prevent any trembling soul that may read these lines from sinking down into despair, from a penetrating sense of its native vileness, that the blood of Jesus Christ is of sufficient efficacy to cleanse the foulest stains of sin. Yes, he may say, in the language of our inimitable poet, " There for me the Saviour stands; Shows his wounds, and spreads his hands :

God is love! I know, I feel; Jesus weeps, and loves me still."

I write not thus to prevent you, my dear M., from sinking in despair, for I know that you have experienced not only this consciousness of your native impurity, but a happy deliverance from it, and can say, as I have often heard you say, " Now I have found the ground wherein Sure my soul’s anchor may remain : The wounds of Jesus for my sin, Before the world’s foundation slain; Whose mercy shall unshaken stay, When heaven and earth are fled away." That your "soul’s anchor" may "remain" firmly fixed on that sure " foundation," is the earnest prayer, just now put up, of your affectionate friend.