"Will you set agoing your Wednesday meeting again, immediately?
"Farewell, dear A. 'Oh man, greatly beloved, fear not; peace be to thee; be strong; yea, be strong.' Yours ever," etc.
To Mr. Burns he thus expresses himself on December 19: "My dear Brother,—I shall never be able to thank you for all your labors among the precious souls committed to me; and what is worse, I can never thank God fully for his kindness and grace, which every day appear to me more remarkable. He has answered prayer to me in all that has happened, in a way which I have never told any one." Again, on the 31st: "Stay where you are, dear brother, as long as the Lord has any work for you to do.[[16]] If I know my own heart, its only desire is that Christ may be glorified, by souls flocking to Him, and abiding in Him, and reflecting his image; and whether it be in Perth or Dundee, should signify little to us. You know I told you my mind plainly, that I thought the Lord had so blessed you in Dundee, that you were called to a fuller and deeper work there; but if the Lord accompanies you to other places, I have nothing to object. The Lord strengthened my body and soul last Sabbath, and my spirit also was glad. The people were much alive in the Lord's service. But oh! dear brother, the most are Christless still. The rich are almost untroubled."
His evidence on this subject is given fully in his answers to the queries put by a Committee of the Aberdeen Presbytery; and in a note to a friend, he incidentally mentions a pleasing result of this wide-spread awakening: "I find many souls saved under my own ministry, whom I never knew of before. They are not afraid to come out now, it has become so common a thing to be concerned about the soul." At that time, also, many came from a distance; one came from the north, who had been a year in deep distress of soul, to seek Christ in Dundee.
In his brief diary he records, on December 3, that twenty anxious souls had that night been conversing with him; "many of them very deeply interesting." He occasionally fixed an evening for the purpose of meeting with those who were awakened; and in one of his note-books there are at least four hundred visits recorded, made to him by inquiring souls, in the course of that and the following years. He observed, that those who had been believers formerly had got their hearts enlarged, and were greatly established; and some seemed able to feed upon the truth in a new manner,—as when one related to him how there had for some time appeared a glory in the reading of the word in public, quite different from reading it alone.
At the same time he saw backslidings, both among those whom believers had considered really converted, and among those who had been deeply convicted, though never reckoned among the really saved. He notes in his book: "Called to see ——. Poor lad, he seems to have gone back from Christ, led away by evil company. And yet I felt sure of him at one time. What blind creatures ministers are! man looketh at the outward appearance." One morning he was visited by one of his flock, proposing "a concert for prayer on the following Monday, in behalf of those who had fallen back, that God's Spirit might re-awaken them,"—so observant were the believers as well as their pastor of declensions. Among those who were awakened, but never truly converted, he mentions one case. "Jan. 9, 1840.—Met with the case of one who had been frightened during the late work, so that her bodily health was injured. She seems to have no care now about her soul. It has only filled her mouth with evil-speaking."
That many, who promised fair, drew back and walked no more with Jesus, is true. Out of about 800 souls who, during the months of the Revival, conversed with different ministers in apparent anxiety, no wonder surely if many proved to have been impressed only for a time. President Edwards considered it likely that, in such cases, the proportion of real conversions might resemble the proportion of blossoms in spring, and fruit in autumn. Nor can anything be more unreasonable than to doubt the truth of all, because of the deceit of some. The world itself does not so act in judging of its own. The world reckons upon the possibility of being mistaken in many cases, and yet does not cease to believe that there is honesty and truth to be found. One of themselves, a poet of their own, has said with no less justice than beauty—
"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
And though foul things put on the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so."
But, above all, we have the authority of the word of God, declaring that such backslidings are the very tests of the true church: "For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you," I Cor. 11:19. It is not, however, meant that any who had really believed went back to perdition. On the contrary, it is the creed of every sound evangelical church, that those who do go back to perdition were persons who never really believed in Jesus. Their eyes may have been opened to see the dread realities of sin and of the wrath to come; but if they saw not righteousness for their guilty souls in the Saviour, there is nothing in all Scripture to make us expect that they will continue awake. "Awake, them that sleepest, and Christ will give thee light," is the call—inviting sinners to a point far beyond mere conviction. One who, for a whole year, went back to folly, said: "'Your sermon on the corruption of the heart made me despair, and so I gave myself up to my old ways—attending dances, learning songs," etc. A knowledge of our guilt, and a sense of danger, will not of themselves keep us from falling; nay, these, if alone, may (as in the above case) thrust us down the slippery places. We are truly secure only when our eye is on Jesus, and our hand locked in his hand. So that the history of backslidings, instead of leading us to doubt the reality of grace in believers, will only be found to teach us two great lessons, viz. the vast importance of pressing immediate salvation on awakened souls, and the reasonableness of standing in doubt of all, however deep their convictions, who have not truly fled to the hope set before them.
There was another ground of prejudice against the whole work, arising from the circumstance that the Lord had employed in it young men not long engaged in the work of the ministry, rather than the fathers in Israel. But herein it was that sovereign grace shone forth the more conspicuously. Do such objectors suppose that God ever intends the honor of man in a work of Revival? Is it not the honor of his own name that He seeks? Had it been his wish to give the glory to man at all, then indeed it might have been asked, "Why does He pass by the older pastors, and call for the inexperienced youth?" But when sovereign grace was coming to bless a region in the way that would redound most to the glory of the Lord, can we conceive a wiser plan than to use the sling of David in bringing down the Philistine? If, however, there be some whose prejudice is from the root of envy, let such hear the remonstrance of Richard Baxter to the jealous ministers of his day. "What! malign Christ in gifts for which He should have the glory, and all because they seem to hinder our glory! Does not every man owe thanks to God for his brethren's gifts, not only as having himself part in them, as the foot has the benefit of the guidance of the eye, but also because his own ends may be attained by his brethren's gifts as well as by his own?... A fearful thing that any man, that hath the least of the fear of God, should so envy at God's gifts, that he would rather his carnal hearers were unconverted, and the drowsy not awakened, than that it should be done by another who may be preferred before them."[[17]]