It was not in my nature to be driven back easily from any path I had entered on; and here the Lord wrought on me to persevere resolutely. I began to examine myself, in order to discover why I was afraid; and taking as my rule the ten commandments, I found myself sadly deficient on some points. The tenth affected me as it never had done before. "I had not known lust," because I had not understood the law when it said, "Thou shalt not covet." A casual glance at the declaration of St. James, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," alarmed me exceedingly; and on a sudden it occurred to me that not only the ten commandments, but all the precepts of the New Testament, were binding on a Christian; and I trembled more than ever.
What was to be done? To reform myself, certainly, and become obedient to the whole law. Accordingly I went to work, transcribed all the commands that I felt myself most in the habit of neglecting, and pinned up a dozen or two texts around my room. It required no small effort to enter this apartment and walk round it, reading my mementos. That active schoolmaster, the law, had got me fairly under his rod, and dreadful were the writhings of the convicted culprit, I soon, however, took down my texts, fearing lest some one else might see them, and not knowing they were for myself, be exasperated. I then made a little hook, wrote down a list of offences, and commenced making a dot over against each, whenever I detected myself in the commission of one. I had become very watchful over my thoughts, and was honest in recording all evil; so my book became a mass of black dots; and the reflection that occurred to me of omissions being sins too, completed the panic of my mind. I flung away my book into the fire, and myself into an abyss of gloomy despair.
How long this miserable state of mind lasted, I do not exactly remember; I think about two weeks. I could not pray. I dared not read the Bible, it bore so very hard upon me. Outwardly, I was calm and even cheerful, but within reigned the very blackness of darkness. Death, with which I had so often sported, appeared in my eyes so terrible, that the slightest feeling of illness filled my soul with dismay. I saw no way of escape: I had God's perfect law before my eyes, and a full conviction of my own past sinfulness and present helplessness, leaving me wholly without hope. Hitherto I had never known a day's illness for years; one of God's rich mercies to me consisted in uninterrupted health, and a wonderful freedom from all nervous affections. I knew almost as little of the sensation of a headache as I did of that of tight-lacing; and now a violent cold, with sore throat, aggravated into fever by the state of my mind, completely prostrated me. I laid myself down on the sofa one morning and waited to see how my earthly miseries would terminate; too well knowing what must follow the close of a sinner's life.
I had not lain long, when a neighbor hearing I was ill, sent me some books just received from Dublin, as a loan, hoping I might find some amusement in them. Listlessly, wretchedly, mechanically, I opened one; it was the memoir of a departed son, written by his father. I read a page describing the approach of death, and was arrested by the youth's expressions of self-condemnation, his humble acknowledgment of having deserved at the Lord's hand nothing but eternal death. "Ah, poor fellow," said I, "he was like me. How dreadful his end must have been; I will see what he said at last, when on the very brink of the bottomless pit." I resumed the book, and found him in continuation glorifying God that though he was so guilty and so vile, there was ONE able to save to the uttermost, who had borne his sins, satisfied divine justice for him, opened the gates of heaven, and now waited to receive his ransomed soul.
The book dropped from my hands. "O, what is this? This is what I want: this would save me. Who did this for him? Jesus Christ, certainly; and it must be written in the New Testament." I tried to jump up and reach my Bible, but was overpowered by the emotion of my mind. I clasped my hands over my eyes, and then the blessed effects of having even a literal knowledge of scripture were apparent. Memory brought before me, as the Holy Spirit directed it, not here and there a detached text, but whole chapters, as they had long been committed to its safe but hitherto unprofitable keeping. The veil was removed from my heart, and Jesus Christ, as the Alpha and Omega, the sum and substance of every thing, shone out upon me just as he is set forth in the everlasting gospel. It was the same as if I had been reading, because I knew it so well by rote, only much more rapid, as thought always is. In this there was nothing uncommon; but in the opening of the understanding, that I might UNDERSTAND the scriptures, was the mighty miracle of grace and truth. There I lay, still as death, my hands still folded over nay eyes, my very soul basking in the pure, calm, holy light, that streamed into it through the appointed channel of God's word. Rapture was not what I felt; excitement, enthusiasm, agitation, there was none. I was like a person long enclosed in a dark dungeon, the walls of which had now fallen down, and I looked round on a sunny landscape of calm and glorious beauty. I well remember that the Lord Jesus, in the character of a shepherd, of a star, and above all, as the pearl of great price, seemed revealed to me most beautifully: that he could save every body I at once saw; that he would save me, never even took the form of a question. Those who have received the gospel by man's preaching may doubt and cavil; I took it simply from the Bible, in the words that God's wisdom teacheth, and thus I argued: "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: I am a sinner; I want to be saved: he will save me." There is no presumption in taking God at his word: not to do so is very impertinent: I did it, and I was happy.
After some time I rose from the sofa, and walked about. My feelings were delicious. I had found HIM of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write; I had found the very Paschal Lamb whose blood would be my safeguard from the destroying angel. Oh, how delicious was that particular thought to me. It was one of the first that occurred, and I laughed with gladness. Indeed my feeling was very joyous, and I only wanted somebody to tell it to. I had two servants, one a young woman, the other a little girl, both papists, both loving me with Irish warmth. They were delighted to see me so well and happy on a sudden; and in the evening I bade them come to my room, for I was going to read a beautiful book, and would read it aloud. I began the gospel of St. Matthew, and read nine chapters to them, their wonder and delight increasing my joy. Whenever I proposed leaving off, they begged for more; and only for my poor throat, I think we should have gone on till day. I prayed with them, and what a night's rest I had! Sleep so sweet, a waking so happy, and a joy so unclouded through the day, what but the gospel could bestow? Few, very few, have been so left alone as I was with the infallible teaching of God the Holy Ghost by means of the written word, for many weeks, and so to get a thorough knowledge of the great doctrines of salvation, unclouded by man's vain wisdom. I knew not that in the world there were any who had made the same discovery with myself. Of all schemes of doctrine I was wholly ignorant, and the only system of theology open to me was God's own. All the faculties of my mind were roused and brightened for the work. I prayed, without ceasing, for divine instruction; and took, without cavilling, what was vouchsafed. On this subject I must enter more largely, for it is one of immense importance.
LETTER VI.
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS.
I am standing before you now in the character of one who, having been brought under conviction of sin into utter self-despair, had found in Christ Jesus a refuge from the storm of God's anger. I felt myself safe in him; but as the revelation which God had made to man was not confined to the sole point of a satisfaction for the sins of men, I felt it my bounden duty to search for all that the Most High had seen good to acquaint his people with. At the same time I found myself a member of a church calling itself Christian; but I too had called myself a Christian, while as yet wholly ignorant of Christ, therefore I could not depend upon a name. I knew that there were other churches, each putting in a claim to a higher and purer standard than its neighbors, and it behooved me to know which of them all was in the right, I had no books of a religious character—not one; no clergyman among my acquaintance, no means of inquiry, save as regarded my own church, whose Liturgy and Articles lay before me. I resolved to bring them first to the test of scripture, and if they failed, to look out for a better.
How I commenced the work and pursued it, I need not state. I tried every thing, as well as I could, by the Bible; and my satisfaction was great to find the purest, clearest strain of evangelical truth breathing through the book which I had used all my life long, as I did the Bible, without entering into its real meaning. How I could possibly escape seeing the doctrines of faith, regeneration, and the rest of God's revelation in them both, was strange to me; but I understood that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, and mourned over the darkness that I supposed universal.