LETTER DCCIX.
To the Honourable Lady T——.
London, Nov. 19, 1748.
Honoured Madam,
WHEN I was lately in Scotland, Col. G——ly wrote me word, that your Ladyship was pleased to desire my poor prayers. Before his writing, they had been put up to the throne of grace in behalf of your Ladyship very frequently; and I would then have written to your Ladyship, had I not feared it would have been making too free. Yesterday good Lady H——n informed me that your Ladyship was ill. Had I judged it proper, I would have waited upon your Ladyship this morning. But I was cautious of intruding. However, the regard I bear to your Ladyship, constrains me to inform your Ladyship, that my heart’s desire and prayer to God is, that this sickness may not be unto death, but to his glory, and the present and eternal good of your better part, your precious and immortal soul. This, no doubt, is the end of afflictions: God’s name and nature is Love. He cannot, therefore, chastise us for any other purpose, than that we may be made partakers of his holiness.—Every cross and disappointment, every degree of pain, brings this important call with it, “My son, my daughter, give me thy heart.” O that your Ladyship’s soul may echo back, “My heart, Lord Jesus, will I give.” O that from a feeling, spiritual, abiding sense of the vanity and emptiness of all created good, you may, in a holy resentment, cry out,
Be gone, vain world, my heart resign,
For I must be no longer thine:
A nobler, a diviner guest,
Now claims possession of my breast!
Then, and not till then, will your Ladyship’s mind be at unity with itself. Then, and not till then, will your Ladyship, upon truly rational principles, with chearfulness wait for the approach of death, and the coming of the Lord from heaven. It is faith in Jesus, a true and living faith in the Son of God, that can alone bring present, real peace, and lay a solid foundation for future and eternal comfort. I cannot wish your Ladyship any thing greater, any thing more noble, than a large share of this precious faith: and a large, yea a very large share, is the glorious Redeemer ready to give to all that sincerely ask for, and seek after it. He waits to be gracious. He giveth liberally; he upbraideth not. When, like Noah’s dove, we have been wandering about in a fruitless search after happiness, and have found no rest for the sole of our feet, he is ready to reach out his merciful hand, and receive us into his ark. This hand, honoured madam, is he reaching out to you. May you be constrained to give your heart entirely to him, and thereby enter into that rest which remains for the happy, though despised people of God. But whither am I going? I forget that your Ladyship is indisposed, and I almost a stranger to you. I will only make this apology: “The love of Jesus constrains me.” Hoping, therefore, your Ladyship will excuse the freedom I have here taken, I beg leave to subscribe myself, honoured madam,