"Now, my dear friend, I have done with what I
had to say on this head. I have had great fears of wounding, lest you should reckon me among Job's friends; but you call me mother, and it is required of a mother to be faithful. I now leave it with the Lord. We are delighted to find you girding up the loins of your mind and setting about active duty. Let us meet at a throne of grace, and look to the course the Lord marks out for us."
To Mrs. G—— Y——.
"MY DEAR MADAM — I have just parted with my dear afflicted friend Mrs. C——; she left it in charge to me, that I should write to you in the time of your affliction. Surely I would do any thing whatever that I thought might alleviate either her or your distress. But there are cases to which God alone can speak; afflictions which he alone can console. Such are those under which the sufferer is commanded to be 'still and know that he is God.' He never leaves his people in any case, but sometimes shuts them up from human aid. Their grief is too great to be consoled by human tongue or pen.
"Such I have experienced. I lost my only son; I neither know when nor where; and for any thing I know, in a state of rebellion against God. Here at my heart it lies still; who can speak to me of it? neither can I reason upon it. Aaron held his peace. Old Eli said, 'It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.' Samuel in his turn had his heart wrung by his ungodly son. David lamented over his beloved Absalom; but it availed him nothing. Job's sons and daughters were all cut off in one day; he himself lay in deep, sore bodily affliction; his friends sat seven days and seven nights without opening their
mouths, because they saw his affliction was very great; and if they spoke, it was to aggregate it; and when God himself spoke, he gave him no reason for his dealings, but charged him with folly and madness. 'Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproveth God, let him answer it.' Then he laid his hand on his mouth, confessed himself vile, and became dumb before God; abhorring himself, and repenting in dust and ashes, instead of the splendid catalogue of virtues enumerated in chapter 29, and complaints in chapter 10, which I make not the least doubt were true, as far as human virtue can reach; but if God charge even his angels with folly, shall man, corrupt, self-destroyed man, plead merit before God?
"But, my dear friend, I do not find in all God's Bible any thing requiring us to acquiesce in the final destruction of any, for whom we have prayed, pleaded, and committed to him; least of all, our offspring whom he has commanded us to train up for him. Children are God's heritage. I do not say he has given us any promise for the obstinately wicked; but when cut off, he only requires us to be still, to hold our peace. I do not think he takes hope from us. God has set limits to our faith for others; our faith must not rest in opposition to his threatenings. We must believe that the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all that forget God; but he hath set no bounds to his own mercy; in that glorious plan of redemption, by which he substitutes his own Son in the stead of sinners, he has made provision for the chief of sinners, and can now be just and consistent while he justifies the ungodly who believe in Jesus. Short was the
time between the thief's petition and the promise of salvation; nay, the petition was the earnest of it. The same was the case with the jailer; I think, too, the publican had the earnest in his petition. Now, instead of laboring to bring my mind to acquiesce in the condemnation of my child, on the supposition of its being for God's glory, I try to be still, as he has commanded: not to follow my child to the yet invisible world; but turning my eyes to that character which God has revealed of himself — to the plan of redemption — to the sovereignty of God in the execution of that plan — to his names of grace, 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin,' while he adds, 'and that will by no means clear the guilty;' I meet it with his own declaration, 'He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.' I read also that 'mercy rejoiceth against judgment,' and many other like scriptures, which, although I dare not ground a belief of his salvation on them, afford one ray of hope after another, that God may have made him a monument of mercy to the glory of his grace.
"Thus God himself consoles his own praying people, while man ought to be very cautious, if not silent, where the Scriptures are silent, as it respects the final state of another, whose heart we cannot know, nor what God may have wrought in it. God hath set bounds to our faith, which can nowhere find solid ground to fix upon but in his own written promise. Yet, as I said above, he has set no bounds to his own mercy, and he has made provision for its boundless
flow, as far as he shall please to extend it, through the atonement and merits of his own Son, 'who is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him,' Now, my dear friend, you have my ideas of our situation; if they be correct, I pray that our compassionate Father may comfort you by them; if otherwise, may he pardon what is amiss, and lead you, my dear friend C——, and myself, to such consolation as he himself will own as the work of his Spirit, and save us from the enemy and our own spirit.