Selected from: Letters of the Late John Love, DD (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1840), 284–286. This letter was previously published in The Master’s Trumpet, “Ten Letters of John Love”, Vol. 2, Dec. 2005.
Dear Madam,
We are much concerned at the continuance of your gloomy apprehensions, which, though your own power cannot remove, yet it is your duty to oppose to the uttermost. When God clothes the heavens with blackness, and makes sackcloth their covering, and shuts up in the prison house where no light can be perceived, it is natural to take a kind of pleasure in yielding to despondency, and in defending it by many arguments. But to resist this tendency requires self-denial, and is the path of duty, however difficult. Let me therefore, request you to attempt this self-resistance, and to say to yourself, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul; and why art thou disquieted within me?” And though you may suppose it no hard matter to assign strong reasons to justify discouragement, yet remember, that though these reasons may now seem firm like the immovable mountains, yet shall they be as chaff before the whirlwind, before a just, believing view of that incomprehensible, infinitely high Savior, whose excellency and love and riches of salvation are beyond all search. Therefore, when the cloud appears blackest and most impenetrable, and when conscience or imagination are mustering up their heaviest charges and forebodings, endeavour to believe that there is One hiding himself behind and above the cloud, whose beams of grace will at length break through it, and shine in upon you with a sweeter lustre than ever.
In the all-fulness, the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, compassion, grace, and power laid up in Jesus the Son of God, there is infinitely more than enough to swallow up your deepest complaints and miseries. Let nothing put you away from knocking at this door, and watching at these gates. Though you should seem to be slain at them, and though Satan should raise a Euroclydon (Acts 27), a combination of storms striving one with another. What, though your strength and confidence seem quite gone, and nothing left but fainting, overwhelming, and sinking, as in the belly of hell! these are no more than the trial of faith, felt more bitterly than can be painted in words, by David, Job, Jonah, Heman, and myriads since their time. What, though faith itself seems quite extinguished! this is necessary that you may know your entire dependence on the author and finisher of faith, for that influence of omnipotence which gives being to the principle and to every act of faith, and which secretly maintains it when no human eye can trace it out. What, though the precious Word of God, and all means and ordinances seem to have quite lost their efficacy! When the God of the Bible and of the ordinances comes again into them, these will be as life from the dead. Therefore, wait, and continue waiting, and resolve to die waiting: “Although thou sayest, I shall not see him, yet judgment”—that is, wise, holy mercy—“is before him, therefore trust thou in him.” Be sparing of complaints in the ears of men, especially of wholehearted secure professors. Rather, complain to God.
Express our sympathy to Mrs. M____, and desire her to think of that expression, “the goodwill of him who dwelt in the bush.” Her distress of body and of spirit may be piercing as the element of fire, and may seem to overspread her wholly, and to threaten destruction every moment, but that “goodwill” is mighty to control and check the flame—and it dwells in the midst of it for that purpose. May the Almighty visit her with strong consolation, and her son with strong subduing grace, through the infinitely precious and powerful blood of the Lamb!
—J. L.
