The Life And Testimony Of Thomas Jones

Earthen Vessel 1878:

The Venerable Thomas Jones

“Christian.—‘Now then,’ said Christian, ‘to prevent drowsiness in this place let us tall into good discourse.’

“Hopeful.—‘With all my heart,’ said the other.

“Christian.—‘Where shall we begin?’

“Hopeful.—‘Where God began with us. But do you begin, if you please.’

“Christian.—Then Christian said, ‘I will ask you a question—“How came you to think at first of so doing as you do now?”‘

“Hopeful.—‘Do you mean, how I came at first to look after the good of my soul?’

“Christian.—‘Yes, that is my meaning.’”—Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Broseley, March 4, 1878.

I complete my fourscore and three this day. A considerable excess on the years commonly allotted to Adam’s children. Moses reckoned the “days of our years as threescore years and ten; and if, by reason of strength, they he fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow” (Psalm 90:10). No doubt this, in the general, describes a protracted life in its decadent stage, “when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves” (Ecc. 12:3); but I am bound to say these conditions are mercifully mitigated in my own case thus far, so that, though daily reminded by unmistakable symptoms that I am an old man, I enjoy a fair degree of bodily health, and my principal sorrow is such as was common to our older brethren from Moses downward, and such as is shared by the most favoured of my contemporaries, a fruit of fraternal fellowship with the Man of sorrows, Jesus, who groaned at the grave of Lazarus (John 11:33), wept over impenitent Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and who, when we saw much people, was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd (Mark 6:34). The labourers have ever been few compared with the greatness of the harvest, and the few have often repeated the lamentation of the prophet, “Lord, who bath believed our report? All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Rom. 10:16-21). For these griefs the Saviour supplies a solace: “Blessed are they that mourn (with godly sorrow); for they shall be comforted.” “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Ps. 126:6).

“A hope so much Divine 

May trials well endure.”

In obeying the call made on me to write of God’s dealings with me especially as to His wise and kind method in bringing me to Himself, I wish to go far back to the time of my earliest recollection, when my age was five or six. In my native town dwelt an old lady, the widow of a clergyman, having two daughters. Miss Mary, the eldest, became, through marriage with a cousin (I think), Mrs. Sherwood, and went with her husband, an officer in the army, to India, where she did much Christian work among the soldiers and their families, and where she wrote many entertaining and instructive books with which most young English readers are acquainted. Miss Lucy married a clergyman of the name of Cameron, and resided in a parish in this county not many miles hence. These–Misses Butt—had me to their house frequently, talked much to me, and put me to read books written by themselves and Mrs. Hannah More; but they interested me most by lessons on pictures, of which they had large folios. These described the progress of disobedient children through a youth of wilfulness to maturity in sin and ultimate ruin. Others represented the holy Child Jesus, in His subjection to His parents, increasing in wisdom and stature, in favour with God and man. Were I a limner, I could from memory give an exact copy of a plate depicting the awful solemnities of the judgment day, and of another, the entrance of the approved into the kingdom prepared for them; and yet another, the Valley of Tophet, the month of the pit to which the impenitent are consigned, with the smoke of their torment ascending in dense clouds of blackness, as it will do for ever and ever (Rev. 19:11). The subjects of these pictures, explained with talent and tenderness, made me think much on the world to come; and at times I had great meltings of heart; fear and terror, alternated by pleasant glows of hope, with heaven in the distance—what the poet Hart calls “joyous fancies,” but to me as real as the sternest facts of life. Some keen theological critics will refer these perturbations of mind to purely natural causes, the play of latent elements, implying no foreign agency, and bearing no relation to vital godliness. I am only careful to state facts, on which profounder casuists may theologise and philosophise to the extent of their pleasure.

Sunday school teachers may possibly find in this case some hints for action or caution in their dealings with child-mind. To myself, it is gratifying to record this small tribute of gratitude to the memory of the dead who showed kindness to me in the earliest years of my life, and, it may be, did me more permanent good than I can now trace. It will satisfy curiosity if I add that, hearing of Mrs. Cameron’s inquiry about me, I rode over to see her. The daughter, the wife, the mother of a clergyman, of course she was an attached Church woman, but she was no bitter bigot; she received me courteously, accepted my acknowledgments of her and her sister’s goodness, and expressed generous wishes for my future.

In my neighbourhood, in the earlier years of my life, it was the popular belief that all English people belonged to the Church. Those who never entered the church doors for Sabbath worship, who had been taken there in babyhood to be made, on sponsorial guarantee, ”members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven;” and who, except they went to a wedding or a funeral, kept outside from year’s end to year’s end, yet always protested they were sincere “Protestants,” which meant in their mouths they were of the religion of the Church, when they died they were carried through the aisle to the grave, where the clergyman thanked God for His mercy in taking their souls to Himself. There was no question of the safety of those who were sleeping partners in this episcopal business, but alas for the schismatic who went to a meeting-house! There were no Dissenting chapels then. It was generally believed that Nonconformity and disloyalty were synonymous, and “Meetingers” were often called Jacobins. There were only two meeting-houses in my town, a Baptist and an Independent, and besides a few Methodists, who assembled for worship in a dwelling-house, and were often annoyed by yelling and stone-throwmg, for which there was no redress, as they were conventionally outlawed by their imputed heresy in disregarding Church canons and presuming to pray without a book. I have lived to witness great changes in the popular mind, great improvements in the civilisation, liberality, and mutual forbearance of all classes, as conspicuous in the clergy as in the laity. But the ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry of the period referred to forbade me going into a conventicle till I was eleven or twelve years old, when a playmate to whom I was much attached, and whose mother was an Independent, told me of a gentleman who taught a class of lads at the Baptist meeting-house, who explained Scripture in an engaging manner, and otherwise interested the youths with instructive subjects. With some difficulty I obtained permission to join the class, and found my playmate’s report of its advantages to be correct. We were taught to read the Bible with emphasis, and were encouraged to ask any amount of questions on the meaning of what we read. My understanding gradually opened to the fact that religion consists not in forms, liturgies, gennflexions, and sacerdotal ceremonies of any and every kind, but in a state of mind having a supernatural cause; in repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Subsequently I came to know that our teacher was himself under strong convictions that, though a member of a large family most or all professors of religion, he was not in accord with his relations on doctrine. Fullerism echoed from most pulpits; apostolic and Calvinistic truth was deemed too narrow for the times; the proud conceit of “enlarged views” had become a passion with young preachers, which won for them favour with folk of no fixed creed, and great praise for their Christian charity. Our teacher knew all about it, and contemned it as fleshly, spurious, and deceiving. Though it was many years till the time accepted (appointed) for his deliverance came, he was convinced that the saved are saved by grace through faith, and that not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Toplady, Romaine, and Huntington were his favourite authors, and his relations disapproved of them. Of course he did not try to take us boys into his mental sanctuary, but he took us into the light of truth theoretically, and thus prepared me, at least, to distinguish between law and Gospel. Hope to proceed with the tale anon.

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“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.”—1 Cor. 13:11.

Before I come to the more solemn and definite action of Divine life in my own soul, I should like to narrate in brief some further particulars about our teacher, extending o.er twenty or thirty years, and which I trust will not be deemed tedious or irrelevant. In the religious experiences of our Father’s children there is great similarity and great diversity. ”There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all” (1 Cor. 12:6). Much of the perplexity and craze they tell of, who were long floundering in the slough of despond, comes of ignorance of the fact that, while all true pilgrims are motived by the same spirit, and are marching to the same goal, there are peculiarities in every case; so there might not be in Zion’s biography a second instance like that of the dying thief, of Saul of Tarsus, or even of Lydia, the seller of purple. Yet it is common with the new-born to take some older disciple as a model, or some marvellous experience as a pattern which their own must resemble, or they cannot be right. Brokenness of heart, deep sorrow for sin, an earnest craving after the Saviour, are common to all the quickened; but all are not as long on the rack, nor have all the same clear discernment of the transition they are undergoing. We read with interest the adventures of enterprising travellers, the voyages and hairbreadth escapes of mariners, without thinking it needful we should imitate the daring or expose ourselves to the risks—as unnecessary, it may be, that our translation out of’ the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, should in all leading incidents compare with the history of a Bunyan or a Huntington. “The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His way” (Ps. 15:9). “What man is he that feareth the Lord? him shall He teach in the way that he shall choose” (Ps. 15:12). The great Shepherd gathereth His sheep one by one {Isa. 27:12), and teaches each one in a manner suitable to his natural temperament, and fitting for his chosen future. Our teacher—my teacher—in the first principles of the oracles of God, will have no memorial in history except from my pen and through favour of the Earthen Vessel, and I shall not even give his name, though he was not unknown to some of your readers; his record is on high by a new name—may all your readers have an entry in the same registry. I forget, if he ever told me, when, or by what means, his soul’s slumbers were first disturbed, but I know he was some years striving to enter in at the strait gate; was tried by fiery temptations and severe bodily afflictions; and was often at his wits’ end. He had removed from our town to Birmingham, where I sometimes visited him. He held fast by the truth through all changes, even when heart-sick with hope deferred. He could not be an Arminian—to will was present with him, but how to perform the good, grasp the promises, plunge into the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, climb by one step the ladder Jacob saw, come boldly to the throne of grace, and say, with a feeling of right, “My Lord and my God”—warrant, ability for these, he found not in himself. He could say, “The sorrows of death compass me, and the pains of hell get hold of me, I find trouble and sorrow” (Ps. 116:3). He called on the name of the Lord in David’s words: “O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul;” but he could not immediately go on with David and say: “I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.” According to popular faiths, he ought to have believed and entered into rest, and not have gone on groaning, like Bunyan’s pilgrim, with a heavy burden on his back, when he might have got rid of it by simple volition. But the fact was, he could not; he must be made thoroughly to know that Christ’s mission can be performed only by Christ Himself. “He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” As in the incarnation, He came in the fulness of time (the fitness), so He has His chosen time for every gracious purpose. He knew that faith comes by hearing, and he lost no opportunity of hearing the soundest and most honoured of the Lord’s heralds; and many a lift he got under the testimonies of Gadsby, Warburton, and Hardy; but his final deliverance came through the instrumentality of Mr. Henry Fowler, who, for some years, blew the jubilee trumpet in Bartholomew- street chapel, and subsequently filled the pastorate at Gower-street, London. If his joy (my friend’s) was great when he felt his freedom from condemnation and his acceptance with the Father, his attachment to the man who had brought him the message was grateful and ardent, and the union continued through their mutual lives. I fear Mr. F.’s history has not been written; were my memory equal to the task, I could do something towards it, for I and another friend or two sat on one occasion till midnight listening to his account of his early days; how he came to know the Lord, and how he was exercised on his introduction to the ministry. He came on a visit to me at Broseley, and preached to my congregation with much acceptance. In his mental cast he was unlike any other Christian man I have known; and though strong in spiritual confidence, to my eye he always wore a shade of depression which I, rightly or wrongly, ascribed to the fiery trials he passed through. Barnabas, I apprehend (a son of consolation), did not win his name from any natural endowment, but under much tribulation the features of the new man became prominent: “Kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; and thus he was taught to comfort his brethren in trouble by the comfort wherewith he himself was comforted of God” (2 Cor. 1:4). How little do our hearers conceive of the struggles of mind, the fears and tremblings, the terrible things in righteousness, whereby our Master’s servants are qualified for ministerial work. “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent, instructed, constrained?” (Rom. 10:14; 2 Cor. 5:14; 1 Cor. 11:16). Great indeed is the mystery of godliness; every part thereof pertaineth to the infinite, and is unfathomable to created minds. His judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out. We think, we talk of the unseen in the upper world, while we are miserably unconscious of the unseen things with which we are mixed up in time, and by which we are linked to our eternal destiny.

This paper might be taken as parenthetical. Those of my readers who have passed through threescore years will mildly criticise the garrulity, as they know that youth lives much in a fancied future, while age ruminates on the real past. Those whose bodies have long mouldered in the grave are often more alive to us than those with whom we exchange words and opinions every day. Our personal history is identified with theirs, and wherein we have been benefited by their instructions and Christian help in any way, our grateful memories are as the balm and sweet spices by which the ancients preserved the human forms they loved, so that they were ever with them. Here is one incentive to kind Christian sympathy and service; it is a degree in immortality more honourable and lasting than any memorial in brass or marble. Let us do what we can for the good of the young, doing it as unto the Lord, and some of them, at least, will rise up to call Him blessed; and inasmuch as He has used us in their behalf, they will not wholly forget us. Let us not be “weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not” (Gal. 6:9). Like the apostle, “I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians”—i.e., to the educated and refined, to the coarse and ordinary, both to the wise and to the unwise; and have seen that, abounding selfishness notwithstanding, no man liveth to or only for himself; but there is no service we can render to others which will compare with that of the woman of Samaria, who, after conversation with our blessed Saviour, went into the city crying, “Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did; is not this the Christ?”

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“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born.”—Ecc. 3:1, 2.

This can only be true of the purposes of God, for man’s purposes are often frustrated, and his wisest plans and best laid schemes find no season for execution. “There are many devices in a man’s heart; but the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand” (Prov. 19:21). “The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass, for as I have purposed, so shall it stand” (Isa. 14:21). In that purpose we find the date of the covenant, well ordered and sure; to that purpose we trace the genealogy of the Church, and there every soul born of God shall sooner or later read its title to mansions in the skies. If, in the particulars of Divine purpose, the time of natural birth is fixed, we may not doubt that the time of spiritual birth is therein determined—the time of adoption, when the chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) are appropriated and claimed by an act of grace, the infusion of spiritunl life, “the accepted time, the day of salvation.” Still it may be that the regenerated soul is not immediately conscious of its passage from death; but, as the presence of animal life is known by its developments, so it must be that the new principle, asserting itself by motions and appetites bearing relation to the unseen, evidences the fact that we are born from above. Perception and memory are not equally vigorous in all the family, but all are equally dear to the Father in heaven. We know the fruits of the Spirit grow only on trees of righteousness, though our remembrance of the planting be indistinct.

In proceeding with my own case I say at once Wm. Huntington was the bearer of the message which God sent to my heart with quickening power. The mere mention of his name would send a thrill of pious horror through the nerves of Pharisees of all tribes, and they are many; to those who believe in a purposing and a performing God, and are acquainted with the coal-heaver’s writings, he is identified with them who have contended for the faith once delivered to the saints. Implicitly as I believed in him, during some years of my youth, I have long ceased to think he was the only preacher of truth in his day, that he was in any reasonable sense infallible, or that he was the most amiably-tempered man in the world. I do not think him correct in all his interpretations of Scripture, that he was always fair in his treatment of opponents, or that he was invariably prudent in the economies of life; but I think and believe he was favoured of our God above most in a clear understanding of the doctrines of the Gospel, a deep experience in the vitalities of truth, wounding and healing, killing and making alive, and, the sweetest of all mercies, fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

The first book of his which fell into my hands was a mere pamphlet, entitled “Zion’s Alarm Not Without Cause.” It interested me, though I hardly know why, for I certainly did not understand it; but its phraseology was singular, I had read nothing like it before, and I was puzzled with the discrepancy between the address and the signature, for it was a letter beginning “Father Carnal” and subscribed “William Huntington”—how was it that his father’s name was Carnal while his name was Huntington? Be it remembered, was only about twelve years of age, and had had little intercourse with religious people, and was ignorant of their modes of speech.

However, the book was given to me, and I lent it to a free-wilier who, I suspect, destroyed it, for it never came back. The next book of Huntington’s lent to me was entitled “Ministerial Qualifications.” It has often occurred to me as a strange thing that such a book should be put into the hands of a young lad; but it is to me one of a thousand proofs of the doctrine of Divine purpose, and of the hand of God moving in the coincidences of life, familiar to all observant minds, but which those who have no faith in a first cause ascribe to what they call chance. The Biblist has no such article in his creed; his Book teaches that not a sparrow falls to the ground but by the will of the Creator. The book, “Ministerial Qualifications,” consisting of letters to ministers on ministerial gifts and work, which from its title and subjects would appear so unsuitable to my years and capacity, was the book which was to speak in my conscience as a voice from heaven. Well, so it was; I read it with greediness, somewhat fascinated by its novelty, though its positions and proofs were as meaningless to me as were the unearthly screams one heard during the Irving mania, fitly called “the unknown tongues.” I was reading aloud at the request of an aged relative, who understood it as little as I did myself, and I came to a passage in which the writer was shewing that through the subtilty of Satan, who transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14), every doctrine of truth has its parody, and every grace its counterfeit. Referring for his authority to chapter and verse, he says, “There is in the world a false Gospel, a false faith, a false hope, a false Church, a false Christ, and a false God.” While reading these lines, my soul and my whole system was convulsed; I cannot describe the feeling, the words seemed to stop in my throat, and I know I must have looked like a person in a fit. My auditor was alarmed, and exclaimed, “What is the matter with you?” I could give no answer, nor could I read any more aloud. I pondered over the passage again and again, and the only idea I could bring home was that the shock to my body and mind came from or through the things I had read; but what they could have to do with me, and how words of a book not understood by me could so affect me, I could not imagine. I read the passages over and over, again and again, and was, if possible, more and more perplexed. The second day after his storming of my peace, I was standing alone, ruminating on the mystery, for I could think of nothing else; there it was, like, what I have no better word to name it by—like a verbal sensation darting through me—Yours is A FALSE HOPE. With this came the first day of truthful intelligence into my soul—a light that has sometimes flickered, but has never been extinguished. What was my hope? The hope all entertain—with many so groundless—a hope of acceptance with God and eternal happiness.

The conviction sank deep, mine was a false hope, the offspring of self-love, a conceit. It was then I began to read the Bible, to search it as for hid treasure (Prov. 2:4), and there I learnt that a good hope is a lively hope, born in those who are born again (1 Peter 1:3), and are joined to the living family of God by a vitalising work (Ecc. 9:4), share in the riches of grace, Christ in them the hope of glory (Col. 1:21).

I was quite alone in this case, had no religious acquaintances; all my surroundings exemplified the threatening in Isaiah 60:2: “Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.” I speak as far as I know. Of course my world was small, and my thought was concentrated on one fact—I was a sinner and knew not the Saviour. I began to pray—hardly so—to long to pray, to seek or grope towards the Lord, if haply I might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). The preaching I heard seldom touched my heart, or described my feelings; perhaps not altogether the fault of the preachers, who sometimes seemed in great earnest, said many alarming things to the ungodly, and blandly invited them to Christ; but they did not describe fully the emptiness and helplessness of the sensibly lost, always in closing devolving the decision on the caprice of the hearer. Many a service was finished with the hymn having these stanzas:—

“O delay not,

Listen to the terms of peace.”

“Say, poor sinner,

Wilt thou now be sav’d or not?”

Oh, how tantalising! Would I be saved? It was all my desire. What were the terms! They were all summed up in a word—BELIEVE. Believe what? That I was a chosen vessel of mercy, redeemed, and justified. I would have given a world, had I possessed one, for such faith.

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“Lord, teach us to pray,” was the request of Christ’s disciples. As Jews, they doubtless had been need to pray liturgically, or by rote, as parents and priests had taught them; but they heard the Church’s Advocate pray as one who had power with God, and could say, “Thou hearest Me always” (John 11:42); and they felt that the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous One (James 5:6) was Spirit breath, an echo of the precious thoughts of our Father in heaven (Ps. 139:17)—prayer which availed much, and was never met by a Nay. Fain would they pray as their Master prayed; and they wisely asked Him to teach them. We have no doubt their request was granted. Saul of Tarsus—one of a sect who were in the habit of making long prayers as displays of piety in the synagogues and at the corners of streets—learnt, on hearing the voice of Jesus, that saying prayers was not praying, and that Pharisaical righteousness is no shield for a guilty conscience; and then he gave up all that were, accounting it no better than dung and dross, and began to cry for mercy; and his cry reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, who gave a commission concerning him to Ananius, saying, “Behold, he prayeth.” Aye, it is a sight worthy or attention—a proud Pharisee abhoring himself and repenting in dust and ashes (Job 13:6). “Behold,” says Jehovah, who delighteth in mercy, “he prayeth.” Angels look, and wonder, and praise; and devils look with vexation and wrath.

“Satan trembles when he sees

A saint of God upon his knees.”

I had been taught from a child to say my prayers, night and morning, which was little more than repeating the Lord’s prayer, and what is called the Apostles’ Creed. A parrot might have been taught to do as much, and with as much feeling and understanding; but as soon as I know by Divine light and solemn impression that the true God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), I was struck dumb; I dared not call the Holy One my Father, nor say I believed in God, or “in Jesus Christ His only Son.” Lip-service was mockery, self-affiliation on the Eternal, presumption, blasphemy. Here every mouth is stopped, and all become guilty before God (Rom. 3:19).

What could I do? My case was desperate. The forms I used to trust in were worst than valueless, and no resource lay open to me. It occurred to my mind that if I could find in some book a prayer consisting purely of confession and petition, and which I could learn und repeat on my knees, with my eyes closed, it might obtain acceptance and response. The ministers at the meeting-house so prayed, and there was an earnestness in their manner which gave, I thought, a power to their supplications, and which certainly accorded with the vehemency of my heart’s desire.

On searching through some old books of devotion in the house, I came upon a prayer expressive of humility, penitence, and entreaty—just the thing to move the pity of God. I soon had it in my memory, and then I knelt down, closed my eyes, and tried, after my idea, to pray it; but could not utter a word. Surprised—for at that time I had a very good memory—I rose to my feet and repeated the prayer readily, knelt down again, and with the same result as before. A third time I tried, and failed. I could say the prayer standing up and my eyes open, but could not get out a word in what I deemed a praying position. I was confounded and distressed. What could it mean? All at once it darted into my mind that the Almighty had bound Himself to answer the sincere prayer of those who should be saved, but I was excluded, and, therefore, was not permitted to pray. Only those who have experimentally stood at the foot of Sinai, burning with fire, and heard the voice of words which shook the earth—a sight and sound so terrible that Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Heb. 12)—only those can imagine the distress and misery of my soul at this premonition of eternal woe, dwelling with devils in devouring fire. The Book was my constant study, though it condemned me much more than it encouraged me. What I have long known and lived on as glorious Gospel was to me of the nature of law; its IFS were directly against me, and its promises only tantalised me. Satan, or my own bewildered heart, always suggested some condition impossible to me. Still it was the Book of truth; nothing not taught in it, or plainly sanctioned by it, had from me the slightest regard; by that only should I be finally justified or condemned. From it came now and then a scintillation of hope, something like the peradventure to which the Ninevites clung—“ Who can tell?”

In the Book I read the case of the publican whose cry, so brief, so comprehensive, so successful, was promptly adopted by myself, and many times in the day—every day for weeks—I crept into any corner and ejaculated, “God be merciful to ME a sinner.” To this I subsequently added David’s prayer (Ps. 51:10): “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Thus I began to pray. I believe the Lord taught me that the Spirit of grace and supplication constrained and gave utterance. I did not think so then, I knew so little of Him. When He called Samuel, the boy did not know the voice, but thought it was Eli’s. He girded Cyrus with might, held him by the right hand, subdued nations before him, yet Cyrus did not know Him (Isa. 14:1-4 ). “He maketh the clouds His chariot,” and often speaks to souls, as of old, out of the midst of the cloud and thick darkness (Deut. 5:22).

Doctor Hawker wrote a book entitled “The Bible, the Christian’s Prayer Book,” and it is certain a man can neither preach nor pray without the Bible; but with this in substance, where one says he had hid it—in his heart—there is no lack of thoughts, and feelings, and words to express both for speaking to God and of God. Here is the communion of saints; at the foot of the throne all are equal, Jews or Gentiles, rich or poor, bond or free; in the estimate of self they are minimized to nothingness. Pomposity of speech or manner, enticing words of man’s wisdom, are simply disgusting. Solomon was a man in years, and no novice in science, yet how simple his address to the Almighty: “O Lord my God, Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am a little child; I know not how to go out and to come in…Give, therefore, Thy servant an understanding heart that I may discern between good and bad” (1 Kings 3:7). This might well encourage the humble who are tempted to think they are not heard because they are not eloquent, but slow of speech and of slow tongue (Ex. 4:10). The High and Mighty One who inhabiteth eternity says to the poor who have no helper, “Let Me hear Thy voice;” “Come now, and let us reason together;” “Thou shalt call and I will answer thee.”

Among my many grateful memories, I often think of striking answers respecting books. These were costly in my youth, and I had not much money to expend on luxuries. A book now costing one or two shillings was charged five or six shillings. I did not know the authors of such books as I wished for help at the strait gate, and I used constantly to ask for guidance in that expenditure. “Hart’s Hymns” was my first purchase, and that I carried in my pocket till I could have repeated half the hymns; that cost me 2s. 6d.—I have bought many copies since for ls., and even 9d. My second purchase was Huntington’s “Bank of Faith,” 3s. 6d.; that can be had for ls. The first periodical I bought was the “Gospel Magazine,” which was 9d. a month, though containing not much more matter than we get in the Earthen Vessel for 2d. Booth’s “Reign of Grace,” bought in numbers, and binding, cost 10s.; but it was worth all the money to me. I wish our young folk to see that if there be any truth in the oft-repeated murmur, “The former days were better than these,” the price of books in these days must be taken as an exception. I may also tell them that at the date I am reviewing, California and Victoria held their precious hoards intact, and a golden guinea was to thousands of English operatives a curiosity. In many respects, the present generation is greatly favoured with mercies very feebly acknowledged.

But what of the use of the books? They explained and corroborated the teachings of the Bible, which means THE BOOK, justly so entitled, as it has God for its Author and salvation for its end. It is a revelation of the gracious heart of God, and the wicked heart of man. Such I found it, and can say with John Ryland, “We should bless God for a Bible inspired and printed, but especially for a Bible explained and applied by the Spirit.” The Spirit explains directly by experience, and indirectly by the ministry of men who repeat to others that which God hath revealed unto them. The pulpit and the press are as trumpets through which are blown, the world over, disclosures of the Divine will, commended to the faith of the many ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48). By such instrumentalities I was taught the fundamental doctrines of truth, the first rudiments of the oracles of God—His choice of a Church, and His method of saving. The doctrine of election, sovereign and unconditional, which to the carnal mind is so displeasing, and against which so many books have been written, and which is denounced as sorely discouraging to would-be Christians, was to me the most encouraging tenet in the Gospel system. Perhaps the poet was much in my case when he wrote,—

“Though God’s election is a truth, 

Small comfort there I see,

Till I am told by God’s own mouth 

That He has chosen me.”

Small comfort is comfort though small, and I had comfort in election even when I feared it did not include me. “Whom He predestinated, them He also called.” Jesus said He came to call “sinners to repentance “—was I under that call? Was this labour and striving to enter in at the strait gate according to or of His working? (Col. 1:29). Was this hunger and thirst after righteousness such as He pronounced blessed? (Matt. 5:6). Only those not written in the Book of Life will be cast into the lake of fire. Salvation is of grace, not of works. I had none to plead or trust in. I could have no wish to expunge the doctrine from Zion’s charter; my business was to give diligence to make my own calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1:10), praying always with all prayer and supplications, and watching thereunto with all perseverance (Eph. 6:18). Blessed be His name for that I was kept from fighting against Him and hatred of His sovereignty, and that the earliest lesson learnt at His feet was what He taught His disciples: “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you;” and that which John wrote, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

“‘Why so offensive in men’s eyes 

Doth God’s election seem?

Because they think themselves so wise 

That they have chosen Him.”

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On the subject of useful books, there is only one besides those I have named to which I owe a special tribute in these scraps of soul history, and that is, “A Practical Discourse on God’s Sovereignty,” by Elisha Coles. It is commended as a legacy to the Church in Huntington’s “Last Will and Testament,” and, to my high gratification, I found it by a catalogue of old books on sale in the neighbourhood, price ls. 6d.; an old battered fragment of print it was, but more precious than gold, and some one to whom I subsequently lent it perhaps had my opinion of it, as it was not returned to me its lawful owner. [On no part of the decalogue is the moral sense weaker than that which affects property in books. A quaint old author says with grim humor, “Borrowing them is tantamount to stealing, and should be punishable with death.”] “Honour to whom honour is due” is an apostolic precept, and while I gladly honour the memory of Elisha Coles, whose elucidations of Scripture brought me more constantly to my knees than any other uninspired volume, I may not withhold respectful mention of the fact, that when in the trade the book was “out of print,” Mr. Spurgeon brought it out in respectable typography, at a very moderate price (2s. 6d.), obtainable of Passmore & Alabaster. In a preface by Mr. Spurgeon he says, “In my earliest days of religions thought this treatise was of great assistance to me…and I believe that the truths which he advocates are both honourable to God and sanctifying to the Church.” ”The points which he sets himself to bring forward are among the most precious and important in Holy Writ, and are so little palatable to our carnal natures that they need to be forced home upon the professing Church most constantly and powerfully…Woe be to the people where the pulpit gives no utterance to the deep things of God; they will grow lean from want of nourishment, and sad from lack of comfort.” This encomium from such a quarter may induce some young disciples to dig into this mine, and so doing, with godly diligence and prayer, they will come upon nuggets of spiritual riches, such as no rust can corrupt and no thieves shall steal.

The history of the first fifteen years of the present century is rife with political commotions, cabinets intriguing, armies and navies moving hither and thither, intent on each others’ destruction, the Governments fanning national vanity in favour of war, and Parliaments voting expenditure of money and blood to an extent appalling to patriotic economists and genuine Christians. The penalty incurred by the madness of that period is being exacted to this day, and unless something occurs of a nature all right-minded citizens would deprecate, the slow process of liquidation will continue for many generations to come. The strifes and contentions which were shaking the earth set many well-meaning people to study the prophecies in the Bible to learn the signs of the times, and the probable duration of these miseries.

A clergyman of Norfolk compiled an eight shilling volume on what he deemed the foretellings of inspiration in reference to current events in Europe, and the results of the same to England more especially. A Wesleyan, old enough to be my grandfather, with whom I had many a wrangle on the doctrines, often drew on my knowledge of Scripture, and did me many kindnesses, bought the book and gave me the first reading of it. That was more than seventy years ago, and I forget the title of the book and the name of it’s author, it was the only copy I ever saw; but I know its tone was evangelical, that the writer was learned and well-read in history, and withal a trifle visionary.

Buonaparte was the great bugbear of the time. He was, in common opinion, the embodiment of all evil, the pestilence that walked in darkness, the destruction that wasted at noonday, Satan incarnate. The Norfolk clergyman found him in the Revelation by John, who wrote of him in the Isle of Patmos, and he credited him with further mission than he had already accomplished, and which, in fact, he never did accomplish. But my business is not with Buonaparte, with Nelson, or Wellington, with diplomatists or warriors, but to introduce my renders to a solemn episode in my own history, of which I am often reminded now by the expression of modern thought, the darings of a profane philosophy which is sapping the foundations of faith, and making the Bible a mass of fable. I forget how the expounder of prophecy inserted the heresy; but he roundly asserted that it is a mistake to accept the dogma of eternal punishment for sin, that the ungodly will be simply annihilated, or, after suffering for a shorter or longer period, they will come out of the fire clean and white, fit associates for those who have laved in the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, who were sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints (1 Cor. 1:2).

It is said a drowning man will catch at a straw; he may, but the straw will not save him from drowning. With some such delusion, however, I caught at this opinion, and for the time it gave me wonderful relief. I was in the Psalmist’s case, “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow” (Ps. 116:3). I had believed that the impenitent and unbelieving would be driven from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power, and the door would be shut upon them never to be opened; that the gulf between Dives and Lazarus would ever be impassable; that the wicked would go, after the judgment, into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal. Oh! the anguish of the thought of an endless exclusion from the presence of the holy God, to dwell in darkness denser than that of Egypt, and without hope of deliverance.

But here is the testimony of a clergyman learned in languages and all theologies, who stakes bis credit as Master of Arts, and representative of one of the Universities, on the comfortable evasion of a terrible truth held by the primitive Church, and reducing eternity to a very brief period, and allowing the soul of man an ephemeral existence, or, it may be—these speculators deal largely in maybe’s—that the soul dies with the body, and there is an end of it. Here was comfort for me, and I cheerfully took it and obtained thereby a false peace. Blessed, for ever blessed, be the God of grace, who waked me up from this stupor, and went on to teach me by terrible things in righteousness that His Word is powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, that He alone is true, that men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree—of high degree in scholastic attainments and ecclesiastical honours—are a lie (Ps. 62:9). How few believe the humbling descriptions of man in his ignorance, pride, and presumption! How few believe in the freeness and mightiness of grace, in its long-suffering, its stoops, and its triumphs! I must defer the way in which the snare was broken and I escaped (Ps. 124:7) for another paper, and conclude this with the words, which were fulfilled in my case (Isa. 28:15-18): “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: therefore thus saith the Lord…Behold I will lay judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand.” The covenant with death, the agreement with hell, the refuge of lies, and the hiding place of hypocrisy, mean the flesh-pleasing theories of pretended theologians, the inventions of crafty priests, the vendors of spiritual opiates, who get wealth by crying “peace, peace, when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). All through we trace free-will trust of the man in his own heart, and defiance of both law and Gospel.

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It was affirmed by Martin Luther as his belief that temptation, meditation, and prayer make a minister. Touching the first, he tells of fearful assaults made on himself, on his faith, his evidences, and his steadfastness by the arch-seducer of Eve, and of his victory gained through the blood of the Lamb and the Word of Divine testimony (Rev. 12:11).

Through these exercises he was matured into that giant champion of Protestant truth which we admire in modern history as having obtained a good report for his spirited defence of the Gospel, and his magnanimous defiance of anti-Christ enthroned with more than imperial splendour at Rome. Our loving Lord Himself was beset by the same foe; was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil; “in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God…for in that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb. 2:17, 18). The fact is beyond dispute, and yet the fact itself is a trial for faith, that in the humiliation of Jesus, His perfect identification with the chosen, He should become so low, so weak, as to suggest to the Satanic mind a possibility of triumph over Him. “The strength of God is known to all,  But who His weakness knows?” “Great is the mystery of godliness.”

All temptation hath in it a direct or implied denial of truth, an impeachment of Divine veracity. In Eve’s case, the serpent did not say at once that God had lied to His creatures, but began with insinuating a doubt, after the manner of sceptics of the present day, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” And having thus thrown a mist over Eve’s memory, he ventures on a bolder step: “Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ By such shuffling equivocations and mendacious flattery, the father of lies bewilders, deceives, and ruins myriads of our race who are blind and deaf to the cautions and threatenings given in the Bible, and corroborated by the experience of the world in every generation. “The wages of sin is death!”

In a former paper I stated how my conviction of the turpitude of sin and the inflexibility of Divine justice was blunted by an accepted evasion of the solemn sentence, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Having no hope of escape from the curse, I drew a miserable comfort from the clergyman’s assurance that the words death, destruction, and eternal had a meaning so modified, so meaningless, that law had no terrors, and justice no sword. Destruction, spoken of in the Scriptures, is annihilation to the ungodly, a most desirable finish; or, if the soul does not die with the body, it will exist only long enough to hear its sentence. True, the Greek language was the authority for this theory, but the bait was too tempting to be resisted; I swallowed it greedily; anything short of eternal fire was a boon to one born in sin and shapen in iniquity, and such was my case. It is one of the many wonders of grace my soul has in remembrance that not a week elapsed ere the fond delusion was swept away. I know not now in what way I stumbled on the fact which at once dissolved the luscious fiction so dear to my foolish heart, but I found that in the Greek the same word is used for the duration of the happiness of the righteous and for the misery of the wicked—”aeonian punishment,” “aeonian life.” Down went my Babel, my refuge of lies; not for a moment could I doubt the eternal felicity of the redeemed family who are to be for ever with the Lord (1 Thess. 4:17). The light, temporarily obscured, returned on my mind with increased intensity. I was again at the foot of Sinai, with its fire, and smoke, and tremour, the voice of the trumpet waxing louder and londer; the Lord had come down to make inquisition, and I had nothing to answer (Exod. 19:18). I said, with Moses, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Heb. 12:23). I had, however, passed one of the straits of Biblical instruction, one temptation to disbelief had been quashed, and the enemy was vanquished. I was not the first or the last he has caught in his net. The Church sang thus in ancient days: “Our soul escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord who hath made heaven and earth” (Ps. 124:7, 8). This commutation of Heaven’s judgment, this anodyne for troubled consciences, was new to me seventy years ago, but I have long known that it was not new. Satan exhausted his invention very early, and brought out all his artillery of lies during the ministry of inspired men, who promptly detected and ably exploded his devilish devices. His policy now is to compensate for lack of novelty by daring impudence; so, through the vanity of weak or wicked men, he reproduces his oft-refuted lies, and his agents varnish them afresh, and boast themselves as new lights, as discoverers of hidden truths, and congratulate the world on the wisdom recently imported, and the wonderful attainments of modern thought. They vie with the evolutionists, who trace animal life to its birth on the banks of the Nile, begotten by the vivifying rays of the sun acting on the slime of that renowned river. The mysteries of revelation do not suffice to display their oratorical powers, so they catch at anything sounding for the admiration of their credulous disciples. What they may be before the heart-searching God I pretend not to say, but belief in the doctrine referred to implies a presumptuous tampering with the attributes of Deity; setting op a human standard for the measurement of sin’s demerit, a virtual disparagement of the Saviour’s great work of saving, and furnishing a lullaby for sinners affected with fear, and whose inquiry is, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Is. 33:14). The pretence that God is honoured by being divested of His justice, and represented as so placid and merciful that He cannot punish, is plausible, but it is deceiving. The poet honours Him by taking His character from His own book—

“God, you say, is good; ’tis true, 

But He’s pure and holy too; 

Just and Jealous is His ire, 

Burning with vindictive fire. 

This, of old, Himself declared, 

Israel trembled when they heard; 

But the proof of proofs, indeed, 

Is, He sent His Son to bleed.”

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).

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Soon after the delusion of a brief eternity had passed off, and my soul was re-awaked to the terrible fact that Divine justice was no fable, and hell no myth, I heard there was a preacher at Broseley who was causing considerable excitement by his bold statements of truth, and his exposure of the Yea and Nay systems of human device, which, with “Lo here” and “Lo there,” run a poor sinner off his legs, and never bring him to a city of refuge. It was said he was an accident of royal dalliance, of which his physiognomy gave striking evidence. With rapid utterance he delivered, in pungent language, the oft-disputed, but never-disproved, Reformation doctrines, which lay the sinner in the dust, and exalt Jesus as the Alpha and Omega in the absolution of the sinner and the discomfiture of’ Satan. The chapel was crowded, persons of all creeds and of no creed went to hear—many to scoff, some of whom remained to pray, and in those who believed and those who believed not there were great searchings of heart. Without wishing to be censorous or uncharitable I had begun to doubt whether I had ever heard a God-sent preacher, so I resolved to walk to Broseley and hear this man, reputed to be one of those who turn the world upside down. I went, therefore, and found the chapel door locked, and no one about could explain the case. In a few days we heard it bruited that the preacher had been so outspoken in his denunciations of error cherished in different sections, that in the fear of violence he was dismissed the chapel, and on the day I was there had preached in a dwelling house in the town: also that the rector and two or three other clerical magistrates had employed an informer to swear that he had held a religious service in an unlicensed building, rendering himself liable to a very heavy fine, and all of the persons identified as present were fined ten shillings each. Remember it, ye juniors, as a feature of the good old times that none might pray or talk one to another on the gravest of all subjects without becoming chargeable with law-breaking, punishable with sequestration of goods and incarceration of person. I might tell of providential reprisals which, within a few years, fell on the chief actors in this persecution; but let bygones be bygones—all the malignants have been called away. I may not omit the fact that a stern execration was evoked against this clerical act, and all the sects clubbed their subscriptions to shelter these delinquents from the worst consequences of their illegal conduct. The minister himself left Broseley for ever, leaving behind him, however, some admiring friends, from whom I heard in my early days many an anecdote of the wit and pith of his discourses, sometimes sweet and sometimes severe, but always having a basis in the law and the testimony, and leaving impressions no time could obliterate. What God writes on the heart (Jer. 31:33) will be ever legible. With myself, after this disappointment, I was floundering in the slough of despond for weeks and months; and gathering no hope from the ministries around, I ceased to go to hear, and remained in the house on Lord’s-days reading and praying with varied frames and feelings; but more gloomy than gladdening. One thing, one thing only, was needful, one word from the warm loving lips of Jesus—PEACE. Blessed be His glorious name, I have many times since then heard that voice pronounce that word, and felt that when He speaks peace, none can give trouble. On one particular Sunday it was indeed a day the Lord blessed. I was alone in the house with a book of Huntington’s on my lap, which I had been reading. Do not remember what book nor the subject of the passage I had been reading, but my thought went from my then present through a three or four years’ past, to the solemn hour when I first felt I had a soul, and that soul, as far as I knew, unsaved. I reviewed the way I had been led, rehearsed the lessons of truth I had learnt as by line upon line, and precept upon precept; how I had striven to enter in at the strait gate and had never been able; how I had cried to the Lord day and night, and there was neither voice nor any to answer, nor any that regarded (1 Kings 18:29). I had been told by one and another I had only to believe. I did believe; no credit to me, the word was branded on my conscience, it was my meditation all the day, and mixed in all my consciousness in the night. Now every truth is questioned; all that pertains to Jew, and every portion of Gospel, is put into the crucible of human logic, and as men’s minds vary in breadth and strength, the results of this kind of chemistry vary also, and hence the discords in our schools of theology, and the contradictions echoing from our pulpits. If all were taught by the same Teacher, all would speak the same thing, and the confusion of Babel would cease. These and a cloud of kindred thoughts filled my mind and obscured hope. To save the book from the stains of tears, which flowed plentifully, I closed it on my thumb, not wishing to lose the place, and still sat musing on misery. At length I carelessly dried my eyes, and threw the book open when these words met my view—“THE WRITTEN IS THE SAME AS THE PREACHED WORD; BUT HAS NOT THE SAME POWER.” It would require many more pages of the EARTHEN VESSEL than I have any right to monopolise to tell the information which those words brought to me. The written Word, the immediate inspiration of the Spirit who searcheth all things, yea, “the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). I had read many times over the written Word, still the same in substance, manipulated by prayerful study and gracious experiences, and so coming to us through many hands, yet the same, “Christ all and in all.” The written Word in many versions I had read, and felt at least that it was true and good to those who could receive it as a message from God to themselves; but it had never emancipated my soul from legal bondage, never lifted me out of the pit wherein is no water. Had the preached Word some peculiar virtue for effecting such deliverances? I knew that it could not be in the mere letter of the Word; the question simply was, Does God of wise design put honour on preaching not commonly attending that which is written? At all events I accepted the author’s statement, and there and then resolved that, if it were possible, I would get within the sound of a Gospel trumpet, blown by a duly-qualified herald of the King of Zion. How this resolution was carried out shall (D.V.) be told anon.