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The Two Deeps
My dear Friend,—I am, more or less, living in the engagement of wading into two great deeps, but cannot fathom either of them, and I often think I am a greater bungling fool in the work than ever; I mean the awful deep of sin and the glorious deep of God's matchless grace. O the horrible springing up and belching forth of sin that my poor soul is obliged to wade in, at times! I once thought that if I should live to be old, I should get rid of some of the branches of the boilings up of sin; but I now live to prove that the decay of nature does not mend the corruption of the heart and that the internal filth of…
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A Last Epistle
The following is the last letter in my possession, written by my father three months before his death. He had been at Leicester on the 18th. The letter was addressed to Mr. Isaac Harrison, Leicester. Dear Friend,—I just drop this line to say that through the kind providence of God, I reached home safely, and thought myself much better for my journey; but we have had some very trying weather here since I came home, and I am now much worse than I was when at Leicester. This morning the weather is very fine, and I have been out, but can scarcely walk for want of breath. O that I were blessed with a little more of the divine breathings of God the Holy Ghost,…
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Feeling And Sight
When God, in his rich grace, takes a poor sinner manifestively in hand, the first thing he does is to give life and light; and when this divine life and light are communicated, the dead soul is quickened, and the dark soul is enlightened. We begin to see sin in the light of God's countenance; even our secret sins are laid open to the conscience, and we both feel and see that it is an evil and bitter thing to sin against God. The pure life and light of God, placed in the conscience against our vile deadness and darkness, horrifies the soul; and though we may not be able to account for our feelings and sight, we do find that we have such as…
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Some Good Thing Toward The Lord
A Sermon Preached by John M’Kenzie at Bedworth on Monday evening, June 1st, 1846 “And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.”—1 Kings 14:13 The Lord appeared to Solomon twice, and told him if he would keep his commandments, and walk before him as his father David had walked, that the kingdom should not depart from him; but if he forgat the Lord and departed from him, the Lord would depart from Solomon in a temporal sense, as it respected the kingdom of Israel. Solomon sinned and did not keep the commandments of…
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Salvation From The Curse
My dear Friend S.,—I am still in a land called Sodom and Egypt, where our dear Lord was crucified, I mean this accursed earth,, where everything is withering under the curse, and sometimes everything good in me seems to he withering and dying away too, and I cannot keep alive my own soul. I know that everything in this world is under a curse, and that we must have been cursed for ever, had not the Lord Jesus come in our nature, stooped under the curse, and been made sin and a curse for us; and certainly he did by his death remove sin and the curse out of the way for ever, or it never would have been removed. If the cause be removed,…
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To Mr. Tiptaft
My dear Brother in the Lord,—Yours came to hand last evening, with the kind present from your friend. Give thanks to him, both for myself and the poor. I do assure him it will be a timely help for the poor. We had just been giving a little flannel and a few blankets to some of our poor, and though we have given to 50, there are others that still stand in great need. I think there are about 90 upon our regular poor-list; so you will see we cannot do a great deal for each; and I was just contriving how I could give them a little beef at Christmas; for there are many of them that cannot get a morsel for months together.…