Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

came; and there is a very lofty old apple-tree, which identified the very spot. My bowels yearned at the sight of the place, and much meekness and contrition flowed in; and the humbling sensation abode with me for many days.

Afterwards the lady came out and walked with us, and then took us into her house, and treated us with great civility: we made the servant a present and withdrew. I thought of the highly-favoured places of the royal Psalmist, when he vows to remember God from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites from the hill Mizar, Psal. xlii. 6.

Strange as it may appear, yet it is truth, before this voice came to me I had no more knowledge of God than the beasts that perish; but as soon as the voice came I was at once assured that it was the voice of my Creator that spake to me; nor have I ever had one doubt about it, from that hour to this. Christ, by his Spirit, spake to my heart; and faith from his fulness came to me by hearing, and hearing by the word which he spake: "As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me," Psal. xviii. 44. The obedience of faith, Rom. i. 5, attended the word of his mouth. My orders were to come out of this world, and from all mine acquaintance, and to have no more to do with them; and I was made willing in the day of his power, Psal. cx. 3, and came out, and have no desire to go back, although I have had opportu nity to have returned.

A few weeks after this, I went in company with a friend to Sunbury, in Middlesex; this was the place where I first heard the sound of the jubilee trump; the effect was, "Loose him and let him go:" it was the place of my enlargement. I did not ask leave at this place for admittance into the garden; another way was opened for me; the next house, a noble structure, is pulled down, and only an out-building left. The garden which adjoins to that in which I wrought, is let to a market gardener, and the out-building is his residence; into this we went, and with leave into the garden. Against the wall, near the spot where the light first shone round about me, there stood a ladder, and upon it I got up to the very place where the sun of righteousness arose with healing in his wings; and I saw also the little tool-house, where the first fervent and effectual prayer was put up, and to which such an answer was returned as will live, burn, and shine to all eternity; for, "Christ dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him.”

A few weeks after this, I went to Ewell in Surry, and went round the house and garden in which I wrought in those parts; this was the nursery where my first weaning time came on; where also I was taught the mystery of providence, and learned to live depending upon it. The overbearing lord, under whom I laboured, and the large and flourishing family, like olive plants round about his table, are left few in number;

there are two tombs erected since I lived there, and I believe both are full, and one was opening the very day that I was there for the reception of another branch of the family. I thought of David's words; "For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be," Psal. xxxvii. 10. No more scoffing, mocking, and ridiculing religion; "The extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressor is consumed out of the land," Isai. xvi. 4: while the slave, the drudge, the servant of servants, is still in possession of double life, and delighting himself in the Almighty.

The slaughter-house at Kingston upon Thames, where the commandment came to me with its convicting and condemning power; where my sin revived and came fresh to light; when the awful curse came home, and the yoke of bondage came on; when guilt and wrath formed a junction; where heart and flesh failed, and all legal hopes gave up the ghost: this place I have never visited since. I have visited all my Bethels, but not the barren wilderness; that dry and thirsty land I wish to see no more. I have often looked: at the house, but it is too much like Jonah's bed in the bottom of the sea, which he calls the belly of hell the poor apostles did not exult because they had found Moses, but because they had found the Messiah. I looked at the nursery in Hampton Wick, where I wrought during a great part

of mine affliction; this was something like the house of Dagon, where Samson made sport. The agitations of my mind, and the continual motions of my limbs, to keep the conceptions of sin from passing into words, gave my fellow-labourers no small entertainment.

I conclude that I have now taken my last farewell of all these sacred spots; I get old, and am looking forward in hope of the better country, and that city which hath foundations, whose maker and builder is God. Of late I have been ill with a bilious disorder, and, to tell you the truth, I have seldom been much indulged in bodily afflictions, as some are; but in this last fit my mind was wholly engaged for several days with the greatest and most sublime subject in all the bible; my views were capacious, clear, harmonious, and very instructing and confirming; and when I got out again I found my cruse full, the spring became a flowing brook, but it was emptied by three discourses on the following words; "That they also may be one in us," John xvii. 21. I learn that afflictions empty the vessel of self; the dross dissolves in the fire, and the tin is consumed, and a perceptible fulness flows in and springs up, and thirsty souls always fare best when the head is anointed with oil, and the cup runneth over, Psal. xxiii. 5; for all that runneth over is dispersed abroad, and is intended to revive, exhilarate, and make verdant by watering the heavenly crop, hence called "The times of refreshing

from the presence of the Lord." But this I perceive also, that however the old man may be mortified, put off and denied; and however the dross and tin may be purged and subdued, insomuch that the soul becomes dead to every motion of it, and loathes and abhors the body of this death; yet it revives again, and loses in a great measure its deformity and unsightliness, and soon assumes an air of gaiety: this must be one of the masterpieces of him who can transform himself into an angel of light.

The Canaanites will dwell in this land; and by these old inhabitants I understand very wicked men; and that corrupt nature which constitutes them such, is, in all its malignity and evil nature, in every member of Christ's mystical body, while in a state militant: hence the most enlarged soul is but a prisoner of hope, for the iniquity of his heels still compasses him about, though he has no just cause to fear, even in the day of evil, Psal. xlix. 5. But against all hope founded in nature and in reason, we must hope, with an expectation founded in grace and truth; "That which is born of the flesh is flesh :" and, "This I say, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God: neither doth corruption inherit incorruption," 1 Cor. xv. 50. But "That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit;" and every grace, every fruit of the Spirit is an incorruptible seed, that lives and abides for ever. My old companion; my honest, faithful, and affectionate friend, adieu. W. H. S. S.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »