I HAVE been admiring the goodness of God to you, in ordering your being at _L****_ at a time, when it must, instead of being hurtful, be profitable to your soul. The attending the sick bed of a dear relation in danger of death, is a most glorious time for exercising a number of Christian graces. Such a scene as this keeps the mind in a most proper temper, humble, recollected, serious; and in your particular circumstances, this illness of **** has freed you from most of the snares you apprehended. How does every thing work together for good to those who love God! And how ungrateful is that heart, which does not strive more and more to love him in deed and in truth! What, my love, are the inward temptations you complain of, and what are those unaccountable scruples? The best thing you can do is not to argue about them in your own mind, but immediately fly to prayer; and if you cannot pray, only wish earnestly to pray. *’Tis right, that you should think yourself the vilest creature breathing, and I am every day more and more convinced, that every soul which really loves God must necessarily in its own particular think the same: and in whatever proportion the love of God increases in the soul, in the same proportion will the sense of its own vileness and helplessness increase, till at last it is in a manner annihilated before God. This is a point which the wisdom of the world cannot understand, and which no scheme of doctrine can teach the heart; but when we truly know Jesus Christ crucified, then we can truly cry out, What! _to me_ such love? to the vilest and most ungrateful of all creatures? O whence such love to me?
I grieve for the sin you fell into. Had the temper of your mind been really charitable, you certainly could not lightly have spoken evil of any one. Nothing is more contrary to the true spirit of the gospel, than this want of universal love. And yet there is nothing so common even among those who in most other respects are unblameable. How ought we every moment to watch! Oh when shall we indeed be renewed after the image of Christ! _Adieu._
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WHAT, my dear companion, can I write so animating as your present circumstances? God seems, I think, in a most peculiar manner to watch over your soul for good. What interesting, what heart-affecting scenes have you gone through? The account I had of your **** death, has made me see the goodness of God to you in the strongest light, and I am ready to shudder, when I think that it is possible, even after all this, that you should again be ungrateful. Oh watch every moment! Think what horrors and agonies you must feel, if you should now suffer your heart to turn aside from this tender and merciful God! The circumstances you are now in are like five talents given to your care. Remember ♦you are to gain with them five talents more, or expect to hear these dreadful words――_Thou slothful and wicked servant_. Your heavenly Father seems to be making a plain way before your face. I see you in a light almost _prophetical_. I rejoice, and yet I tremble. You seem pointed out, I think, as an instrument in the hands of God for the conversion of Miss ****; but here you will be in danger from your old enemies, pride, and love of teaching, and above all that self-setting-up which you have found so difficult to overcome. O my dear love, fail not every hour of the day to pray particularly for humility. I trust you are not in danger from any increase of fortune. No surely. The heart of my beloved friend cannot be so mean and low, as to pride itself in dross and dirt. Perhaps you will find some difficulties in regard to the tempers of your ****; how necessary will it be for you in this case to place constantly before your eyes the meekness and lowliness of the Lamb of God? And fear not, you will in all these things be more than conqueror through him, who has loved you.
♦ “your” replaced with “you”
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