SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1909
SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1909
MY DEAR —, — ... I know by continued experience how trying weakness is, and how little it is understood by those who have never known what it is. Still the “marvellous loving-kindness” of our gracious God is unfailing, and one learns the minuteness and tenderness of His care in many little things that quite escape the notice of those who have strong bodies and nerves. So that, from this point of view, we have a certain advantage over our stronger brethren which we do well to appreciate at its full value. I have thought sometimes in connection with David’s psalms that he was a man of intense and sensitive feeling. Things that might never have affected a duller heart touched his to the quick. While this, no doubt, added to his trials, it became the occasion of his proving Jehovah’s deliverance and sustaining grace and power in a wonderful way; and it also qualified him to be the vehicle of those varied and profoundly instructive utterances of the Spirit of Christ which have been so, precious to faith in all ages, and which will be peculiarly encouraging to the remnant in evil days yet to come. The sufferings, no doubt, abounded but the consolations of God abounded likewise. Paul in his day was another illustrious witness of the working of this law of divine compensation (2 Corinthians 1). I seek to encourage my heart to look for the compensation even here and now, so that one may be more conscious of present gain, and more taken up with the “heavenly light” that “makes all things bright”. It is blessed to realise that it is our privilege, through the favour of God, to be in spiritual energy in spite of all the infirmities which compass the feeble vessel. I am not thinking now of energy that makes a stir [p. 56] in any external way, but of that divine power which can sustain our hearts in a sense of the love of Christ and of the love of God in Him, and can give us appreciation of it, and enable us to respond to it as did Mary of old. Do not our hearts say:
“O largely give, ’tis all Thine own,
The Spirit’s goodly fruit!”?
One finds oneself so inconstant and variable oftentimes, but that divine power which gives all things that pertain to life and godliness can form in us even now something of that which beloved J.N.D. had in view when he wrote
“And filled with Thee, the constant mind
Eternally is blest .”..
Yours very affectionately in Him,
September 27th, 1909.