A Letter To Mr Tanner – June 22nd, 1864

My dear Friend, Mr. Tanner,

On looking over your letter this morning to refresh my memory, I was reminded of one of Bunyan’s master traits, where, in describing the clothing of the women in the house Beautiful, he says, “They could not see that glory each one had in herself which they could see in each other. Now therefore they began to esteem each other better than themselves,” etc. So I could see—don’t think I am flattering—that grace in you which I cannot see in myself. You have had not only a long and trying affliction, but have had trial upon trial from almost every quarter—in your family, in your business, in the church, in your soul, and continually in your poor afflicted body. Your sympathizing friends would, if they could, take all these loads off your back, and all these pains and infirmities out of your body. But the same hand which took away the affliction, would with it take away the consolation, and by giving health to the body would remove health from the soul.

You have not only a better but a wiser Friend than we poor mortals could be to you, even with our best wishes, and tenderest sympathies; and that all-kind and all-wise Friend will not lay upon you any more than His grace enables you to bear; and though the profit of it may not appear to yourself, it is seen and felt by others. No one but he who has had an experience of it knows what a heavy trial an afflicted tabernacle is, and especially when to weakness is added almost constant pain. Of the former, as you know, I have had much experience; but of the latter I have had less, perhaps, than many of my friends, for my illnesses have not usually been attended with bodily pain and suffering.

But, through the goodness and mercy of the Lord, I am very much better, and entertain a hope that, with the help and blessing of the Lord, I may be brought through my London labours without breaking down. I have proved again and again that the strength of the Lord is made perfect in weakness, nor do I expect that I shall have any other experience of His strength but as made known in the same way. You know, my dear friend, that it is very blessed to feel the strength, but very painful and trying to learn the preceding weakness. But can the two be separated? If the strength of the Lord is to be made perfect in it, weakness must be as indispensable for that perfection as the mortice is for the tenon.

I was sorry to hear of your dear wife’s affliction. But how kind and gracious was it of the Lord to give her such a rich blessing! Oh, how mysterious are His ways, and His dealings past finding out, and yet what goodness and mercy are stamped upon them all! How true it is that whom the Lord loves He loves to the end; and that He never leaves nor forsakes those in whose hearts He has planted the grace of godly fear. But oh, how in long seasons of darkness, all His past mercies seem buried and forgotten. I have often thought of a remarkable expression of Bunyan’s in his “Grace Abounding,” where he says “that when he had lost the feeling that though God did visit his soul with ever so blessed a discovery of Himself, yet that he found his spirit afterwards so filled with darkness that he could not so much as once conceive what that God and what that comfort was.” How true is this that there seems to be through darkness and unbelief such a clear and clean sweep of everything tasted, handled, and felt, that it seems even as if the very conception of them was gone.

But it is in such spots as these that we feelingly and experimentally learn the depths of the fall, and how thoroughly and entirely destitute we are by nature of either power or will. Now what would we do, or what could we do, under such miserable circumstances, unless the Lord of His own rich, free, and sovereign grace, revived our spirit! What poor, unprofitable creatures would we be in the pulpit and in the parlour, in the church and in the family, on our knees or with the Bible open before our eves, if the Lord did not come of His own free grace. It is this thorough inwrought feeling and experience of our own miserable helplessness and of the freeness and fullness of sovereign grace, which enables us to declare as from the very bottom of our heart what man is by nature, and what he is made by grace; and as all the dear saints of God have a similar experience, both of darkness and light, of nature’s miserable destitution, and of the Lord’s almighty grace and power, it enables us, according to the measure of our grace and gift, to speak to the heart and conscience of the living family of God.

I see more and more that what the Lord blesses is His own word and work—that it is not great gifts or abilities in opening up the word, but that it is what the Lord in His sovereignty blesses. I have long seen this in a remarkable way in our dear friend, Mr. Tiptaft, now laid aside. His best friends could not say that his gifts were very great, or that he was an able expositor of the word of truth. And yet how much has his simple testimony been honoured and blessed, far beyond that of men who have outshone him in ministerial gifts. No doubt he has been tried sometimes at his lack of variety and ministerial ability, but has been strengthened and comforted by the testimonies which he has received of the blessing of God resting upon the word preached by him.

Yours affectionately in the truth,
J. C. P.