A Letter To Joseph Tanner – April 27th, 1864

My dear Friend, Joseph Tanner,

Afflictions and trials, when they are made to work together for good, much draw the family of God nearer and nearer to each other. I have used this figure sometimes—Put together two pieces of cold iron, there is no uniting; put together one piece glowing hot out of the furnace and another cold piece, still no union; bring together two pieces, both out of the furnace, and let the heavy hammer of affliction fall upon them both together, there is a welding, a union, and they become one. The application will suggest itself without any explanation. I have felt, since I have been myself in the furnace of affliction, much more drawn to, and united with, the suffering family of God, than when I am out of it. I have no doubt, dear friend, that you have felt the same in your afflictions and trials, and that they give you more feeling for, more union and communion with, the suffering members of the mystical body of Christ, than when you are not so much in the furnace. The humble, the simple-hearted, the tempted and tried, the afflicted, the broken in heart and contrite in spirit, are not these the choicest of the Lord’s precious jewels? And why? Because they are more like Christ, more conformed to His image, more manifesting the power of His grace.

I never was, since I made a profession, one in mind and spirit with the heady, bold, daring professors; but though for many years I could not clearly discern where they were wrong, yet I had an instinctive feeling of disunion and of separation from them in heart. I think from the very first, where there is what our blessed Lord calls the light of life, there is a spiritual discernment both of the truth of God and of the children of God. By the first we are in good measure kept from error, and by the second from becoming mixed up with ungodly professors. Not but what we often make great mistakes; but this is more from lack of judgment than from willful error. The Lord therefore graciously pardons such errors in judgment, as He knows that they are not done out of malicious wickedness.

How mysterious is the life of God in the soul. It seems like a little drop of purity in the midst of impurity. When I was a boy in London, there was exhibited in the window of some eminent watchmaker, a very curious movement, if I may so term it. If I remember right there was a flat plate of glass or metal, I forget which, suspended horizontally on a central pivot. In this plate there were cut, what I may call perhaps, little paths or roads communicating with each other, top and bottom, and a large globule, as it seemed, of quicksilver kept perpetually coursing up and down these paths, depressing alternately each side of the plate as a kind of pendulum. I may perhaps describe it wrong, as more than forty years have passed since I have seen it; but it just struck my mind as a representation of the new man of grace in the heart coursing up and down so bright, shining, and spotless, and yet giving movement to and regulating the whole machine. Please to forgive me if my figure be wrong.

I have had a severe attack of what I may almost call my constitutional malady—bronchitis. Through mercy, all the inflammatory symptoms have been removed, and now my chief ailment is great weakness and tenderness. Still, I am thankful to say that I am daily mending, and being able now to get my walks when the weather admits, I hope I may, with God’s blessing, be after a little time restored to my usual health. It is very trying to me and to my people that I should be laid aside, as I so often am; but they bear it with much kindness and patience, and I doubt not there is a secret purpose of wisdom and goodness to be accomplished thereby—”What I do, you know not now; but you shall know hereafter”.

It is a part of true Christian wisdom, of living faith, of real humility of mind, of submission to the will of God, to be content to believe what we cannot see. “He leads the blind by a way that they knew not.” A sense of this blindness will lead us to commit our way unto the Lord, to trust in Him, that He may bring it to pass. But we have to mourn over our ignorance, darkness, unbelief, infidelity, and that wretched lack of submission to the will of God, which adds so much to the weight of every trial. If we could but believe, and be firmly established in the belief, that our various trials, whether bodily, or family, or mental, or connected with the church, were for our own good, how much would it lighten their load. But to grope for the wall like the blind, and to grope as if we had no eyes, leaves us to carry the burden alone; and you know what poor fainting work we make of it, when we have to carry the load with our own arms. The sweet persuasion that the Lord has sent the trial, will support us in it, and will bring us out of it, wonderfully lightens every trial, however weighty it may be in itself.

You have now a trial before you. You are going to London, weak in body and suffering various ailments which seem to need the especial care of home. Amid all these ailments you have to stand up before a London congregation, among whom there may be some choice children of God, and very many sharp-eyed keen-eared critics. You are looking perhaps to what you think is your lack of education, or ability to set forth the precious truths of the everlasting Gospel. You do not consider how the Lord can strengthen you in body, mitigate your ailments, alleviate your pain, take away the fear of man, and give you a door of utterance which may not altogether satisfy yourself, and yet may be satisfying to the hearers—at least to that part of them who alone deserve the name of hearers.

I have long seen, and see it more and more, that it is not gifts and abilities that the Lord blesses, but His own Word in the heart and mouth of His sent servants. As to gifts and abilities, they are something like what Mr. Huntington says of female beauty, scattered upon some of the worst of men. The letter ministers are far beyond the experimental in abilities, and in their way, far greater preachers. But what are all their gifts and abilities, but to build up themselves and their hearers in a graceless profession? A few simple words in the mouth of a simple-hearted servant of God, like David’s sling and stone, will do more execution than all Saul’s armor, or the spear of the Philistine like a weaver’s beam. Be content then to go simply in this your might, with what the Lord has done for you, and what He may speak by you; and if Mr. Pride gets a wound in the head, it will not be the worse for the grace of humility. If you have but a single eye to the glory of God, He will bring you through safely, and it may be, successfully and honourably.

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