A Letter To John Grace – February 4th, 1859
My dear friend, John Grace,
We shall be glad to see you if you can contrive to give us a look-in by the way; but should have been better pleased if you could have contrived to have given us a week evening at the chapel. I believe our friends love real experimental truth. In fact, what else can really satisfy a soul which has been made alive unto God? How many, alas! in our day seem to amuse themselves with religion; instead of its being their most weighty concern, to which all others must be subordinate. But the fact is, that the natural, legal conscience wants soothing into quiet like a fractious child; and religion in some shape or other is taken as a kind of tonic to quiet the uneasy babe. There are very many whose consciences would loudly remonstrate against having no religion, for as some are born poets, others musicians, others artists, so many are born religious; and these turn as naturally and as instinctively to religion as a person born with an ear to music takes to playing a musical instrument. It would be a great mistake to call such persons “hypocrites” in the strict sense of the word, as they are to a certain extent sincere and do not put on religion as a mask to deceive others. It is of these people that the great mass of hearers in all denominations is composed; and when, from various causes, such embrace doctrinally the truth, they take their standing among professors of the doctrines of grace. But all this while their heart and conscience are untouched by the finger of God; no spiritual life has been communicated to their dead souls, nor has divine light penetrated into their consciences. In one sense they are the most hopeless of hearers, for they are accustomed so to hear everything which convicts or comforts the child of grace with an unfeeling heart, that they seem almost beyond all conviction.
How we are brought by everything that we see without, or feel within, to be deeply and firmly convinced that salvation, with everything which that term embraces or implies, is wholly of free and sovereign grace! The helplessness, the ignorance, the unbelief, the darkness, the carnality, and death of the heart of man, as sensibly and inwardly felt, preached to us in a way that no preacher can match our case and state by the Adam fall. And as the precious truth of God is opened up and applied to the heart by a divine power, there is a pulpit, and more than a pulpit, within, which proclaims the beauty and blessedness of salvation by grace, that touches every secret string of the conscience. Every minister who hopes to be made a blessing to the church of God must know something of Paul’s experience, 2 Cor. 4:13. It is by possessing the same spirit of faith which dwelt in the bosom of David and of Paul, that any minister can be useful or acceptable to the Lord’s family.
I am glad to find that the Lord continues to be with you at Brighton. I have always viewed it as a very important place, and we have reason to believe the Lord has many of His dear people there. Sussex has been for many years a highly favoured county; but you justly observe that men may hear the truth preached in its purity for years, and yet if the Lord does not apply it to the heart, it has no real entrance, and men will readily turn away from it to error or empty sound.
I hope the Lord will be with you in your journeys.
Yours very affectionately,
J. C. P.
Jesus is LORD! 
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