Being Thankful in Times of Trouble

We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds (Psalm 75:1). Learning to say Thank You is a rite of passage through which we all pass as children. The aim of the exercise, of course, is not merely to learn to say thank you but to learn to mean it. In a similar way, most Christians are aware that giving thanks is part of the Christian life. We are to overflow with thanksgiving. But there must be more; there must be a gratitude attitude. We give thanks because God's Name is near. He is present and active in every part of life. We live coram deo - in the presence of God.

It is most obvious in his wondrous works of which men speak: in miracles, extraordinary providences, kindnesses beyond our expectations. It is easy enough to feel thankful when things are going well. However, what is more difficult is to feel just as thankful when everything seems to be going wrong.

In Psalm 75 Asaph gives a number of reasons why believers should continue to give thanks even when things look bleak. Let us consider the reasons he gives.

• Because God chooses his own times. God never is before his time, he never is too late. Much frustration in life stems from the fact that we do not know the details of God's timetable. How impatient we get! Yet even Jesus, on earth, did not know the date of his return. We must learn patience. We must be convinced that God will bring about his will at his appointed time. We must learn to sing with David: My times are in your hands (Psalm 31:15). We can also sing the hymn based upon that line and add: My God, I wish them there and I'II always trust in Thee.

• Because God's judgments are upright. Another comfort for us is that when God's judgments do come, they are always upright. There is no need for an appeal, no possibility of a miscarriage or anything being found incorrect. His judgments are worth waiting for. Because God is always in control. It is not just the prospect of judgment that comforts the believer. 'When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm,' the LORD declares. Even when everything seems to be in a state of flux, we must never forget that God is still in absolute control. How can I sink with such a prop As my eternal God Who bears the earth's huge pillars up And spreads the heavens above? The nineteenth century Lutheran Friedrich Tholuck wrote, 'When all around us is in confusion and the firmest strongholds give way, we should still retain the belief that God is only waiting for his set time.'

• Because no man can give ultimate help. In times of trouble it is tempting to turn for help to human expedients. Trouble comes from the north and we look east or west or south for help. But there is no ultimate help to be found in man. Stop trusting in man who has but breath in his nostrils, God says through Isaiah, Of what account is he?

• Because God alone can bring about justice. God brings down one and exalts another. One book in the last century describes the rise and fall of empires as historic ninepins. God removes one great power and raises another as if they were no more than that! A Ceaucescu or a Nebuchadnezzar, a Herod or a Hitler he removes in a moment.

• Because God's wrath is coming on the wicked. God has a cup of foaming, spicy wine which he will pour out for the wicked. There is a day coming when they will be forced to drink his wrath down to the dregs. Thus believers, even in the bleakest times, have every reason to be truly thankful to God and confident in him.

But how is that confidence to be expressed? Asaph closes with three promises and an expectation. We ought to follow him in these thoughts.

I will declare this forever. It is not enough to know these things. We must speak to one another about them and let unbelievers know too. Do such matters come into your conversations? Do they crop up in your letters?

I will sing praise to the God of Jacob. Thankfulness should be accompanied by praise in prayer and singing.

I will cut off the horns of all the wicked. As in Psalm 146:6, this element must also be present. We begin with ourselves, lopping off the horns of wickedness that remain; putting sin to death by the Spirit. But we also have a duty to oppose wickedness wherever it is found.

The great expectation is that the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. Regardless of how we may feel, this is the prospect for all who have been made righteous in Christ.

This article was originally published in Grace Magazine

Imagine the Lord’s Prayer

This article originally in Grace Magazine comments on Imagine and the Lord's Prayer both popular at the turn of the mil

It has been suggested that one reason Britain has such a commercially successful popular music business is that long ago the Methodists taught us to sing emotionally charged lyrics to catchy tunes. May be. There can be few reading these lines who have not been affected by the vast amount of popular music churned out in the twentieth century. Still writing in the old millennium it is difficult to be sure how long it will last but two particular songs have been popular recently. They encapsulate different worldviews. Here we see two universes next door to each other.

Materialistic humanism

I refer, on the one hand, to John Lennon’s 1970s song ‘Imagine’. Considered by many ‘the song of the millennium’ it has a pleasant lilting tune but with lyrics straight from the pit. The former Beatle, who died at the hand of an assassin, in 1980, asks us to imagine what for him would presumably be a perfect world.

We begin by imagining no heaven or hell. Curiously, we are to imagine people ‘living for today’ which must be the easiest thing in the world as that, sadly, is how most do live. In the remaining verses the reason for this stark materialistic approach is revealed. Lennon, like many in the latter half of the twentieth century, was sickened by the wars and violence so prevalent and so the idea of ‘no countries … nothing to kill or die for … no religion too’ seemed very attractive. Whether religion is responsible for most wars is debatable but it is an easy target when all one longs for is peace and quiet. He then suggests that somehow the elimination of possessions would help prevent greed and hunger, leading to ‘A brotherhood of man’. Lennon himself is aware that all this sounds hopelessly naïve and his one argument is that many people feel this way and that if he can persuade the listener he is right then that will be one step nearer to a world at one.

The reality is that Lennon’s philosophy did not keep him from being a violent and unpleasant man at times, a man who experienced and who caused pain and whose own fame contributed to his early death. His philosophy did not and cannot work because it is totally man centred and fails to take account of sin and death.

Heaven centred Christianity

In 1977, in the week that Elvis Presley died, I remember hearing an evangelist contrasting Elvis with Cliff Richard in terms of the peace that the latter had found in Christ. Many of us would not want to draw attention to Sir Cliff. In many ways his stance causes as much harm as good. However, his choice of words to sing at this time again presents us with a stark contrast, this time with the John Lennon philosophy found in ‘Imagine’. The main content of Cliff’s successful single is what is universally known as the Lord’s Prayer. It is the pattern for prayer laid down by the Lord himself in the Sermon on the Mount. In complete contrast to ‘Imagine’ it is a totally God centred lyric, addressed to God not man. It speaks positively of heaven and honouring God. It prays for the advance of his kingdom and the doing of his will before coming to earthly concerns. Far from being naïve or unrealistic it recognises the temptations or trials of faith that the believer is bound to face and malicious role of the devil and prays for deliverance.

It is no surprise that while little has been done to hold back the Lennon song great efforts have been made to silence Sir Cliff Richard. This year a court in Canada ruled against the use of the Lord’s Prayer in state schools as it could be spiritually harmful! It is not so long ago that Soviet Russia was trying to keep Bibles out of the hands of its people and there are still places today where Christian hymns must be sung sotto voce for fear of arrest.

The improvement

But what about us? It is easy enough, we trust, to see the defectiveness of ‘Imagine’ but are we making full use of the Lord’s Prayer? It was never intended to be recited but to give a memorisable pattern for our praying. Reciting it or singing it, however, does have the advantage of fixing it in our minds. I have sung it to perhaps half a dozen different tunes over the years, including an attractive calypso version that repeats ‘hallowed be thy name’ throughout. We have tried ‘auld lang syne’ with mixed results and usually sing it to ‘Crimond’. How ever you do it, have you learned it? Do your children know it? More, do you understand it? What ever we think of Cliff’s recording, let us at least go back to the prayer itself and learn something about prayer. It divides into a series of six requests. Because the language is very compact it is not immediately apparent what some of the requests are about. There are many catechisms and other helps available, however. They tell you this

• Hallowed be your name. In the first request we ask God to help us and others to glorify him in everything and to over-rule all things to that end.
• Your kingdom come. In the second, we pray that people will be brought to faith and kept in it and that Jesus will come again soon to bring in his kingdom.
• Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In the third, we ask to know and obey his will as the angels - unquestioningly, willingly, diligently, immediately, constantly, wholeheartedly.
• Give us this day our daily bread. In the fourth, bread stands for all the necessaries of life and so we ask for what we and others need to sustain life.
• Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. In the fifth, we seek forgiveness for ourselves while committing ourselves to forgiving others.
• Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. In the final prayer we recognise that temptations will come but pray that God will lead us out of them without our giving in to sin and for deliverance from the Devil and all his designs.

Perhaps, in the providence of God, many will turn afresh to the Lord’s Prayer and consider it again. It can certainly be the best possible help to us in learning how to pray.

66 Books You Must Read Before You Die

 

This article is in In Writing published for the Evangelical Library

At some point early in this century or before, people started to talk about what they wanted to do before they died, their bucket list as it is called. This soon transmuted into lists of places to visit, films to see and books to read. We are now familiar with lists such as 100 Books to read before you die or The forty best books to read before you die. Such lists include novels such as Jane Eyre or 1984 and non-fiction titles such as The Diary of Anne Frank. Occasionally, you will see spiritually helpful items such as Augustine's Confessions or Pilgrims Progress mentioned and even the Bible itself and its sixty six books in such lists but not often.

The 66 best read books of all time

When we consider how massively influential the sixty-six books that make up the Bible are, it is perhaps surprising to learn how little read they are. Surveys suggest that many intelligent people have never actually read the sixty-six, even some who profess to be Christians.

This is strange in some ways as the sixty-six books that form the Bible are together the best selling, most widely available, most often translated books on planet earth.

When it comes to those sixty-six books, the Bible is far and away the best selling set of books of all time. The Guinness Book of World Records estimates that more than 5 billion copies of the Bible have been printed. Other texts are not even close to that figure. The Quran - only 800 million copies; The Book of Mormon - only 120 million. Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong or the little red book has several hundred million copies in print but is nowhere near the Bible in number.

The Wycliffe Global Alliance tell us that the world's 7.9 billion people speak some 7378 languages. At present 717 of these languages have all 66 books translated and 3495 languages, some 7.04 billion people, have some part of the Bible. Work is currently going on with a further 828 languages, covering another 67.6 million people.

There are people who cannot read the sixty-six books of the Bible for themselves, then, but a vast number can - and yet so many of them choose not to do so. While they are busy reading Moby Dick or Lord of the Rings, the sixty-six get short shrift.

Encouraging people to read the Sixty-six

So what can we, we who have read the sixty-six, or most of them, do to encourage others to read them?

It is generally agreed that the best place to start is with one of the Gospels is. Mark is shortest, Matthew is good for religious people and Luke is for anyone. John also suits everyone but is different to the others in being more theological in style. All the sixty-six are about the Lord Jesus Christ but it is most obvious in the Gospels which provide us with portraits of Jesus, focusing especially on his death and resurrection.

Only two or three others of the sixty-six are seen under separate cover. Paul's Letter to the Romans is sometimes done like that. That is useful as it sets out Paul's theology for us in a systematic way. Do read Romans. The Old Testament Book of Psalms is also sometimes seen like that. It contains 150 hymns and prayers reflecting on God's Law and the coming Messiah. The book is best loved by those already converted to Christ.

New Testament

The 27 books of the New Testament are often seen bound in one volume, of course, either with or without the Psalms. Once people have read the Gospels, one would encourage them to read the Book of Acts, also sometimes found under separate cover. It gives the history of the church from the Christ's ascension to the end of Paul's three missionary journeys.

Most of the rest of the New Testament is letters. First, Paul's 13 letters to churches and individuals. There are nine to churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica then four to individuals. Of the latter, the two to Timothy and the one to Titus deal with matters of particular interest to pastors who should read and re-read those books.

Next is the Letter to the Hebrews. We are not sure who wrote it but, if not Paul, it must be by someone in his circle. It particularly focuses on the High Priesthood of Christ. We then have seven short general letters - three by John, two by Peter, one each by James and Jude. These are important too and not to be neglected.

The last book in the New Testament is Revelation (not Revelations). It is a book full of symbolism and not easy to read or understand but once you start spotting things like the way the writer, John, uses the number seven, it begins to make sense. One great help to understanding it better is to get to know the Old Testament books.

Genesis to Esther

A full Bible not only has the 27 books of the New Testament but the 39 books of the Old Testament too. These are again all about Jesus Christ but because they were written long before he was born this is usually less obvious. These books contain prophecies, types and shadows of what was going to come. Chapters, like Isaiah 53 are very obviously about Jesus but in some cases this is much harder to spot.

The first five books were written by Moses and take us from the world's creation to the time just before God's people enter the Promised Land. Genesis and Exodus are easy to read as they are mostly story but Leviticus and Numbers are not so easy nor is Deuteronomy.

After those five come Joshua and Judges, taking us from the conquest of the land to the time just before the first king of Israel. After Judges there is a little book called Ruth, which is not only a charming story but a real pointer to King David and to Jesus himself.

Next come three big books, so big the Jews divided each of them in two. First come the Books of Samuel then the Books of Kings. They take us from Samuel, the last of the Judges, through Saul, David and Solomon on to the kings who ruled over the divided kingdoms north and south, down to the time when Judah was sent into exile in Babylon. The third book, Chronicles, goes all the way from Adam to the exile. The opening chapters are not easy to read as they are mostly genealogies. There are things in Chronicles you will not find anywhere else so it is a must read.

After Chronicles comes Ezra and Nehemiah, both about the Jews' amazing return from the exile. The Book of Esther follows, a remarkable story about the providence of God to his people when still in exile. The striking thing about it is that it never mentions God by name. It would be great book to start with for anyone wanting to read the Bible.

Job to Malachi

After all that history, we get five books usually referred to as books of wisdom. The first, Job, is from a time before Moses and deals with the difficult subject of suffering. The beginning and end are easy to read but many chapters lie between, not always easy to read, where Job's friends try to prove to him he is suffering because he has done something wrong, which we know he has not. It is a fascinating and important work that is worth reading and re-reading.

We have mentioned the Book of Psalms, mostly by David. There is also the Book of Proverbs, mostly by his son Solomon. A large part of Proverbs is taken up with proverbs, brief and pithy sayings oozing with wisdom that point in one way or another to Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God. In this section we also have The Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, not always easy books to interpret but full of wisdom about our relationship with God and with one another.

The rest of the Old Testament is given over to the prophets, major and minor. Major and minor refer to the length of the books they left, not their importance. There are four major ones and twelve minor ones, all worth reading. Of the major ones, Daniel who lived in exile in Babylon is perhaps the easiest, as the first six chapters tell stories about him and his three friends. The second six chapters are more like Revelation. Isaiah is long but there are many prophecies of Messiah that are full of interest and plenty of encouraging verses about the future. Jeremiah and Ezekiel are among the most difficult books to read but are worth reading for the way they point forward to Christ. Where would we be without Jeremiah 31 or Ezekiel 36? With Jeremiah there is a bonus - a little book called Lamentations, a lament over the destruction of Jerusalem. Right in the middle there are some tremendously encouraging words about how great is God's faithfulness.

The last twelve books are all prophets. The Book of Jonah is the best known. It is different to the others and is well known for how it tells the story of Jonah being sent to Nineveh, refusing to go, then being first swallowed then vomited out by a great fish. The other minor prophets, with strange names like Habakkuk or Haggai, are all worth reading too. The first, Hosea, is all about the love of God. Most of the minor prophets are short. Obadiah is only one chapter. It is not always clear who prophesied when but the last three, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, all prophesied after the return from exile. It would be another four hundred years after the last of these before John the Baptist began to prophesy and make way for Messiah Jesus.

How many?

So how many of these sixty-six have you read? How many of them do you know well? They are the most important sixty-six books in existence. Some are more important than others, it is true, but all are God breathed and have something important to teach us about the Lord Jesus Christ and serving him. Do not allow the dust to gather on these amazing books. Read them and read them again. They will be more valuable to you than anything by Dickens or Tolstoy, as great as those writers were, or even Calvin or Spurgeon for that matter. If you never get to read The Great Gatsby or Brave New World it is a pity but if you neglect these sixty-six books it will be a tragedy indeed.

In 2014 Andy Miller published The Year of reading dangerously where he describes how he read some fifty books he had never got round to reading before. How did he do it? Just by getting on with it. There was no big secret. What about you and these sixty-six? If you read three or four chapters a day, you could easily read all sixty-six in a year. There are various plans that will take you through all the books in a shorter or longer period. You will never regret time spent reading them. So get started today.

Extracts from six letters written by Benjamin Beddome 1717-1795 in 1759 and 1760

This article appeared in the first edition of  The Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies

Following his death, Particular Baptist minister Benjamin Beddome continued to have an impact through his writings. In his lifetime, he published only one book (A scriptural exposition of the Baptist catechism) but in 1817 a large collection of hymns appeared and between 1807 and 1820 a number of his sermons were printed in a series of eight slim volumes (Short discourses adapted to village worship or the devotion of the family). The sermons went through several editions and in 1835 were reissued in a larger combined format with a fresh volume of 67 more sermons.

A volume of letters has never appeared although some few examples are extant. In 1800 The Evangelical Magazine featured extracts from six letters written in 1759 and 1760. At this time Beddome would be in his early forties. The last two contain hymns. Interestingly, unlike the other letters, these were penned on a Saturday and probably contain the hymn Beddome had composed that week and that would be sung the next day. [A letter exists in the Angus Library written to Richard Hall on a Saturday afternoon containing a hymn. There Beddome explicitly states it has been written for the next day.]

A Calvinistic periodical The Evangelical magazine was aimed at nonconformists and members of the established church. It began in 1793, merging with The Missionary Chronicle in 1812. The founding editor was Anglican clergyman John Eyre (1754-1803).

The letters appear in the April to September editions of 1800. They were were provided by someone with the initials S C, who obtained them from a relative of Beddome's. The most likely S C would be Luton born Baptist preacher Samuel Chase but his dates are usually given as 1787-1863 making him rather young to be doing this sort of thing. However, he was baptised by John Ryland at the Broadmead Church in Bristol when only 13 and is said to have studied in Bristol around 1802, 1803. If these tentative dates are revised down a little, it is no surprise to find a student in Bristol, where Beddome also studied and grew up and still had relatives, as the conduit for these letters. An obituary for Chase's mother appeared in The Evangelical Magazine 1798. It is not possible to identify the recipient of the letters. In 1760 Beddome's two sisters, Mary and Martha, still lived in Bristol. One of the letters uses the term cousin so it is unlikely to be a sibling. Mary's daughter Mary Brain (1744-1819) would have been a teenager in 1760 and could possibly be the one who received and shared the letters. Beddome's cousins, the children of his mother and father's siblings may have been as many as five.

*

Letter 1 (April)

The first letter is headed

The following original letter of that excellent and ingenious man, the late Rev. B. Beddome, pastor of the Baptist Church at Bourton on the water, having lately been put into my hands by one of his relations to whom it was addressed; I obtained leave to make an extract, which you are at liberty to insert in the Evangelical Magazine, if it pleases you as well as it has done your correspondent. S C.

Bourton, July 23, 1759

I lament that my conversation when you were at Bourton was not more instructive. Alas! I often think of the words of one of the first Reformers: “Old Adam is too cunning for Melanchthon”. [The quotation is from Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) himself. In his youthful zeal he had left the university lecture hall for the squares of Wittenberg to evangelise. On his return, his mentor Luther asked how he had got on, eliciting the rueful reply. “O, old Adam was too strong for young Philip.” Life of Philip Melancthon, the German Reformer Presbyterian Board of Publication 1841 p 2] If my preaching has been blessed to others, if it was so in the least measure to you, not the preacher, but God must have the glory. Whatever I hear from others, I see, I feel, enough in myself to keep me humble. May your good wishes in your letter be continually turned into fervent prayers to God, in my behalf: for I may say of the things wished, as David does of the well-ordered covenant, they contain all my salvation, and are all my desire; and I return them by wishing you all needful supplies of grace here, and a well-grounded soul-enlivening hope of glory hereafter - O may we be more and more prepared for that state where all the endearments of friendship will be felt, without those unhappy mixtures which embitter all its sweets upon earth.

Thus prays, yours, &tc. B B

Letter 2 (May)

October 18, 1759

Dear Cousin

Though the motions of the wheels of Providence are rough and intricate, nay, though they are retrograde, and sometimes seem to go back, yet there are eyes within and without, [An allusion to Revelation 4:8 and to Ezekiel 1 and 10] and I doubt not but all thing are ordered by an infinitely wise God for your good and advantage. I hope you have found the school of affliction to be the school of Christ, and that you can say with David, in very faithfulness thou hast afflicted me.

In your last you told me of a promise that had been sweet to you: by that God was by preparing you for the sorrowful scene that followed. He allured you, and brought you into the wilderness, and I trust he has there spoken comfortably to you. [An allusion to Hosea 2:14] The bitter cup is sometimes as necessary as the cordial draught; and when God teaches us, as Gideon did the men of Succoth, by the briars and thorns of the wilderness, [See Judges 8] his lessons often often make the deepest impression. I shall be heartily glad to hear of the perfect restoration of your health and above all, of your spiritual welfare,

I am, etc. BB

Letter 3 (June)

May 19, 1760

“________ When you lent Sister H_______ Mr Thomas’s diary, she promised not to let it go from her, and she scrupulously fulfilled her promise, so that I could not get a sight of it. Since that I borrowed it of Mr S [A single letter is not enough to make an identification. Was it the London based Seventh Day Baptist Samuel Stennett 1727-1795?] and read it with great delight, and indeed amazement, that a person about the age of twelve or thirteen should be able to write with such propriety.

‘Peace! - Praise! I have peace.’ That there is peace procured, though we should have no personal interest in it, is matter of praise. That we have peace, peace with God, peace within, that peace that passeth all understanding, and which the world cannot give nor take away, lays a foundation for loftier praises still; and peace in a dying hour should raise our notes to the highest pitch: then one dram of true peace is worth all the world; the one we leave behind us, the other we take with us. ‘The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and of assurance for ever.’ That we might often meet at the throne of grace in this world, remembering each other there, and finally meet before the throne of glory above, is the earnest desire and I would hope, fervent prayer of

“Yours affectionately BB”

[The minister referred to above is Timothy Thomas (c 1700-1720). Beddome quotes Thomas's dying words at the beginning of his final paragraph. Thomas was preceded in the Pershore pastorate by his father, also Timothy Thomas, pastor from 1696/7 until his death in 1716. Thomas senior and his wife Anne were Welsh. She tried to procure Philip Doddridge as pastor of the open communion church, following her son's death. By 1760 John Ash was pastor (he came in 1746). Thomas junior died prematurely, only three years into the pastorate and no more than 21 years of age. His personality continued to speak, in his diary and letters, which, a generation later were handed by his sister to Thomas Gibbons (1720-1785), minister of the Independent Church at Haberdashers Hall, London, who in 1752 published them anonymously as The Hidden Life of a Christian. It is interesting that the young man's eager, devout spirit evidently made an instant appeal to those caught up in the Evangelical Revival (a second edition was soon called for and it was translated into Welsh) even though he wrote in the years 1710-1720, when religion in England is often supposed to have been at a low ebb.]

Letter 4 (July)

July 17, 1760

I am obliged to you for your last kind letter and heartily wish I could answer it with the same humble, savoury and spiritual frame with which you seem to have written it but this what I want, and sometimes fear I never shall attain,to have my pen, my tongue, proclaim aloud the Lord Jesus Christ, the wonders of his dying love and riches of his sovereign grace.

I want more of that poverty of spirit whereby a Christian sees his own sin and misery, and yet hopes in God’s mercy; performs duties, and yet does not trust in them; assigns all his failings to himself, and all his excellencies to Jesus Christ: but why should I multiply particulars?

In all the lives that I have read and they are not a few, I never met with so wanting, and yet so undeserving a creature as myself. The Lord lead me to the fulness of Jesus Christ, not to make use of him as a man does of his deeds, bonds, and other securities for money, which he looks upon, perhaps, once in a long season, to see whether they are safe, and then takes no further thought about them; but I would live upon Jesus Christ as a man does upon his daily bread. I am satisfied that religion will never flourish in my soul till I am enabled so to do for all religion begins in the knowledge of him, thrives by communion with him and is compleated in the enjoyment of him. Christ is the Christian’s All. Sometimes I think I can say as the Church - Isa 26:18 "Yea in the way of thy judgments,etc" but I want to say as she does - Cantic 3:4 "It was but a little that I passed, etc." Yet will I wait God’s time, for that is best, and the longer the mercy is delayed the more welcome will it be when it comes. Besides, we are told the Lord is good to them who wait for him, to the soul which seeketh him. May you know but little of the distresses I sometimes feel and much of the comforts for which I long and wait."

BB

Letter 5 (August)

September 27, 1760

With respect to your spiritual concerns, what shall I say? Your soul is in the best hand; your most important interests are lodged with the great Redeemer; to him the Father hath committed them; to him you have been enabled, by divine grace, to commit them; and eh will be faithful to his trust. A sense of an interest is desirable, but there may be an interest where there is not a sense of it. I wish I had your evidences. This I can say, that I mourn - I look upwards. All that is dark and distressing in your letter, I feel; all that is other wise, I want.

O God all-holy and all-wise,
Open my heart, open my eyes;
Reveal thyself, reveal thy Son,
And make thy great salvation known.

As once of old, so now proclaim
Thy wond'rous love, thy gracious name;
To me thy pard’ning mercy show,
And spread the joys of heav'n below.

My tuneful voice I then will raise,
And all my powers shall tune thy praise;
I'll in thy church thy works declare,
And celebrate thy glories there.

It has been a consolitary thought to me, that God is more glorified in the salvation of one soul through Christ, than in the destruction of a whole world. O for a savory spirit, an evangelical temper of mind! Dear friend, pray for me, that while I want I may experience and then you shall meet with the same return from your unworthy, though affectionate friend,

BB

Letter 6 (September)

December 13, 1760

’Tis sin disorders all my frame,
Nor can this world afford me rest;
The law does nothing but condemn,
In Christ alone can I be blest.

’Tis his grace, ’tis in his blood,
I sweet refreshment hope to find;
His blood can cleanse my crimson guilt,
His grace can bow my stubborn mind.

Prostrate beneath his feet I wait,
For a kind look, or quick’nng word;
Shine in on my distressed soul
My King, my Saviour, and my Lord.

[This hymn appears at the close of a published sermon on Jeremiah 13:27 with the added title Necessity of holiness. See the eighth sermon in Short discourses adapted to village worship or the devotion of the family Vol 1 1807]

Here you have the language of my lips, the language of my pen, and I trust the language of my heart. Though I find it hard to pray to God, and harder still to wait for God. “I waited patiently for the Lord,” says David. [Psalm 40:1] O that is not as easy a thing as some may account it. We are apt to kick against the pricks, [See Acts 26:14 KJV] to rebel under the smarting rod, and accuse God of severity, when he does not immediately bestow the promised and expected blessings. I have much reason to complain of a stubborn and untractable heart, an unsubmissive temper of mind.

Yours, etc BB

Christmas with Isaiah

 I have an article in the December 2021 edition of Evangelical Times