Morning Star

For the Morning Star.

LETTERS FROM A SON ENGAGED IN THE MINISTRY, TO HIS FATHER.

LETTER XII.

My Dear Father:

The pressure of various duties is my apology for the long interruptions in the narration of the merciful dealings of the God of all grace, with my once undone and lost soul—Wondrous grace by which the lost is found! That grace is, and eternally will be, the theme of the redeemed who strike their golden harps, and sing and shout around the throne of God in glory.

As before related, while fast circling, as on a whirlpool, towards the vortex of dissipation; and while standing upon the very brink of dreadful crime, as upon the verge of an awful precipice—the spirit of the living God, in mercy infinite, awoke me from that fearful delirium of sin in which my immortal soul was swiftly hastening towards everlasting wo. He opened my eyes to the odiousness of my sins and crimes, and excited in my soul a deep abhorrence of them and an inexpressible loathing of my own vile character. Before my God, I renounced my wicked pursuits and purposes, repented of my past sins, sought forgiveness of all my guilt, and in the fullness of my soul determined to depart from every evil way and seek the path of righteousness.

But O, how little did I know of that God whom I had now purposed to seek and to serve! how ignorant of his attributes! Drawn far away, as I had been, from the landmarks of Truth upon the deceitful tide of universalism, beclouded and tempest-driven, as I had been by scepticism and overwhelmed as my wretched soul had been with the dark and destructive billows of Atheism—my faith was as a feeble infant gasping with the first breathings of life—my soul was as the emaciated invalid just rising from his bed of sickness, and whose returning life and strength is as yet hardly sufficient to enable him, with slow and tottering step, to walk erect; and as the restored or rescued wanderer, who can hardly realize his escape from the miseries of his exile and captivity, and whose imagination is often haunted with those scenes of toil, of dreariness, of awful dangers and of cruel sufferings through which he has passed.

But the Spirit led me to the fountain of living waters, and to that table so abundantly furnished with the bread by which the soul may live. I resorted to the written word of God—commencing with the first chapter, I searched as for an everlasting treasure. I determined to take the Bible as the Word of God; and to receive whatever it taught of the attributes of God, of the duty of man and of his final destiny, as immutable and eternal truth—I resolved to build all my faith, all my practice, all my hope, upon the Holy Scriptures, willing, if they should fall, to fall with them—determined that while they stood firm, my soul should abide upon them.

The word of God was indeed that bread by which the soul could live and increase in strength. As I perused, in course, the sacred oracles, the holy and glorious attributes of God, his will concerning man, and the final destination of the human soul, were fast unfolded to my gladdened and admiring view. I rejoiced at the revelation which the Scriptures made of God, as being himself holy and as requiring man to be holy, and as being a rewarder of virtue and an avenger of sin—for at these revealed truths my feeble faith caught, as my main support, against falling into the now dreaded abyss of disbelief of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.

Your affectionate son,
E.