In making visits to the sick, I became acquainted with a woman belonging to my congregation, with whom I had very little acquaintance before. She was in a very distressful state of mind.
“I am a sinner,” says she, “I am the vilest of sinners! I must soon meet my God, and I have no preparation to meet Him! I see before me nothing but His wrath, His dreadful wrath forever! Indeed I feel it this moment within my soul! It drinks up my spirit! God curses me now; and oh! how can I bear His eternal curse, when He shall cast me off forever!”
“God is merciful, Madam,” said I.
“I know He is merciful, sir, but I have despised His mercy; and now the thought of it torments my soul! If He had no mercy, I could meet Him: I could take the curse of the Law, and it would not be the half of the hell which now awaits me! But oh, I cannot bear,—I cannot bear the curse of the Law and the Gospel both! I must account to the Lord Jesus Christ for having slighted His offers! I have turned a deaf ear to all His kind invitations! I have trampled under foot the blood of the covenant! and I am soon to appear before Him, my feet wet with His blood, instead of having it sprinkled on my heart!”
(She wept and wailed, as if on the borders of the pit.)
“Madam, there is no need that you should appear thus before Him. The same offers of mercy are still made to you, which have been made to you before. The same throne of grace still stands in heaven; the same God is seated upon it; the same Christ reigns as Mediator; and the same Spirit is still promised ‘to them that ask Him.’ The invitation of God is as broad as the wants of sinners: ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.’”
“I know it, sir; I know all that. And this is the burden of my anguish—the offer is so free, and I have no heart to accept it! If the offer was accompanied by any difficult conditions, I might think myself partly excusable for not accepting it. But it is all so free, and, fool that I am, I have all my days shut up my heart against it; and even now, I am rebellious and unbelieving. Oh! my heart is senseless as a brute’s! It cannot feel! It is harder than the nether millstone!”
“I am glad you are sensible of that; because it prepares you to understand the promise, ‘I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you.’ God says this; and you perceive He makes His promise for just such hearts as yours.”
“Oh, I wish I could believe it! My heart won’t believe. It disbelieves God! It makes Him a liar, because it believes not the testimony which God gave of His Son!”
“Madam, think a moment; if you did not believe that testimony, you could not be distressed on account of your unbelief. If you were hungry, and you did not believe there was any food upon the earth, you could not be distressed because you did not believe there was food enough. You might be distressed because there was no food, but you could not be distressed because you did not believe there was any; you would not wish to believe in a falsehood, or in what you deem a falsehood.”
“I have not any doubt of the truth of God’s Word, sir; but my heart does not trust in it. It will not trust. I have no faith.”
“You have sometimes thought you had faith?”
“Yes, I did think so; but I was deceived. I have made a false profession. I have profaned the Lord’s table! When I was a young woman, in Scotland, I first came forward, and I have attended on the ordinance of the table ever since, whenever I could. But I see now that I have been only a mere professor—one of the foolish virgins. For forty years I have been a communicant; and now, when my days are nearly done, the Lord frowns upon me for my sin. I feel it; I feel it. His wrath lies heavy on my soul! He knows I am an empty hypocrite, and He frowns upon me in His awful displeasure!”
“How long since you found out that you had no true faith?”
“I have suspected it a great many times, but I was never fully convinced of it till since I have been confined to the house with this sickness.”
“Before you were sick did you enjoy a comfortable hope in Christ?”
“I thought I did, almost always after I made my first sacrament. That was a very solemn day to me. It was before I was married. I was nearly twenty, and my parents and the minister had often enjoined my duty upon me; and after a long struggle with my wicked heart, and after much prayer, I thought I was prepared. But I deceived my own soul! I have been deceived ever since till now; and now God fills me with terror! I shall soon meet Him, and He will cast me off!” She wept piteously.
“Have you lived a prayerful life since you came to the communion first?”
“Yes, I have prayed night and morning; but I see now that I never prayed acceptably.”
“Are you penitent for your sins? Do you mourn over them?”
“Yes, I mourn; but I have ‘only a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.’ My soul is in torment! God will cast me off! I shall be lost forever! Lost! Lost!”
“It is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”
“I believe it, sir. He is a great and glorious Saviour.”
“Your Saviour, Madam, if you want Him to be.”
“No sir; no, not mine; not mine.” (Again bursting into tears.)
“Yes, Madam,—Yours, if you want Him;—yours in welcome;—Yours now, on the spot;—Yours, if you will ‘receive and rest upon Him, as He is offered in the Gospel;’—yours, if you have never received Him before;—yours still, even if you have profaned His covenant, as you say, for forty years. You have only to believe in Him with penitence and humility. Christ is greater than your sin.”
As I was uttering these words, she continued to repeat the word, “No, no, no, no,” weeping most distressfully. Said I,—
“Madam, suffer me to beg of you to hear me calmly.”
“I will try, sir.”
“I utter to you God’s own truth, madam. I tell you Jesus Christ is for you. He is offered to you by the God of heaven. He proposes to be your Prophet, Priest, and King, to do for you all you need as a sinner to be saved. He is an all-sufficient Saviour. And in the presence of His merits, I defy your despair. Salvation is of grace—of God’s grace,—of grace operating in the infinite love of God, and by the infinite humiliation of His Son. Here is fulness, the fulness of God. ‘Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.’ Jesus Christ did not fail in His attempt, when He undertook to redeem sinners. He did His work well. His love brought Him from heaven, and took Him through all the path of His humiliation, from the cradle to the grave. He bore the curse, and sinners may go free. He reigns in heaven, the King of glory, and sinners may meet Him there.”
“Indeed, sir, He is a wonderful Lord. He hath done all things well. I am glad He is on the throne. When I can catch a glimpse of His glory, my heart rejoices.”
“And His glory lies in grace, Madam; such grace that He invites you to cast all your cares upon Him, for He careth for you.”
“I praise Him for it; I will praise Him forever. I rejoice that Christ is Lord over all.”
She appeared to have lost her trouble. She had become calm; and she continued to speak of the love of God, and the adorable condescension of Jesus Christ, for some minutes. She asked me to pray with her, and praise God for His wondrous grace. After prayer I left her, supposing that her despondency had been but for a few minutes, and would not return.
The next week I saw her again, as she had requested me to do; and I found her in the same deep despondency as before. She continued to speak of herself; and all I said to her gave no alleviation to her anguish. Several times I visited her. Uniformly I found her depressed, and sometimes left her rejoicing, and sometimes sad. I could not account for it.
At length it occurred to me, as I was thinking of the different conversations I had had with her, that her mind had uniformly become composed, if not happy, whenever I had led her thoughts away from herself, to fix on such subjects as God, Christ, Redeeming love, the covenant of grace, the sufferings of the Redeemer, the Divine attributes, or the glory of God. Afterwards I tried the experiment with her frequently, and the result was always so. I finally stated to her that fact.
“Oh, yes sir,” said she, “I know that very well. It has always been so with me ever since about the time I made my first sacrament. If I can get my mind fixed on my covenant God and Saviour, then I can rest. But how can I rest when I have no faith?”
“But, Madam, can you not remember, in your dark hours, what it was that made you have light ones? and can you not then recur to the same things which made them light, and thus get light again?”
“Oh, sir, I cannot see the sun through the thick clouds. God hides Himself, and I cannot find Him; and then I mourn. I know it is Satan that would drive me to despair. He shoots out his ‘fiery darts’ at me, and my poor soul trembles in anguish. I cannot help trembling, even when I know it is Satan. I have such awful doubts, such horrible temptations darting through my mind, and such blasphemous thoughts, that I feel sure God will cast me off.”
This woman never recovered from her sickness; but the last ten weeks of her life were all sunshine. She had not a doubt, not a fear; all was peace and joy. Alluding to this, she said,—
“God does not suffer the adversary to buffet me any more. Christ has vanquished him for me, and I find the blessed promises are the supports of my soul. I fly to them. I fly to Christ, and hide myself in Him. I expect soon He will ‘come again and receive me to Himself,’ that I may be with Him ‘where He is.’ I shall behold His glory, and Satan shall never torment me any more.” She died in perfect peace.
There is a difference between the despondency of a believer, and the despondency of an unbeliever. A desponding believer still has faith. It only needs to be brought into lively exercise, and his despondency will melt away. He becomes desponding, because he has lost sight of the objects of faith, and has fixed his thoughts upon himself and his sins. Let the matters of faith be brought up before his mind, and they are realities to him,—unquestionable realities. He only needs to keep his eye upon them.
The despondency of an unbeliever is different. He does not despond, because he has lost sight of the objects of faith, for he never had any faith; and there is, therefore, no preparation in his heart to welcome the doctrines of grace, of free forgiveness, of redemption through the blood of Christ, of eternal life for sinners. These things are not realities to him. His faith never embraced them. When, therefore, in his despondency, whether he looks at his own wickedness or looks at God, he sees only darkness. Especially, the love and mercy of God, the death of Christ for sinners, all redemption, are things as dark to him as his own soul. He does not realize them as facts; much less does he embrace them for himself. In the self-righteousness of his spirit he desponds, because he thinks himself too guilty to be forgiven. He is a mere legalist; he sees only the law,—not Christ.
But there is only one way of relief for believer and unbeliever in their despondency. They must look to Christ, and to Christ alone, all-sufficient and free. A believer has a sort of preparation to do this; an unbeliever has an obstinate reluctance. He thinks only of himself and his sins. Nothing can magnify equal to melancholy, and nothing is so monotonous. A melancholy man left to himself, and the sway of his melancholy, will not have a new thought once in a month. His thoughts will move round and round in the same dark circle. This will do him no good. He ought to get out of it.
Despondency originates from physical causes more than from all other causes. Disordered nerves are the origin of much religious despair, when the individual does not suspect it; and then the body and mind have a reciprocal influence upon each other, and it is difficult to tell which influences the other most. The physician is often blamed, when the fault lies in the minister. Depression never benefits body or soul. “We are saved by hope.”
