THE RULES OF THIS FAMILY
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First. It is expected that everyone who comes under this roof fail not to be present at Family-prayer, and the Reading of the Scriptures.
Secondly. It is hoped that, beside these things, attention be given to the private engagements of the closet. They who begin the day in prayer, will probably find cause to end it in praise.
Thirdly. The apostle's maxim is to be invariably followed, under the divine blessing—In all things, "conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ." "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen" (Eph. 4:29.)
Lastly. "Whatever is done in word or deed, all is to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (Col. 3:17.)
To everyone who, looking up for grace to render it effectual, sincerely desires to act in conformity to these rules, the good man of the house says, "Come in you blessed of the Lord; why do you stand outside?" (Gen. 24:31.)
Thus invited, I entered the door, and found that it led into a large room like a hall. There were several people seated round a table, at the head of which a venerable old man appeared to preside. Having taken my place at the bottom, to which the kind looks of the master at the top seemed to invite me, I soon discovered by what dropped from his lips in discourse, that the characters around me were Zion's Pilgrims, like myself; and that the Lord of the way had directed them in his providence here, for refreshment and counsel.
It is a very precious thing when little societies meet together on gracious errands. There is a restraint upon the mind in the assembly that is mingled. "Two cannot walk together except they be agreed." I venture to believe that, more or less, every follower of the Redeemer knows somewhat of this in his own experience, and it should seem that the dear Lord himself, at his last supper, restrained those sweet and incomparable discourses which the apostle John has recorded in the fourteenth and following chapters of his gospel, until Judas the traitor had withdrawn; for as soon as he was gone out, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of man glorified!" and immediately the Lord began his farewell sermon.
At this assembly of the Interpreter, there was something visible in every countenance which indicated that "they were all of one heart and of one soul." They were come together to lay down their several burdens, and to unbosom their minds to each other; and the good man of the house seemed to be deputed to speak a word of consolation to every case.
I found my mind much relieved under one part of my burden (I mean under the sorrows induced from the persecutions of my relations) by what the Interpreter said to a woman in the company under similar circumstances. "My best advice to you," he said, "will be to recommend you to seek grace, in order to adopt the prophet's example; for when he found no favour from man, he recollected that he had the favour of God—so that however wicked the times were in which he lived, yet the righteousness of Jehovah was unchangeable.
The best of them, (he said,) was as a briar—the most upright is sharper than a thorn-hedge. Who, therefore, could venture to come near either? Your case, you see, is not singular, in the unkindness you sustain from your relations on account of your religion. In all ages it has been the same; and hence the prophet says, 'Even the best of them is like a brier; the straightest is more crooked than a hedge of thorns. Don't trust anyone—not your best friend or even your wife! Your enemies will be right in your own household.' But what was the prophet's conduct under these heavy troubles? 'As for me, I look to the Lord for his help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me.' (Micah 7:4-6.) The more the world frowns—the sweeter will be the smiles of Jesus; and the greater unkindness you meet with from your relations, the greater will be your esteem of the affection of the Redeemer. What though all your earthly connections fail, and their friendship is continually fluctuating and changeable—yet in Jesus you find an unchanging friend, 'at all times—one born for adversity, and who sticks closer than a brother.'
"And it should very evidently seem that God overrules those very events which tend to loosen our attachment to everything here below, on purpose to raise our affections, and to fasten them on the great objects which are above. By tinging our most innocent enjoyments in this mortal state with vanity and disappointment, what is it but in effect saying, 'Arise, and depart, for this is not your rest, because it is polluted?' There is much meaning in that word of the prophet, when he says 'Therefore I will look unto the Lord;' that is as much as to say, because all things else are dissatisfying, I will look where I am sure not to be disappointed. Though all creatures leave me, my Creator is the same; and though every earthly friend fails me, my heavenly Friend never will! O, depend upon it, let a child of God be persecuted, forsaken, slighted, or despised ever so much by man—yet while he has a God to look up to, and a Covenant-God to trust in—while he can say, 'my God'—he may at the same time, with full assurance, say, He will hear me.
And I believe it possible, no more than possible, even frequently induced by divine grace, that where the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, in its fullness and strength, it drives out all lesser considerations—as the effulgent brightness of the sun outshines the fire of the hearth; and it is in this sense we must accept that otherwise seemingly harsh doctrine to flesh and blood, where the Redeemer says 'If any man comes to me, and hates not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yes, and his life also—he cannot be my disciple.'
That the apostle Paul felt the influence of this hating his own life, no one will question who attends to the holy saint's groaning under 'the body of sin and death,' which he tells us he carried about with him; and that a believer in the present hour, who knows what it is at times to loathe, and even hate his own flesh from the corruptions of it, may, without violence to the purest affections, be well supposed to feel something of obedience to the Redeemer's precept, in hating every tie which tends to separate the soul from the great and unrivalled object of his love, will not be doubted. 'Whom have I in heaven but you? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside you,' is an appeal which many besides David have been enabled to make."
When the Interpreter had finished his discourse to the woman, he addressed himself to me; and concluding, from my appearance among the circle, that one and the same motive as brought others to his house had brought me also, he desired to know what was the immediate subject of my present attention.
I simply repeated to him the distress with which my mind had been exercised since I had perused a little book on the subject of grace, and had overheard the conversation between The Brothers.
He prevented my adding more, by saying "I know very well that author's writings, and can easily conceive how his reasoning's may have operated upon your mind; but a moment's reflection, under God the Spirit's teaching, will be enough to refute doctrines of such a tendency.
"To suppose that the gift of God's grace depends upon man's merit, is to invert the very order of things, and make the creature the first mover in his salvation; which is in direct opposition to the whole tenor of scripture. This, if true, would destroy God's foreknowledge.
"To imagine that our acceptance or refusal of grace is the result of our own pleasure, is to rob God of another of his glorious perfections of character; for it is in effect saying, that man is more powerful than his Maker, in that what God wills, man may defeat; and this takes from God his omnipotence.
"To fancy that our improvement or misimprovement of grace will render it effectual, or the contrary, is committing another breach on the divine attributes; for this is reducing the covenant of grace to a covenant of works; and hence, after all God has said and promised concerning the freedom, and fullness, and sovereignty of his salvation, in this case, the outcome of it would depend on the merit of the creature; and this is taking from God both his wisdom and his glory.
"And to believe, after what God the Father has given, and God the Son has accomplished for the salvation of his people in a covenant way, that souls renewed by God the Holy Spirit, and called with an holy calling may yet finally perish—this is bringing down redemption-work to so precarious and uncertain an outcome, as must leave it altogether undetermined whether a single believer shall be saved or not; and this throws to the ground the distinguishing character of God's immutability.
"I will very readily grant," continued the Interpreter, "that grace is brought forward into many sharp and trying dispensations in the lives of the faithful. God is certainly exercising the gifts of his holy Spirit which he bestows upon them, by temptations and troubles, and a variety of providences; and in fact, such must be the case; for unexercised grace would otherwise find no scope to manifest itself; but for anyone to imagine from hence, that our acceptance with God depends upon the event of those exercises, would be to make the present life a life of probation and trial, as some injudicious teachers have taught their people, and to render the Redeemer's merits and death still questionable, whether it would become available for the sinner's justification before God.
"Blessed be the divine benignity, things are not so! It is our mercy that the finished and complete salvation of the Lord Jesus does not rest upon so uncertain a tenure. 'An everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure,' can never leave the outcome of it doubtful. What Paul says, when resting the whole stress of the sinner's hope for acceptance before God upon the justifying merits of Christ Jesus, may be equally applied to the case of every believer—'I do not,' says he, 'frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ died in vain.'"
My heart rejoiced in the consolation. "God be adored, I cried, who has brought me to this place, and has given you (taking the Interpreter by the hand as I said it) the tongue of the learned, to know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. (Isaiah 51:8.) I see now the fallacy of those arguments in that book, by which my mind has been exercised with distress."
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