LETTERS TO SEEKING SOULS

Dear Friend,

According to promise, I sit down to talk with you a little concerning the great things of an eternal world. How kind it is in God that He has given us such an easy way of communicating our thoughts, even at a distance!

My only reason for writing to you is, that I may direct your soul to Jesus, the sinner’s friend. “This man receiveth sinners.” I would wish much to know that you were truly united to Christ, and then, come life, come death, you will be truly and eternally happy. Do you think you have been convinced of sin? This is the Holy Spirit’s work, and His first work upon the soul. (John 16, v.8; Acts 2, v. 37, and 16, v. 29, 30). If you did not know your body was dangerously ill, you would never have sent for your physician; and so you will never go to Christ, the heavenly Physician, unless you feel that your soul is sick even unto death. Oh! pray for deep discoveries of your real state by nature and by practice. the world will say you are an innocent and harmless girl; do not believe them. The world is a liar. Pray to see yourself exactly as God sees you;

Pray to know the worth of your soul.

Have you seen yourself vile, as Job saw himself?— Job 40, v. 3 and 4; and 42, v. 5, 6; undone, as Isaiah saw himself?—Isaiah 6, v. 1 and 5. Have you experienced anything like Psalm 51? I do not wish to feign humility before God, nor to use expressions of self-abhorrence, which you do not feel; but oh pray that the Holy Spirit may let you see the very reality of your natural condition before God! I seldom get more than a glance at the true state of my soul in its naked self. But when I do, then I see that I am wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.—Revelation 3, v.17. I believe every member of our body has been a servant of sin —Romans 3, v. 13, 18— throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet, eyes. Every faculty of our mind is polluted. —Genesis 6, v.5.

Besides, you have long neglected the great salvation; you have been gainsaying and disobedient. Oh that you were brought to pass sentence on yourself, guilty of all! Hear what a dear believer writes of himself: “My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and swallowing up all thought and imagination, like an infinite deluge, or mountains over my head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deep, and yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is exceedingly small and faint.”

Perhaps you will ask, why do you wish me to have such a discovery of my lost condition? I answer, that you may be broken off from all schemes of self-righteousness; that you may never look into your poor guilty soul to recommend you to God; and that you may joyfully accept of the Lord Jesus Christ, who obeyed and died for sinners. Oh that your heart may cleave to Christ! May you forsake all and follow Jesus Christ.

Count everything loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ

Your friend in Jesus, Robert Murray M’Cheyne Dundee, 1841

To a Young Boy Anxious about His Soul

My Dear Boy,

I was very glad to receive your kind note, and am glad to send you a short line in return, although my time is much taken up. You are very dear to me, because your soul is precious; and if you are ever brought to Jesus, washed and justified, you will praise Him more sweetly than an angel of light. I was riding among the snow today, where no foot had trodden, and it was pure, pure white; and I thought again and again of that verse.

“Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

That is a sweet prayer—make it your own. Often go alone and look up to Jesus, who died to wash us from our sins, and say, “Wash me.” (Psalm 51, v. 7). Amelia Geddie was one day dressed in a new white frock, with red ribbons in her bonnet, and someone said to her: “No doubt you will think yourself very trim and clean?” “Ah! no,” she said, “I will never think that until I have the fine robe of my Redeemer’s righteousness put upon me.”

I am glad, my dear boy, you think that God is afflicting you to bring you to Himself. It is really for this that He smites you. His heart, His hand and His rod are all inscribed with love. But then, see that He does bring you to Himself. Do not delay. The lake of fire and brimstone stretches beneath every soul that lives in sin. “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” If the Lord Jesus would but draw the curtain and let you see His own fair grace, and His wounded side, and how there is room for the guiltiest sinner in Him, you would be drawn to Jesus with the cords of love.

I was preaching in Perth last Sabbath. When I came out, a little girl came up to me, I think about three or four years old. She wanted to hear of the way to be saved. Her mother said she had been crying the whole night before about her soul, and would take no comfort till she should find Jesus.

Oh! pray that the same Spirit may waken you. Remember Johnnie, you once wept for your soul, too, and prayed and sought Jesus. Have you found Him? or have you looked back, like Lot’s wife, and become a hard, cold pillar of salt? Awake again and call upon the name of the Lord. Your time may be short, God only knows. The longest lifetime is short enough. It is all that is given you to be converted in. they are the happiest who are brought soonest to the bosom of Jesus.

Write me again. At present I must draw to a close. Give my kindest remembrances to your mother, and to A. when you write. Tell him to write me. May you all meet at the table of Jesus above; and may I be there, too, a sinner saved by grace.

Ever yours,

Robert M. M’Cheyne

Collace, January 27th, 1842

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