LETTER TO THE REV. W. C. BURNS - Robert Murray Mcchene

Awakenings—Personal holiness in ministers.

DUNDEE, September 1840.

MY DEAR BROTHER, —I have had a severe illness, or would have answered your kind note long before this. I fear you may have left Breadalbane before this can reach it; still, I write in hope. You may be sure I ever follow you with my prayers and earnest longings of heart that God may humble, purify, and make use of you to carry glad tidings of great joy to the inmost hearts of poor, guilty, perishing sinners, wherever you go. I have been much interested by all that I have heard of the good that has attended you in the north. I long to hear still more. The very name of Moulin stirs up the inmost depths of the heart, when I remember what great things, the Lord Jesus did there of old. Do write to me when you have a moment and stir me up. You know a word to a minister is worth a word to three or four thousand souls sometimes. Nothing stirs me up so much to be instant and faithful as hearing of the triumphs of the Lord Jesus in other places. I am glad and thankful to say that we are not left quite desolate. There have been evident tokens of the presence of the Spirit of God among my dear people many nights, —more, I think, upon the Thursday nights than on the Sabbaths. Some I have met with seemingly awakened without any very direct means. A good number of young mill-girls are still weeping after the Lord Jesus. I have been out of my pulpit only one Sabbath, and I hope to be back to it next Sabbath, if the Lord will.

What Mr. T. mentioned to you was true of some having followed after an enthusiastic kind of man, who in my absence came among them. Doubtless Satan wanted to carry off some of the sheep and succeeded so far. Still, I trust it will end in good. Some have been a good deal humbled in the dust on account of it, and I have been roused up to cry for more knowledge how to guide them in the right way. I think, if strength were restored to me, I will try, in name of the Lord Jesus, to catechize through my parish. I ask your advice and prayers on this. If it could be conducted humbly and with patience and aptness to teach, I am persuaded it would tend to ground them more deeply in divine things. Hypocrites also might be denounced and warned, and the unconverted pointedly dealt with. I feel the immense difficulty of it in a town, and such a neglected, ignorant one as this. Still, if God were with me, who can be against me?

Everything I meet with, and every day I study my Bible, makes me pray more that God would begin and carry on a deep, pure, widespread, and permanent work of God in Scotland. If it be not deep and pure, it will only end in confusion, and grieving away the Holy Spirit of God by irregularities and inconsistencies; Christ will not get glory, and the country generally will be hardened, and have their mouths filled with reproaches. If it be not widespread, our God will not get a large crown out of this generation. If it be not permanent, that will prove its impurity, and will turn all our hopes into shame. I am much more afraid of Satan than I used to be. I learned a good deal by being with Cumming in Strat bogie.

I am also deepened in my conviction, that if we are to be instruments in such a work, we must be purified from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Oh, cry for personal holiness, constant nearness to God by the blood of the Lamb! Bask in his beams, —lie back in the arms of love, —be filled with his Spirit; or all success in the ministry will only be to your own everlasting confusion.

You know how I have always insisted on this with you. It is because I feel the need thereof myself. Take heed, dear friend; do not think any sin trivial; remember it will have everlasting consequences. Oh, to have Brainerd’s heart for perfect holiness, —to be holy as God is holy, —pure as Christ is pure, —perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect! Oh, what a cursed body of sin we bear, that we should be obliged by it to break these sweet gospel rules! How much more useful might we be, if we were only freer from pride, self-conceit, personal vanity, or some secret sin that our heart knows! Oh, hateful sins, that destroy our peace, and ruin souls!

But I must be done. I have not attained the full use of the pen. Go on, dear brother; but an inch of time remains, and then eternal ages roll on forever,—but an inch on which we can stand and preach the way of salvation to a perishing world. May He count us faithful, keeping us in the ministry. —Ever yours, etc.