Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (22, 23 and morning
of 24 May 1738) I had continual sorrow and heaviness in my heart; something of which
I described, in the broken manner I was able, in the following letter to a
friend:
O why is it that so great, so wise, so holy
a God, will use such an instrument as me! Lord, ‘let the dead bury their
dead!’ But wilt thou send the dead to raise the dead? Yea, thou sendest whom
thou wilt send, and showest mercy by whom thou wilt show mercy! Amen! Be it
then according to thy will! If thou speak the word, Judas shall cast out
devils.
I feel what you say (though not enough) for
I am under the same condemnation. I see that the whole law of God is holy and
just and good. I know every thought, every temper of my soul ought to bear
God’s image and superscription. But how am I fallen from the glory of God! I
feel that ‘I am sold under sin’. I know that I too deserve nothing but wrath,
being full of all abominations; and having no good thing in me to atone for
them, or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, my righteousness, my
prayers, need an atonement for themselves. So that my mouth is stopped. I have
nothing to plead. God is holy; I am unholy. God is a consuming fire; I am
altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed.
Yet I hear a voice (and is it not the voice
of God?) saying, ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved.’ ‘He that believeth is
passed from death unto life.’ ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.’
O let no one deceive us by vain words, as
if we had already attained this faith! By its fruits we shall know. Do we
already feel ‘peace with God’, and ‘joy in the Holy Ghost’? Does his
‘Spirit bear witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God’? Alas,
with mine he does not. Nor, I fear, with yours. O thou Saviour of men, save us
from trusting in anything but thee! Draw us after thee! Let us be emptied of
ourselves, and then fill us with all peace and joy in believing, and let
nothing separate us from thy love in time or in eternity!
