LETTER XLVII.
Dear Charles,—What that unpardonable sin mentioned
by our Saviour is, may be difficult, perhaps, to ascertain.
And it is not my present intention to inquire; but there is
reason to fear that in some cases (it may be in all) a crisis
occurs when our eternal destiny is fixed irretrievably.
A time comes when the long-grieved and wilfully insulted
God says, “Let him alone!” And I do mean, Charles, to
express by these remarks, my own conviction that men do
often, with a peculiar wilfulness and deliberation, choose to
turn away from God, from hope, from heaven!
There is a class of persons learned, tasteful, refined, free
from gross and presumptuous external sin, and encompassed
by all circumstances combining to make this a terrestrial
paradise, who, by the very gifts of God showered around in
exuberant abundance, instead of being won to penitence,
gratitude and devotion, are unhappily led to the worship of
the creature and not of the Creator. To them, vain all ordinary
argument to convict of folly, impiety and danger;
for while the coloring of beauty and glory and the form of
excellence cover and invest life, these persons will “love the
world and the things of the world.”
To these comes, in mercy, God's last voice—the voice of
the rod. He speaks in a severe affliction—the severest ever
sent; the severest that can be endured in this life—the moral
melancholy! If that fails—and it may!—there comes no
more His voice in love—the next voice is that of doom!
Combined with the moral melancholy, either preceding
as partial cause or following as effect, is usually found physical
or nervous melancholy. Hence, with the moral means
of cure, let the best physical remedies and alleviations be
promptly and perseveringly tried; but, Charles, the moral
melancholy cannot be eradicated except by spiritual means. It
is a divine messenger sent in special mercy to drive men to
the cross! And the blood of its sacrifice is the only remedy
appointed for that healing. And that spiritual remedy will,
almost in an instant, banish the melancholy attributable to
moral causes, and greatly alleviate and aid in the entire cure
of what may be referred to physical causes. The causes of
many bodily ailings is a morbid mind; and many a wise
and benevolent physician has healed the body by administering
to the spirit.
A physical melancholy is not unfrequently aggravated by
mistake and misconception of religion and its duties, especially
when penances, and ceremonies, and forms are recommended,
or are, by previous education, deemed religion; but
if these errors are detected or avoided, and the true interior
nature of spiritual religion is clearly perceived and honestly
approved, religion is to melancholy persons the surest cure,
the sweetest cordial, and most soothing and invigorating restorative.
Moral melancholy arises from the distinct perception of
the world's ineffable vanity, contemplated as the summum
bonum, and while yet the carnal heart utterly hates holiness!
To feel that joy in this life, in the things of earth, can
never be in the heart again—and to feel no taste for the joys
of that other life!—to awake from delusion and be keenly
sensible to the dark emptiness!—to taste the wormwood and
the gall in the drained cup!—to hunger and thirst, and yet to
know these appetites shall never be satisfied!—to wish to love,
and still feel the object to be worthless and base; and amidst
all this disappointment to turn with shuddering dread and
death-like apathy, aye, and secret hate, from the spiritual
and heavenly now offering itself to our watchful, sensitive
soul, as the only good in the universe!—that, Charles, creates
the moral melancholy, and renders the soul dark as the
very shades of death!
Here is the crisis! And as men now voluntarily disregard
or obey this special, merciful, and final voice of the Holy
Ghost, so is their eternal state!
Of infinite moment, then, that persons thus melancholy
betake themselves to immediate, persevering, fervent, effectual
prayer—a prayer for such change in the inmost core
of the carnal heart, as that the only remedy for its sadness
may be willingly and instantly received. If these persons
will not, woe is almost inevitable; and if abandoned, it is
not to me the least wonderful that drunkenness, madness, suicide
follow!
To myself, Charles, the morally melancholy man is an
object of intense interest; for, having been in that furnace,
I see in his spirit an awful battle between light and darkness!
His soul is an arena, where heaven and hell are
struggling for victory! And he, at times, is as keenly pierced
as if he felt a burning arrow, a “fiery dart” in his breast!
I well know if this man will, in his utter and hopeless despair,
cry to the Mighty One—I well know that war of indescribable
horror and “great fight of afflictions” shall
cease!—the tumultuating waves of the turbid and bitter
waters shall subside into calm!—the harsh winds of the howling
tempest die away into the hush of peace; and the sereneness
of an almost cloudless sky smile so as to thrill the
whole soul with sweet and ineffable joys!
Son of God! to the world thou art as a root out of the
dry ground, and without form and comeliness! But to the
melancholy soul, turning to thy cross for healing, thou art,
O Christ! in very deed, the chief among ten thousand, and
one altogether lovely! Saviour! that man believes not
only—he experiences that thou art the Lamb of God that
takest away the sins of the world! and knows, in his soul,
that thou didst come down from the Father, and didst thence
bring life and immortality to light! He may fail to convince
others; but he is a witness unto himself! Elder Brother!
first born among many brethren! the ransomed one would
fain, like the Magdalene, weep tears of penitence and love
upon thy sacred feet! He understands how “soul, body and
spirit,” are all thine; and he humbly prays for power to lay
all on thy altar—a reasonable sacrifice—a joyous service!
He knows there
is meaning in the song of the blood-bought,
“Worthy the Lamb!”
