Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

In this there's most of fear and joy, Because there's most of sin and grace; Sin will this mortal frame destroy,

But Christ will bring me to Thy face.

"Shall I draw back, and fear the end

Of all my sorrows, fears, and pain, To which my life and labours tend, Without which all had been in vain? Can I for ever be content

Without true happiness and rest? Is earth become so excellent

That I should take it for my best?

"Or can I think of finding here

[ocr errors]

That which my soul so long has sought? Should I refuse those joys, through fear, Which bounteous Love so dear has bought? All that does taste of heaven is good; When heavenly light does me inform, When heavenly life stirs in my blood, When heavenly love my heart doth warm.

Though all the reasons I can see,

Why I should willingly submit,
And comfortably come to Thee-
My God, Thou must accomplish it.
The love which filled up all my days
Will not forsake me to the end;
This broken body Thou wilt raise,

My spirit I to Thee commend."

Such was the kind of "whine" or moan which persecution drew from the true Puritans! Such was the music oppression drew by its strain from strings not otherwise deemed musical. It is the solitary spontaneous songs of those whose natural speech is a quiet prose, which, more than anything, make me comprehend what is meant by the New Song.

We sang that hymn by Aunt Dorothy's grave, on the hill-side, under the old oak-tree where she loved to sit on summer evenings. She used to say the sound of the wind in its leaves took her back to old Netherby; and from its shade she could catch a gleam of the sea, on the other side of which is England.

We had not expected, and we did not find New England to be an Eden, nor even the "desired haven" where the "good fight" would be over. It has been possible, however, to wage the war here, not only for our own souls, but "in those public services for which a man is born." For that end we took refuge here; and we are content. Yet of some wars we have, I trust, seen the victorious end. Since the "being" of the plantations seems secure, men have more leisure to seek

their "well-being." Since law has grown to have firmer roots, the lawgivers have grown more merciful. Magistrates and ministers have ceased to persecute, and Quakers have ceased to provoke. Which was the cause and which the effect, will perhaps long remain a subject of debate.

Just now, however, there are terrible rumours of witches, which recall the old witch-drowning and rescue of Gammer Grindle on Netherby Mere in my early days. Wretched old women are said to be accusing themselves of riding through the air on sticks, and of having evil spirits in the form of cats to wait on them, knowing that if convicted they will be hung. My husband thinks that, by-and-by, when the magistrates cease to excite diseased fancies by threats of the gallows, and thus the stimulus of danger is withdrawn, the witches will cease to believe they deserved a terrible punishment by having committed impossible crimes.*

Meantime John Eliot has been fighting the devil in more undeniable forms by preaching the gospel to the Indians. He reduced the language to writing, and translated the Bible into it. At first the Pauwaws, their magicians or "clergymen," were furious, and threatened his life. But he went fearlessly, alone, among them. "I am about the work of the great God," he said. "God is with me. Touch me if you dare." Now there are six churches of baptized praying Indians, and eighteen assemblies of catechumens.

The

Yet when he was passing away, he said there was a dark cloud on the work among the Indians. The nation itself seems to fade before us. praying Indians perish like caged deer in their Christian villages.

Now, alas, his life of love, which shone among them and before us so many years, has at last faded from our vision.

The firm gentle hand which was wont ever to "ring the curfew for contentions" is still; the voice and the life which preached among us so constantly "bear, forbear, forgive," are silenced. The eyes which flashed so indignantly against wrongs to the weak and helpless, and which glanced so tenderly on the little children, are

* "When the persecution of the witches ceased, the Lord chained up Satan, that the afflicted grew presently well."-v. COTTON MATHER

closed. The "lambs which Christ is not willing to lose" will watch for John Eliot's smile and kindly word henceforth in vain.

Whenever bad news came from England (and in those days it came so often!), he would say, "These are some of the clouds in which the Son of man will come."

And now the better tidings have come, he has passed to better still. The Son of man has come for him, not in a cloud of darkness but of light.

When he was too feeble to labour longer among his Indians, he said, "I wonder for what my Lord keeps me longer here." And then he turned to such sufferers as his labours could yet reach. His last efforts were to gather the negro servants of the settlers and teach them. His last scholar was a blind boy whom he took to be with him in his house.

His last words to us still in the battle-field were, "Pray, pray, pray.”

His first words to the victors he has joined were, "Welcome, joy!"

And soon after this our "Apostle of the Indians" died. Mr. Baxter wrote:

"There was no man on earth whom I honoured above him. It is his evangelical work that is the Apostolical Succession I plead for. I am now dying, I hope, as he did. It pleased me to read from him my case ('my understanding faileth, my memory faileth, my tongue faileth, but my charity faileth not'). That word much comforted me. God preserve you and New England."

Thus New England has already her apostolic fathers and her sacred graves.

A few months passed, and then we heard how Richard Baxter had followed Eliot home.

"I have pain," he said; "there is no arguing against sense. But I have peace—I have peace.” And when asked during his mortal sickness how he did, his reply was, "Almost well."

So the day he looked for as his Sabbath and "high day" came to him, and he is gone to the great company of those he justly honoured, aud of some whom he never learned to honour here, in the "many mansions" of that "all-reconciling world."

But, alas! when shall we say "almost well" for, what he called, "this distracted world?"

In England the better days seem dawning, and | God reconciles us all to Himself and to each here in New England.

But from France Lettice's old servant Barbe, who has taken refuge here with her family, brings tidings too sad to think of.

Port Royal is extinguished as a source of light; the schools suppressed; the nuns prisoners in their own convent or elsewhere; the recluses silenced and scattered. Hundreds of the best men and women in France, as Madame la Mothe deemed them, thus rendered powerless for good.

But the sufferers of whom Barbe speaks count| by hundreds of thousands! "One soweth and another reapeth." Who will reap the harvest of this sowing?

Of these hundred thousand good Protestant men and women, scattered, tortured, killed at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and through all the persecutions before and after it, of whom Barbe tells us stories of horror such as England never knew, those other good men and women of Port Royal, on earth, knew nothing.

Oh, joyful revelations of that "all-reconciling world!" Next to the joy of seeing Him in whom

other, will be the joy of seeing the wonder on the countenances of saint after saint as they unlearn their wrong judgments of one another. The joy of the unlearning.

Yes; this joy of unlearning is one we shall certainly none of us miss! As John Robinson said on the other side of the sea, at Delft Haven, to the fathers of our New England when they were departing, "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument, be very willing to receive it as from me. Lutherans go not beyond Luther; Calvinists beyond Calvin; yet though burning and shining lights in their time, they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. But were they now living, they would be as willing to receive further light as that which they first received from the Word of God."

They are living, living and learning, and ever "receiving further light" from the Eternal Light (oh, how willingly!), on the other side of that Great Sea which we must all so soon pass over, to learn together, with ever deepening love and joy, how wide His dominion is "of whose diocese we are" "On Both Sides of the Sea."

FLETCHER OF MADELEY AND HIS MINISTRY;

OR, ENGLAND

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

BY THE REV. J. C. RYLE.

BELIEVE that no one ever reads his Bible with attention without being struck with the deep beauty of the fourteenth chapter of St. John's gospel. I suspect that few readers of that marvellous chapter fail to notice the wondrous saying of our Lord, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you." Cold and dull must the heart be that is not roused and stirred by these words.

This beautiful saying, of late years, has been painfully wrested from its true meaning. Men of whom better things might have been expected, have misapplied it sadly, and imposed a false sense on it. They have dared to say that men of all faiths and creeds will find a place in heaven at last; and that " every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light of nature." They would fain have us believe that the inhabitants of heaven will be a mixed body, including heathen idolaters and Mohammedans as

well as Christians, and comprising members of every religious denomination in the world, however opposite and antagonistic their respective opinions may be. Miserable indeed is such theology! Wretched is the prospect which it holds out to us of eternity! Small could be the harmony in such a heterogeneous assembly! At this rate, heaven would be no heaven at all.

But we must not allow human misinterpretations to make us overlook great truths. It is true, in a most comfortable sense, that "in our Father's house there are many mansions," and that all who are washed in Christ's blood, and renewed by Christ's Spirit, will find a place in heaven, though they may not see eye to eye upon earth. There is room in our Father's house for all who hold the Head, however much they may differ on points of minor importance. There is room for Calvinists and room for Arminians, room for Episcopalians and room for Presbyterians, room for Thomas Cranmer and room for John Knox, room for John Bunyan and room for George Herbert, room for Henry Martyn and

room for Dr. Judson, room for Edward Bickersteth and room for Robert M'Cheyne, room for Chalmers of Edinburgh, and room for Daniel Wilson of Calcutta. Yes! thank God, our Father's house is a very wide one. There is room in it for all who are true-hearted believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thoughts such as these come crowding over my mind, as I take up my pen to write an account of the eleventh spiritual hero of the eighteenth century, whom I want to introduce to my readers. The man whom I mean is the well-known Fletcher, vicar of Madeley. I cannot forget that there was a doctrinal gulf between him and my last hero, Toplady, and that while one was a Calvinist of Calvinists, the other was an Arminian| of Arminians. But I will never shut my eyes to the fact that Fletcher was a Christian as well as an Arminian. Mistaken, as I think he was, on some points, he was certainly thoroughly right on others. He was a man of rare grace, and a minister of rare usefulness. In short, I think that no account of English religion a hundred years ago could be considered just, fair, and complete, which did not supply some information about Fletcher of Madeley.

John William Fletcher was a native of Switzerland, and was born at Nyon, in that country, on the 12th of September 1729. His real name was De La Flechiere, and he is probably known by that name among his own countrymen to this day. In England, however, he was always called Fletcher, and, for convenience' sake, I shall only speak of him by that name. His father was first an officer in the French army, and afterwards a colonel in the militia of his own country. The family is said to have been one of the most respectable in the canton of Berne, and a branch of an earldom of Savoy.

Fletcher appears to have been remarkable for cleverness even when boy. At the first school which he went to at Geneva, he carried away all the prizes, and was complimented by the teachers and managers in a very flattering manner. During his residence at Geneva, his biographer records that "he allowed himself but little time either for recreation, refreshment, or rest. After studying hard all day, he would often consume the greater part of the night in writing down whatever had occurred in the course of his reading which seemed worthy of observation. Here he acquired that true classical taste which was so frequently and justly admired by his friends, and which all his studied plainness could never entirely conceal. Here, also, he laid the foundation of that extensive and accurate knowledge for which he was afterwards distinguished, both in philosophy and theology."

From Geneva his father sent him to a small Swiss town called Leutzburg, where he not only acquired the German language, but also diligently prosecuted his former studies. On leaving Leutzburg, he continued some time at home, studying the Hebrew language, and perfecting his acquaintance with mathematics. Such was Fletcher's early training and education. I ask the

reader's special attention to it. It supplies one among many proofs that those who call the leaders of the English revival of religion in the last century "poor, ignorant, illiterate fanatics," are only exposing their own ignorance. They know neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. In the mere matter of learning, Wesley, Romaine, Berridge, Hervey, Toplady, and Fletcher, were second to few men in their day.

Young Fletcher's education being completed, his parents hoped that he would at once turn his attention to the ministry, a profession for which they considered him to be eminently well fitted. In this expectation, however, they were at first curiously disappointed. Partly from a sense of unfitness, partly from scruples about the doctrine of predestination, young Fletcher announced that he had given up all idea of being ordained, and wished to go into the army. His theological studies were laid aside for the military works of Vauban and Cohorn, and, in spite of all the remonstrances of his friends, he seemed determined to become a soldier.

This strange determination, however, was frustrated by a singular train of providences. The same overruling hand which would not allow Jonah to go to Tarshish, and sent him to Nineveh in spite of himself, was able to prevent the young Swiss student carrying out his military intentions. At first, it seems, on his parents flatly refusing their consent to his entering the army, young Fletcher went away to Lisbon, and, like many of his countrymen, offered his services to a foreign flag. At Lisbon, on his offer being accepted, he soon gathered a company of Swiss recruits, and engaged a passage on board a Portuguese man-of-war which was about to sail for Brazil. He then wrote to his parents, asking them to send him money, but met with a decided refusal. Unmoved by this, he determined to go without the money, as soon as the ship sailed. But, on the morning that he ought to have put to sea, the servant at breakfast let the kettle fall and scalded his leg so severely that he had to keep his bed for a considerable time. In the meanwhile the ship sailed for Brazil, and, curiously enough, was never heard of any more!

Fletcher returned to Switzerland, in no wise shaken or deterred by his Lisbon disappointment. Being informed that his uncle, then a colonel in the Dutch service, had procured a commission for him, he joyfully set out for Flanders. But just at that time a peace was concluded, and the continental armies were reduced; and his uncle dying shortly after, his expectations were completely blasted, and he gave up all thought of being a soldier.

Being now disengaged from business, and all military prospects seeming completely at an end, young Fletcher thought it would not be amiss to spend a little time in England. He arrived in this country, almost totally ignorant of our language, sometime in the year 1750, and began at once to inquire for some one who could instruct him in the English tongue. For this

purpose he was recommended to a boarding-school, kept by a Mr. Burchell, at South Mimms, and afterwards at Hatfield, in Hertfordshire. With this gentleman he remained eighteen months, and not only acquired a complete mastery of English, but also became exceedingly popular as a clever, amiable and agreeable man, both in his tutor's family and throughout the neighbourhood. While staying at Mr. Burchell's, Mr. Dechamps, a French minister to whom he had been recommended, procured him the situation of private tutor in the family of Mr. Hill of Tern Hall, in Shropshire. His acceptance of this post in the year 1752, in the twenty-second year of his age, was the turning-point in his life, and affected his whole course, both spiritually and temporally, to the very end of his days.

Up to this time, there is not the slightest evidence that Fletcher knew anything of spiritual and experimental religion. As a well-educated man, he was of course acquainted with the facts and evidences of Christianity. But he appears to have been profoundly ignorant of the inward work of the Holy Ghost, and of the distinctive doctrines of the gospel of Christ. Happily for him, he seems to have been carefully and morally brought up, and to have had a good deal of religion of a certain sort when he was a boy. From an early period of life, he was familiar with the letter of Scripture, and to this circumstance he traced his preservation from infidelity, and from many vices into which young men too often fall. Beside this, a succession of providential escapes from death, which his biographers have carefully recorded, undoubtedly had a restraining effect upon him. Nevertheless, there is no reason to think that he really experienced a work of grace in his heart until he had been some time an inmate of Mr. Hill's house. Up to this time he had, after a fashion, believed in God and feared God; but he had never felt his love in Christ Jesus shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost. He had never really seen his own sinfulness, nor the preciousness of Christ's atoning blood.

The first thing which awakened Fletcher to a right conviction of his fallen state, was the simple remark of a servant in Mr. Hill's household. This man, coming up into his room one Sunday evening, in order to make up the fire, found him writing some music, and, looking at him with concern, said, "Sir, I am sorry to see you so employed on the Lord's day." At first his pride was aroused and his resentment moved, to hear a reproof given by a servant. But, upon reflection, he felt the reproof was just, put away his music, and from that very hour became a strict observer of the Lord's-day. How true is that word of Solomon, "Reproofs of instruction are the way of life!" (Prov. vi. 23.)

The next step in his spiritual history was his becoming acquainted with the people called Methodists. The way in which this was brought about he afterwards related to John Wesley, in the following words :"When Mr. Hill went to London to attend Parliament, he took his family and me with him. On one occasion,

while they stopped at St. Alban's, I walked out into the town, and did not return till they were set out for London. A horse being left for me, I rode after them and overtook them in the evening. Mr. Hill asked me why I stayed behind. I said, 'As I was walking I met with a poor old woman, who talked so sweetly of Jesus Christ, that I knew not how the time passed away.' Said Mrs. Hill, 'I shall wonder if our tutor does not turn Methodist by-and-by.' 'Methodist, madam,' said I; "pray what is that?' She replied, 'Why, the Methodists are a people that do nothing but pray; they are praying all day and all night.' 'Are they?' said I; 'then, by the help of God, I will find them out, if they be above ground.' I did find them out not long after, and was admitted into the society."

The third important step in Fletcher's spiritual history was hearing those clergymen who were called Methodists preach about faith. Under the influence of newly-awakened feelings, he had begun to strive diligently to make himself acceptable to God by his doings.

But hearing a sermon one day preached

by a clergyman named Green, he became convinced that he did not understand the nature of saving faith. This conviction was only attained through much humiliation of soul. "Is it possible," he thought, "that I, who have always been accounted so religious, who have made divinity my study, and received the premium of piety (so-called) from a Swiss university for my writings on divine subjects-is it possible that I should yet be so ignorant as not to know what faith is ?" But the more he examined himself and considered the subject, the more he was convinced of the momentous truth. The more he saw his sinfulness, and the entire corruption and depravity of his whole nature, the more his hope of being able to reconcile himself to God by his own works began to die away. He still sought, by the most rigorous austerities, to conquer this evil nature, and to bring into his soul a heaven-born peace. But, alas! the more he strove, the more he saw and felt that all his soul was sinful. In short, like Bunyan's Christian, before he saw the way to the Wicket-gate, he felt his imminent danger, and yet knew not which way to flee.

How long this inward struggle continued in Fletcher's mind, is not quite clear. It seems probable that it was at least two years before his soul found peace and was set at liberty, and his burden rolled away. Evangelists were rare in these days, and there were few to help an anxious conscience into the light. His diary shows that he went through an immense amount of inward conflict. At one time we find him saying, "I almost gave up all hope, and resolved to sin on and go to hell." At another time he says, "If I go to hell, I will serve God even there; and since I cannot be an instance of his mercy in heaven, I will be a monument of his justice in hell; and if I show forth his glory one way or the other, I am content." At another time he says, "I have recovered my ground. I thought Christ died for

« AnteriorContinuar »