Part 4 (2/2)
”O, why will sinners resist the grace of G.o.d, and spend the precious time given to seek and find it in thoughtless folly? What can they do, on such a bed of distress, who have no G.o.d? Time misspent and gone--opportunities unimproved and gone--calls resisted never to be repeated--death hunting the soul through every avenue of life--a dreadful, unknown, unthought of eternity at hand--an awful Judge, and no Advocate secured to plead. A time was when a kind Saviour was expostulating with them: 'Why will you die?' 'Hear, and your soul shall live;' 'Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you;' 'Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth;' 'Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our G.o.d, for he will abundantly pardon;' 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters'--blessings purchased by Christ: pardon of sin, reconciliation with G.o.d, a new heart and spirit, all that is necessary for time and eternity--'He that hath no money,' no merit, no good about him, no claim upon any account whatever, 'come, buy and eat, without money and without price;' 'Why spend ye your money,' time, talents, affections, desires, 'for that which is not bread,' and cannot satisfy? 'incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation. To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart.'
”Such is the language of the dear Redeemer to sinners every day, in his written word, from the pulpit, and in the dispensations of his providence; but O, the madness of sinners, who will not think, who will not attend, will not apply to this Saviour, whose sole errand into this world was to seek and to save sinners, yea, the very chief; but they will not put their souls into his hands, nor give him any service. A time will come, and we are forewarned of it, when this same inviting Saviour will say, 'Because I have called and ye refused, stretched out my hand and no man regarded, I also will laugh at your calamity, and will mock when your fear cometh.'
”Improve this dispensation, my dear child; beg of the Lord to search you and try you, and see that your hopes be well grounded.
”Your affectionate mother,
”I. GRAHAM.”
The following to her beloved friend Mrs. Walker, shows the impressions made on the mind of Mrs. Graham by visiting _the place of her nativity and the scene of her struggles with this world's adversity_, when the hand of G.o.d was heavy upon her.
”EDINBURGH, September, 1787.
”MY DEAR MADAM--I have been on a jaunt for nearly three weeks; my school mostly dismissed, the remainder I left with Miss S----.
Goodness and mercy have followed me, and the Lord has taken care of my house also in my absence. Yours was put into my hand on my return, and brought fresh cause of thankfulness; your observation, that we were mutually feeding on the same allowance, continues to hold. I too have been considering the works and doings of the Lord, and many of them have been renewed in my memory by the scenes I have pa.s.sed through.
”I visited the seat of my juvenile years with my dear and only brother. There I recollected the days of my vanity, and the Lord's patience and long-suffering; my repenting, my returning, his pardoning, his blessing; my backslidings, his stripes and chastis.e.m.e.nts, his restoring and recovering, yea, many and many times.
There, too, I found my old acquaintances no more; most of them had finished their course under the sun; some I could still clasp in the arms of faith, as united to the glorious Head, and now singing the song of Moses and the Lamb. From the idea of others, I was obliged to turn away and say, 'The Judge of all the earth shall do right.'
”I recollected a lowly cottage, where lived a pious father, mother, two daughters, and a son; where the voice of prayer seldom ceased, the voice of complaint was seldom heard: not one stone remained upon another; only the bushes which surrounded it, and the ruins of a little garden, the seat of secret communion of each with their G.o.d in turn; for one little earth-floored place was all their house-convenience, and in the winter's storm their little cow-house, built under the same humble roof, was their secret temple. I found three had gone to glory: of the other two I could learn no tidings; but I shall see them one day in very different mansions. I saw others spreading like a green bay-tree, adding field to field, and dwelling alone, servants and dependents excepted.
”I saw my father's cottage, in the day when the Lord pressed him down, and the place where my dear glorified-mother poured out many prayers for me and mine; my own retirement too, after the vanity I had seen of human life, and when tired and sick of it, I sought to end my days in solitude, saying, 'It is enough; here let thy servant depart in peace, and let my children be reared in obscurity.' Then I returned to the town where my husband had practised as a physician, where I had been respected and tasted largely of life's comfort. I saw the house we had lived in, and many tender scenes pa.s.sed; to this same town I had returned a widow, helpless and poor, neglected and forgotten. I saw the house where I had taught my little school, and earned my porridge, potatoes, and salt; when I found myself totally neglected by some who once thought themselves honored by my acquaintance; while others, once s.h.i.+ning in affluence, were now reduced to humble dwellings.
”The Lord has been saying, 'Know and consider all the way by which I have led thee, to prove thee, and try thee, to show thee what was in thy heart, that he might do thee good in thy latter end.' He is now saying, 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;'
'Occupy till I come.' Oh, for a thankful heart, a loving, a zealous heart, a meek and humble heart. Oh, for diligence and steadiness in the path of duty, a due sense of our own weakness and inability, of the Lord's power and all-sufficiency, and firm faith in the same. Give my love to ----, she is the Lord's: her heavenly Father mingles her cup; not one unnecessary bitter drop shall be put into it; bid her trust in the Lord; the time, the set time for deliverance shall come.
I can witness, with many thousands on earth, and an innumerable company in heaven, that he is the best of masters. I have suffered much, yet not one word of all that he has said has failed. I expect to suffer more; but whatever bitter draughts may yet await me, I would not give one drop of my heavenly Father's mixing for oceans of what the world styles felicity.
”I. GRAHAM.”
Under another date she adds:
”When we trace the tenderness of our Daysman's conduct through the whole of his tabernacling here below, and add to this the many gracious words which he spoke, and to these again what were spoken by the disciples by his authority, can we refuse to cast all our burdens on him, and to trust him with ourselves and them? You know how sweet it is, in the time of tumultuous distress, when the spirit is overwhelmed, when G.o.d's mercy seems clean gone for ever, and his promise to fail, how sweet to get even a lean upon the Saviour; but when he, as he does at times, takes the soul out of itself, and away from forebodings, reasonings, and suppositions, to his own divine attributes, and gives it a believing view of its interest in them all, in his wisdom as unerring, his power as almighty, his goodness as boundless, his faithfulness unchanging; when we add to these his humanity, and consider that our High-priest was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin, and that he has a feeling for our infirmities; when we find him listening to every pet.i.tion--a widowed mother for her son--the centurion for his servant--weeping with two sisters over a brother's grave--embracing and blessing the little children whom mothers, like you and me, pressed through the crowd, in spite of the reprehensions of disciples, to present to him--accepting the effusions of Magdalene's penitent heart with tender consolation, O how near does this bring the Divinity to us, and how sweetly may we confide in such tenderness. Oh my friend, He rests in his love. Let us rest in our confidence. All shall be well.”
When Dr. Witherspoon visited Scotland in the year 1785, he had frequent conversations with Mrs. Graham on the subject of her removal to America. She gave him at this time some reason to calculate on her going thither as soon as her children should have completed the course of education she had proposed for them. She had entertained a strong partiality for America ever since her former residence there, and had indulged a secret expectation of returning. It was her opinion, and that of many pious people, that America was the country where the church of Christ would preeminently flourish. She was therefore desirous to leave her offspring there.
After some correspondence with Dr. Witherspoon, and consultation with pious friends, her plan received the approbation of the latter; and having had an invitation from many respectable characters in the city of New York, with a.s.surances of patronage and support, she arranged her affairs for quitting Edinburgh. The Algerines being then at war with the United States, her friends insisted on her chartering a small British vessel to carry herself and family to the port of New York. This increased her expenses; but Providence, in faithfulness and mercy, sent her at this time a remittance from Dr. Henderson, the young friend of Dr. Graham, who succeeded him as surgeon of the regiment; and a legacy of two hundred pounds bequeathed her by Lady Glenorchy, as a mark of her regard, was now of great use to her.
Thus in the month of July, 1789, Mrs. Graham once more prepared _to go into a land which the Lord seemed to tell her of_.
The two following extracts from her private journal, indicate the state of her mind and heart previous to leaving Edinburgh.
”EDINBURGH, March, 1789.
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