The Life and Letters of the Rev. George Mortimer, M.A. John Armstrong

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ REV. J. ARMSTRONG.

       Table of Contents

      Wellington, April, 1813.

      My dear Friend,

      I have of late been obliged to give up all thoughts of missionary exertions; my present ministerial labours (small, alas! as they are when contrasted with the more extended operations of my dear friend) are a weight which presses very heavily upon my mind; they drink up all my spirits, and have so completely transformed me from the cheerful happy individual which I formerly used to be, that could you break in upon me accidentally and unawares you would hardly recognise me for the same. Ah, my dear friend, could I have foreseen these things, I should scarcely have dared to have encountered all the anxieties and perplexities attendant upon the ministerial office. I feel indeed that I have to sustain a burden; but there is one cheering consideration—it is the Lord’s burden; it is placed and appointed by him, and if patiently sustained, not only his glory, but my own eternal welfare, and perhaps that of others also, will be advanced. But if I feel the burden so great at present, how little am I cut out for so great a work as that which you have the honour and the privilege to be employed in!

      In the service of the sanctuary there were hewers of wood and drawers of water. I seem to be of this description. But, though these individuals were mean and insignificant, compared with others, yet were they useful in their way; and, if God do but bless my labours, I trust I shall be content and be willing to be employed by him to the end of my days. I would gratefully acknowledge some of his gracious manifestations in this respect. Two individuals have, I trust, been savingly brought to the knowledge of God, and some few have, in other respects, been benefited. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.

      But though my ministerial duties are thus oppressive, I have reason to be thankful in other respects. I have a dear wife, whom I tenderly love, and God has been pleased to present me, about three months since, with a sweet and interesting little son. He is healthy, animated, and vigorous, and proves to me a source of comfort which, I must frankly confess, I but little anticipated. I feel I have an important deposit placed within my hands; but I trust God will enable me to train him for the skies, and then all will be well. We have named him “Cecil,” after our trusty, excellent, and most valuable friend. I should have preferred to have prefixed in its stead that of my good friend whom I am addressing; but its length, as well as the number of consonants which compose it, render it as a Christian name somewhat harsh and sonorous.

      Since I last wrote to you, I received a letter from our friend F—, of Trinity. It was the bearer of melancholy tidings; the cup of this excellent young man seems to be composed of sorrows peculiarly severe. He lost some time ago, as you will doubtless recollect, a tender father, under circumstances truly afflictive, and now he has lost his still dearer mother.

      He heard, by letter, of her illness, rode to Inverness, where she then was, without the least intermission; but when he arrived, she was dead. The weight of this calamity upon his mind, together with the accumulated pressure of temporal and domestic concerns, have caused him to pass through deep waters; but God has given to them a sanctifying influence: you would be truly gratified at the genuine stream of piety which pervades the whole of his letter. It characterizes a real child of God.

      I have lately been turning my attention towards botany. Should you ever be sending a packet to your brother, would you be so kind as to enclose me a few seeds of some of your choice and beautiful flowers; I mean those which are peculiar to your climate? You will favour me still further by affixing the names by which they are commonly known. If you have never amused yourself in this way, you will be surprised at the inexhaustible source of pleasure of which it is capable. I walked out with my Mary this morning through the adjoining country. We were pleased and exhilarated on various accounts; but our botanic pleasures were by far the greatest. Little, exquisitely tasty beauties were discovered by us, which before had completely escaped our notice; they lie before me on my table; and while I look at them, I am led to adore the Hand which so elegantly and ingeniously formed them.

      * * * * * *

      My best wishes and my constant weekly prayers attend you. I greatly love you—am tenderly concerned in your welfare, and shall always rejoice on being able to congratulate you on its realization.

      From your ever sincere Friend,

       G. M.

      About the middle of the year 1814, Mr. Mortimer was joined by a coadjutor in the curacy of Wellington, of a kindred spirit with himself, and one with whom he seems to have taken sweet counsel, walking to the house and service of God as friends. This was the Rev. John King, already mentioned in the preface. In a letter to his sister, on the 3rd of June, 1814, is this short notice of the event just referred to:—“My dear friend King has joined us—he is beloved by all.” In another letter dated the 30th of the same month, he mentions his great attachment to Mr. King, their delightful opportunities of studying together, and that he esteems his coming under his roof as one of the greatest blessings ever vouchsafed. His intimacy with this gentleman was formed at the University; “being introduced to him,” as he mentions in a letter to the writer, “the very first evening of his coming to college, and we have,” he adds, “ever since remained in the closest bonds of union.”

TO THE REV. J. ARMSTRONG.

       Table of Contents

      Wellington, Sept. 1, 1814.

      My very dear Friend,

      I feel thankful that a day of comparative leisure enables me to fulfil my engagement as to writing to you. It is the Lord’s goodness; and I cannot help considering it as one out of many thousand other instances in which prayer and simple reliance upon God tend most effectually to forward us in our concerns. I fear to trust my own unstable and treacherous heart, and therefore begged of God that he would graciously assist me; and, were I to do so constantly, how much better would it be for me! how many good plans and well concerted schemes, instead of being rendered abortive, would have been sped and prospered! But, trusting in the goodness of the plan, instead of the blessing of the Lord, and, at the same time, overlooking my own utter insufficiency, I have been manifestly left to learn lessons of dependence, through the unwelcome medium of failure and disappointment. But, after all the pains which a gracious God has been pleased to take with me, how slow I am to learn, how unwilling to become nothing, that God may become all in all. And yet this is the only way in which we can be either extensively or permanently blessed. We are dealt with as children; but on which of his children will a judiciously affectionate parent bestow the greatest honour? Not on the forward and self-sufficient. This is a spirit which he must chasten and subdue by patient and humiliating discipline. It is the child who is modest, distrustful, and unassuming, who is diffident of his abilities, and afraid of leaning to his own understanding, that will meet with the countenance and support of the wise and tender father. But to one of a contrary temper, such a mode of treatment would be ruinous, and, therefore, utterly inadmissible on the part of a parent whose affectionate heart was regulated by a sound and enlightened judgment. Ah, my dear friend, how often do we put it out of the power even of the tender Father of mercies to speed and prosper us! How much humiliating discipline are we incessantly courting by attempting to rob God of that glory which belongs to himself alone!

      A few evenings ago I received a letter from my agent in town, giving me an account of some loss which I had lately sustained. I took my dear wife with me into my study, and falling on our knees, we prayed to the Lord to bring us into a ready acquiescence with his divine will, and to keep us from every the least feeling of dissatisfaction or expression of complaint. СКАЧАТЬ