Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/108

98 love, certainly we are not; but God, all gracious, hath said, If any lack wisdom, let them ask of God, who giveth liberally, and upbraideth not. My heart is exercised by fearful apprehensions; this moment I dread to read, the next I am anxious to hear what the author can say. We will, therefore, lay this book before our God. There is, my love, a God, who is not far from every one of us; we are directed to make our requests known unto Him for all things, by supplication and prayer. God hath never yet said to any, Seek ye my face, in vain; we will then pray for his direction and counsel; and we may rest in the assurance of obtaining both. Accordingly, we entered our closet, and both of us, for we were both equally interested, prostrated ourselves before God, with prayers and tears, beseeching Him, the God of mercy, to look with pity on us; we were on the point of attending to doctrines of which we were not, we could not be judges, and we earnestly supplicated Him to lead us into all truth. If the volume before us contained truth, we entreated him to show it to us, and to increase our faith; if, on the other hand, it contained falsehood, we beseeched God to make it manifest, that we might not be deceived. No poor criminal ever prayed for life, when under sentence of death, with greater fervour of devotion, than did my labouring soul upon this occasion supplicate for the light of life to direct my erring steps. After thus weeping, and thus supplicating, we opened the bible, and began to read this book, looking into the bible for the passages, to which the writer referred. We were astonished and delighted at the beauty of the scriptures, thus exhibited; it seemed, as if every sentence was an apple of gold in a picture of silver; and still, as we proceeded, the wonder was, that so much divine truth should be spoken by so heinous a transgressor: and this consideration seemed suggested, as a reason why I should not continue reading. Can any thing good proceed from such a character? Would not truth have been revealed to men, eminent for virtue? How is it possible, discoveries, so important, should never, until now, have been made, and now only by this man? Yet, I considered, God's ways were in the great deep; he would send, by whom he would send; choosing the weak and base things to confound the mighty and the strong, that no flesh should glory in his presence. And, as my lovely wife justly observed, I was not sure, all, I heard of Mr. Relly, was true; that our Saviour had said to his disciples, They shall say all manner of evil of you falsely; and the present instance may be a case in point. "You have no personal acquaintance with Mr. Relly," said she; "nor do you know, that any of those, from whom you have received his character, are better