Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/139

Rh thou art the only friend I have. To thee, O thou compassionate Father of my spirit, encouraged by thy gracious promises, I make application. Pity, O pity the destitute stranger; leave me not, I most earnestly entreat thee, to my own direction.

Thus did I pray, thus did I weep through the greater part of the night; dreading more than death, even supposing death an object of dread, the thought of engaging, as a public character. On the one hand, I discovered, that if there be a ruling power, a superintending providence, the account, given by the extraordinary man under whose roof I reposed, evinced its operation; that, if the heart of the creature be indeed in the hand of the Creator, it was manifest, that God had disposed the heart of this man to view me as His messenger, sent for the purpose of declaring the counsel of his peace to his creatures. On the other hand, I recollected, that the heart is deceitful, above all things; that the devices of the adversary are manifold; and that, had it been the will of God, that I should have become a promulgator of the gospel of his grace, he would have qualified me for an object of such infinite magnitude. If I testified of Jesus according to the scriptures, I well knew upon what I must calculate; the clergy, of all denominations, would unite to oppose me. For I had never met with any individual of that order, either in the Church of Rome, or elsewhere, who were believers of the Gospel, that God preached unto Abraham, that, in Christ Jesus, all the families of the earth should be blessed; nor did they, as far as I had known, embrace the ministry of reconciliation, committed unto the Apostles, namely, that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto them their trespasses; nor did they acknowledge the restitution of all things, testified by all God's holy prophets ever since the world began. To these doctrines I supposed clergymen in this, as well as in the country I had left, united in their opposition; and, convinced that there were no enemies in the world more powerful, than the clergy, I trembled at the thought of stemming the full tide of their displeasure. I was persuaded, that people in general, being under the dominion of the clergy, would hate where they hated, and report what they reported. Acquainted in some measure with human nature, and with divine revelation, I was certain, that, if I appeared in the character of a real disciple of Christ Jesus; if I dared to declare the whole truth of God, all manner of evil would be said of me; and, although it might be falsely said, while the inventor of the slander would be conscious of its falsehood, the majority of those who heard would yield it credit, and I should become the victim of their credulity.