L. Tyerman

“ Are we not called to come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ? Is a dwarf’s state of grace the full prize of our high calling? If this hope preys upon my feeble frame, I dare not cast it off: let me rather die a martyr to it than lose it. Why should there not be true martyrs for the hope, as well as for the faith of the Gospel? At all events, let us wait for the great salvation of God the Spirit. Against hope, let us believe in hope that we shall see the royal priesthood clothed with Divine righteousness, and all God’s saints rejoice and sing. ”

“ Love and good-will everywhere! Especially in the place where Providence has called us to cry, ‘Behold! what manner of love the Father has testified to us, in Jesus, that we, children of wrath, should be made children of God, by that only-begotten Son of the Most High, who was born for our regeneration, crucified for our atonement, raised for our justification, and who now triumphs in heaven for our sanctification, for our full redemption, and for our eternal glorification. To Him be glory for ever and ever;’ and may all, who fear and love Him about you, say, for ever, Amen! ”

“ Wear no more the old rusty coat of nature and self-righteousness. Send no more to have it patched. Make your boast of an unbought suit, and love to wear the livery of Jesus.
“You will then love His work. It will be your meat and drink to do it; and, that you may be vigorous in doing it, as I shall take a little of your wine for my stomach’s sake, take you a good deal of the wine of the kingdom for your soul’s sake. Every promise of the Gospel is a bottle, a cask that has a spring within, and can never be exhausted. Draw the cork of unbelief, and drink abundantly. ”

“ If you take Jesus to be your head, by the mystery of faith, you will be united to the resurrection and the life. The bitterness of death is past, my dear friend. Only look to Jesus. He died for you—died in your place—died under the frowns of heaven, that we might die under its smiles. Regard neither unbelief nor doubt. Fear neither sin nor hell. Choose neither life nor death. ”

“ Wait all day long for His glorious appearing within you; and, when you are together, by suitable prayers, proper hymns, and enlivening exhortations, keep up your earnest expectation of His pardoning and sanctifying love. Let not a drop satisfy you; desire an ocean. Do not eat your morsel by yourselves, like selfish, niggardly people, but be ready to share it with all. Let every one with whom you converse be the better for your conversation. Be burning and shining lights wherever you are. Set the fire of divine love to the hellish stubble of sin. Be valiant for the truth. Be champions for love. ”

“ Faith is the gift of God to believers, as sight is to you. The parent of good freely gives you the light of the sun, and organs proper to receive it. Everything around you bids you use your eyes and see; nevertheless, you may not only drop your curtains, but close your eyes also. This is exactly the case with regard to faith. Free grace removes, in part, the total blindness which Adam’s fall brought upon us; free grace gently sends us some beams of truth, which is the light of the sun of righteousness; it disposes the eye of our understanding to see those beams ”

“ Let the love of David and Jonathan, heightened by that of Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and our Lord, shine in all your thoughts, your tempers, your words, your looks, and your actions. If you love one another, your little meetings will be a renewed feast; and the God of love, who is peculiarly present where two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus, will abundantly bless you. Bear me still upon your breasts in prayer, as I do you upon mine; and rejoice with me that the Lord, who made, redeemed, and comforts us, bears us all upon His. I am yours in Him,
“J. Fletcher.” ”

“ I, who am an unprofitable servant! Would to God my eyes were fountains of waters to weep for my sins! Would to God I might pass the rest of my days in crying, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me!’ ‘All is vanity’—grace, talents, labours,—if we compare them with the mighty stride we have to take from time into eternity! Lord, remember me, now that Thou art in Thy kingdom!
“I have preached and administered the sacrament at West Street sometimes in the holidays. May God water the poor seed I have sown, and give it fruitfulness, though it be only in one soul! ”

“ The few professors I see in these parts are so far from what I could wish them and myself to be, that I cannot but cry out, ‘Lord, how long wilt Thou give Thine heritage to desolation or barrenness? How long shall the heathen say, where is now their indwelling God?’ I hope it is better with you in the north. What are your heart, your pen, your tongue doing? Are they receiving, sealing, spreading the truth everywhere within your sphere? Are you dead to praise or dispraise? Could you quietly pass for a mere fool, and have gross nonsense fathered upon you without any uneasy reflection of self? ”

“ Paul, ‘O the depth!’ Then, finding the manhood is again resorbed into the Godhead, you will gladly renounce all selfish, separate existence in Adam and from Adam. You will take Christ to be your life; you will become His members by eating His flesh and drinking His blood; you will consider His flesh as your flesh, His bone as your bone, His Spirit as your spirit, His righteousness as your righteousness, His cross as your cross, and His crown (whether of thorns or glory) as your crown. You will reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through this dear Redeemer. ”

“ Oh, what a day when we shall all be so filled with power from on high, as to go forth and prophesy, and water the Lord’s drooping plants and barren parched garden with rivers of living water flowing from our own souls; and when an ardent fire of Divine love will make us put our candle to the chaff of sin, and fire all the harvests and tents of the Laodiceans! ”

“ Can I in conscience receive what is devoted to the poor when I am not in actual want?’ I am not ashamed of living upon charity, but to receive it, without being an immediate object of charity, gives me more uneasiness than want could possibly do. And now I am deprived, for many months, of the unspeakable advantage of living upon Providence, and must live upon a stock, as well as the rich of this world! Is not this a lesson? And does not your generosity, Madam, bid me look to Jesus for poverty of spirit, without which all outward acts are nothing but pride, sin, misery, and lies? ”

“ Waiving the case of infants, idiots, and those who have sinned the sin unto death, was there ever a sinner under no obligation to repent and to believe in a merciful God? Oh, ye opposers of free grace, search the universe with Calvin’s candle, and among your reprobated millions, find out the person who never had a merciful God; and show us the unfortunate creature, whom a sovereign God bound over to absolute despair of His mercy from the womb. If there is no such person in the world; if all men are bound to repent and to believe in a merciful God, there is an end of Calvinism. ”

“ A year ago, I laid before you the horror of that sin, and besought you to leave it to Satan and his angels, and to act no more the part of an incarnate devil. Have you strictly complied with that request? Has not heaven been pierced with another fiery dart? Have not good men, or good angels (if any attend you still) shuddered at those imprecations, which you have used, perhaps without remorse?”
“But, perhaps, your conscience bears you witness that you are not a swearing Christian, or rather a swearing infidel. Well; but are you clear in the point of adultery, fornication, or uncleanness? ”

“ Thanks be to grace, however, I sincerely desire to be a living shadow of the Divine Man, who is truth and love incarnate. I sincerely desire to embrace those great and precious promises given unto us, whereby we may become partakers of the Divine nature. I will not rest in the first Comforter, so as to slight that other Comforter, who is to abide with us for ever. I want not only to see Jesus altogether lovely, but to feel Him altogether powerful and wise, both in myself and in all my fellow-Christians. ”

“ I know there is no argument in banter, nor conclusion in sarcasm, nor divinity in a sneer: such weapons I wish totally to discard; they are pitiful even for the world, but they are scandalous when used by a Christian. I hate such feeble aids, and will scorn to use them; they would defile my soul, and stab the cause I mean to maintain. The meek and dove-like disposition of Christ, I humbly hope will teach me, while I write, to pity, not to abuse, the mistaken; and meekly to deliver my sentiments, without having recourse to the low arts of slander and reflection. ”

“ Love always delights in the object loved. ‘Delight thou in the Lord,’ then, and ‘thou shalt have thy heart’s desire;’ for we can desire nothing more than the supreme good and infinite bliss; both are in God. When, therefore, we love God truly, we delight in what He is; we share in His infinite happiness; and, by divine sympathy, His throne of glory becomes ours; for true love rejoices in all the joy of the object to which it cleaves. ”

“ Make conscience then to maintain a sense of His blessed presence all the day long, and all the day long you will have a continual feast. For, can you conceive anything more delightful than to be always at the fountain of love, peace, beauty, and joy,—at the spring of power, wisdom, goodness, and truth? Can there be a purer and more melting happiness than to be with the best of fathers, the kindest of brothers, the most generous of benefactors, and the tenderest of husbands? Now Jesus is all this and much more to the believing soul. ”

“ A lesson I learn daily, is to see things and persons in their invisible root, and in their eternal principle; where they are not subject to change, decay, and death; but where they blossom and shine in the primæval excellence allotted them by their gracious Creator. By this means, I learn to walk by faith, and not by sight. Tracing His image, in all the footsteps of nature, and finding out that which is of God in ourselves, is the true wisdom, genuine godliness. I hope you will never be afraid, nor ashamed of it. ”

“ From the gilded palace to the thatched cottage, our guilt calls for vengeance. Wickedness is become so fashionable, that he who refuses to run with others into vanity, intemperance, or profaneness, is in danger of losing his character, on one hand; while, on the other, the son of Belial prides himself in excesses, glories in diabolical practices, and scoffs with impunity at religion and virtue. O England! England! happy, yet ungrateful island! Dost thou repay fruitfulness by profaneness,—plenty by vanity,—liberty by impiety,—and the light of Christianity by excesses of immorality? ”

“ The more nearly I consider death and the grave, judgment and eternity, the more I feel that I have preached to you the truth, and that the truth is solid as the rock of ages. Although I hope to see much more of the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living than I do see, yet, blessed be the Divine mercy! I see enough to keep my mind at all times unruffled, and to make me willing calmly to resign my soul into the hands of my faithful Creator, my loving Redeemer, and my sanctifying Comforter, this moment, or the next, if He calls for it. ”

“ Glad am I, Sir, that when you made so free with the souls of men you did not pass your philosophical sponge over the existence of the Father of spirits, the great Soul which gives life and motion to the universe. But, though you spare the Father’s dignity, you attack the Son’s divinity; you deny the sanctifying influences of the Holy Ghost; and, by hasty strides, you carry us back to a dwarf, mongrel Christianity, made up of materialism, Judaism, and the baptism of John. ”

“ It is to break the prison of corruptible flesh and blood, into which sin has cast us. It is to draw aside the curtain which prevents us seeing the Supreme Beauty and Goodness face to face. O my dear friend, how lovely is death, when we look at it in Jesus Christ! To die is one of the greatest privileges of the Christian.
“If Miss Ireland is still living, tell her, a thousand times, that Jesus is the resurrection and the life; that He has vanquished and disarmed death; that He has brought life and immortality to light; and that all things are ours, whether life or death, eternity or time. ”

“ But suppose that all creatures should stand for ever, little signatures 165of God, what are they even in their most glorious estate, but as tapers kindled by His light, as well as formed by His power? Now conceive a Sun, a spiritual Sun, whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference can be found nowhere; a Sun whose lustre as much surpasses the brightness of the luminary that rules the day, as the Creator surpasses the creature; and say, What are the twinkling tapers of good men on earth,—what is the smoking flax of wicked creatures,—what the glittering stars of saints in heaven? ”