The account of A- in our August paper tells out, in all Christian simplicity, facts which show the way God may intervene by His judgments to deliver His children from the sad spiritual consequences arising out of want of faithfulness. A young Christian had allowed herself to be drawn into an offer of marriage by an unconverted man; her conscience testified clearly that she was acting against the will of God. But she could not stop at the first steps, and not having rejected from the very beginning, as an unfaithful act and a sin, the very thought of what was offered her, she had no strength for it afterward, and God had to take her out of the world to keep her from committing a sin she would not have wished to commit, but which she had no more strength to resist. O! how difficult, when once started on such a road, to stop on the way! If true affection recognizes God and all the relations in which He has placed us with Himself, it is absolutely impossible that a Christian should allow himself to marry one of the world, without violating all his obligations toward God and toward Christ. If a child of God joins himself to an unbeliever, it is evident he utterly leaves Christ aside, and he does it willingly, in the most important circumstance of his life. It is at such an hour there should be the most intimate communion of thought, of affection, of heart interest with Christ – and He is totally excluded. A common yoke with an unbeliever is taken up. The choice has been made to live without Christ. With set determination, one has preferred to do his own will and exclude Christ rather than renounce that will and enjoy Him and His approbation. The heart has been given to another in giving up Christ and refusing to listen to Him. The more affection there is – the more the heart is engaged, the more openly one has preferred something to Christ. What a terrible decision, thus to fix one’s self for life, and to choose for companion an enemy of the Lord! The influence of such a union must necessarily be to drag the Christian back to the world. He has already chosen to accept, as the most loved object of his heart, what is worldly, and the things of the world alone can please the worldly, though death be their fruit (Rom. 6:21-2321What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. 22But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:21‑23)). “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” What a horrible position, to be unfaithful to Christ, or to have always to resist, when the most tender affection should have established a most perfect union. The fact is, that unless God’s sovereign grace sets to work, it is always the Christian who gives up, and who, little by little, falls into worldliness; nothing is more natural: the man of this world has only worldly desires; the Christian, besides his Christianity, has his flesh, and, what is more, he has already renounced Christian principles to please his flesh, by joining himself to a person who does not know the Lord. Now the result of such a union is, that there is not one thought in common concerning the subject which should be the most precious to the heart, with the person dearest on earth and who is as a part of one’s self. Nevertheless, they will only have quarrels, as it is written: “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:33Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (Amos 3:3)). Otherwise, there will have to be a giving up to worldliness, and afterward having a taste for it.
But that sad result is not in view when the position which makes it inevitable is taken. The Christian is drawn in little by little; he is not in communion with his Savior, and he can find pleasure in the society of a person who is agreeable to him, without thinking of Jesus. When he is alone he does not think of praying, and when he is with the person he loves, his conscience or his Christian friends may warn him, but he has no more strength, and Christ has not power enough in his heart to turn him away from his course and make him give up an affection which he knows the Lord disapproves. He engages himself more or less by other motives, such as a feeling of honor. Alas! even more detestable motives are often the case, such as pecuniary interests, and conscience will be sacrificed, and the Savior, and, as far as lies in his power, his own soul, but at any rate, the glory of God. That which, at the beginning, seemed only a fancy, has become an ungovernable will.
There is another remark the history of this young girl leads me to make. The first impulse of a converted soul, no matter how sincere, produces quite another thing from the judgment of one’s self and of the flesh. This, in manifesting our weakness to us, makes us cast our burden at the feet of Jesus; then we seek for strength only in Him, and we have confidence only in Him. The confidence one has in Jesus, who knows and distrusts himself, is what gives him a solid and lasting peace – when he has understood, not only by doctrine, but in his heart, that Himself is our righteousness. But one gets there only through having been in the presence of God, and having found out before Him that we are only sin, and that Christ is perfect righteousness, God perfect in love. Henceforth, we distrust self; we fight it, and the flesh and the enemy have no more the same power to deceive us.
I do not think the young person mentioned in these pages had got through with self. There are many Christians in that state, and though we are all exposed to the same danger, yet such have particularly to fear the enemy’s cunning, because they have not learned to what extent flesh deceives, nor what a terrible traitor we have to do with. When one has learned all that, it may happen he will fail in watchfulness, but Christ has a large place in his heart and there is more calm and less of self.
Notice how deceitful the heart is and how it loses all power over itself when away from God. This poor young girl, while sinking deeper and deeper in the mire she was playing with, according to her own expression, was asking a friend of her mother’s to do all she could to remove the obstacles, and this woman, who had some piety, wondered that A. should want to marry an unconverted man.
How cunning and deceitful is our heart! What slaves an idol makes of us, inasmuch as, while we seek to avoid the danger, we take means to accomplish the thing we desire while we fear it. What an awful thing to get away from God!
This young person, before being entangled in this affection, would have turned away with horror from the very thought of such ways. When the heart has got away from God, it fears men more than God Himself. One can easily understand that God, who loved A. and by whom He was loved in the bottom of her heart, should have had to take her out of the world where she had no more the courage to return to the straight path. He has taken her to Himself. She died in peace, and through pure grace only she triumphs. While enjoying peace at his last moments, the Christian should always, in such cases, feel God’s intervention in allowing it to be so. What a solemn lesson for such as want to get away from God and His holy Word with a view to satisfy an inclination which would have been easily got rid of at its birth, but which becomes tyrannical and fatal when nursed in the heart. May God give the reader of these lines, as well as all His children, to seek every day His divine presence.
(Continued from page 217)