January 16, 1841.
It is a small thing to say, my dear sister, that I have my little visits to you in sweet remembrance, when we used to speak together of that blessed One who had united us. Sad it is that the heart should ever be dull and cold—but oh, its stupidity, its lifelessness, its distance from the atmosphere of the Canticles, is known and felt every day; the shallowness and narrowness of the flowing of the Spirit through us are well understood in the secret of the soul within us. I am not sure that we have not been a little hasty after knowledge, and the soul in its search has not been given space to pour itself out over the word with sufficient desire. Better to break the heart over one truth than get many truths in the mind. But you, beloved sister, may not be so sensitive of this as I am. Your retirement has its privations, but it has its many holy advantages also. But, indeed, we know also the high blessedness of speaking of the precious Word of God, and were it not for the contending of wretched carnal affection, the joy of such occupation would be unmixed. But oh, the vanity, the strife, the disorder, that the flesh casts up! May the Lord be with you, my dear sister, and so plead with the pains of nature as to give you more ease. The bigger the cloud swelled over Job—though he judged it big with rain, and wind, and lightning—it was only the fuller of blessing for him at last, for the flocks that were scattered by it were replaced with larger, and the children who were slain by it were succeeded by fairer ones. And instead of being habituated to look at God as at the source of human sorrows, should we not the rather remember the griefs of Jesus over them, and in these griefs and tears see the divine mind, while contemplating such a scene of travail in pain as this whole creation is?
I have considered some of the scriptures, dear sister. The Lord keep us that our growth in knowledge may be healthful. In many souls I believe knowledge is doing mischief rather than good.
1 Samuel 1-8
There is a beautiful line of truth through 1 Samuel 1-8. It was a time of the full ruin of the whole system, standing, as it then did, in man's strength, and its restoration by the sovereign grace and power of God, who takes up the barren woman, and the babe, and suckling, to be the vessels and instruments of His gracious working. In the course of all this, the people are brought to repentance, and confession, and the sign of this is, the mystic action of spilling the water on the ground, denoting the good-for-nothingness of flesh, that all it is fit for is to return to the dust out of which it came. Jesus speaks of being "poured out like water," "brought into the dust of death" (Psa. 22).
I would just take leave to aid your meditations on this lovely scripture by the following short analysis of it.
Chap. 1. Israel's personal inability is here presented in a mystery, and God's interference in grace.
Chap. 2. Israel's progress in sin, while the Lord is preparing His mercy.
Chap. 3. The Lord gets His instrument of mercy and salvation ready.
Chap. 4. Israel's ruin.
Chap. 5-6. God rises to plead His own cause, the glory of His own name against the enemy, though His people had sold it.
Chap. 7. The Lord's instrument, already prepared for mercy and salvation, does its work effectually, and Ebenezer is raised.
Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33
It is natural to contrast these passages; but I understand a decided difference in the words of Jacob and of Moses over the twelve—the one regarded them as children, and the other as tribes of the Lord; the one was anticipating their own conduct and history, the other was putting them severally in that place of honor and blessing which God had settled and secured for them. Thus, in the words of Moses, you get nothing but blessing. No mention of any fault or evil of their own, but God disposing of them all according to His own purpose of grace. It is the tribes under the covenant of promise in the latter day. There may be, and are, divers glories among them, but all are blessed. No mention of any evil they had committed. All that is forgotten. Jehovah findeth none. No iniquity in Jacob—no perverseness in Israel. Their tents are all goodly, under the favor and light of the Lord! It is the blessing, as from mount Gerizim, being under God's covenant, as just before it was the curse from Ebal under their own (Deut. 28). And on the mount, as it were, the God of Jeshurun riding in his magnificence for their help. Happy are such a people. But Jacob anticipates their ways, ways which they have already, generally, ran, and ended; sin, shame, loss, apostasy, marking nearly all, more or less.
"From thence," in the prophetic word on Joseph I understand to mean this, that from the one whom the archers: had shot at comes the stone and shepherd of Israel; i.e., the glories of Jesus result from His sufferings, as typified in the history of Joseph. Not that Christ came from Joseph as a tribe, but follows him as a type. I do not see that the stone here has connection with the pillar in chapter 28. But the stone is a great title of Christ in Scripture—the foundation or chief corner-stone—the disallowed stone—the head of the corner that is to break the image in pieces—the living and the precious stone. And I judge, as the stone in these its different aspects, it might be thus presented. First. He came to Israel as the Foundation-stone, but was rejected by them. The builders would not use Him. Secondly. Being rejected or disallowed by Israel and the earth, He has been lifted up as the Head of the corner, communicating the life and the preciousness that He has to all who will by faith own and use Him in His disallowed condition, and thus they become living stones and precious stones like Himself (1 Pet. 2). He communicates His life and value to them. Thirdly and finally, as Head of the corner—He will, after He has thus communicated His life and preciousness to all the stones of His heavenly elect house, fall on the great image, the full concentration of all those worldly powers that once rejected Him, and grind them to powder. The pillars were witnesses of God, memorials of His ways, standing, abiding memorials. Thus, "the God of Bethel" is Jacob's God, the God in whom mercy rejoiced over judgment. Jacob learned Him as such at Bethel and held Him in that character ever after—worshipped Him as such. Joshua erected the stones on the other side of Jordan, the very first thing he did, that God's' glory might be first provided for, that the inheritance of Israel might thus be taken first to God's praise; and then to the people's joy and blessing. As Noah, when he stepped out from the ark, first erected his altar and offered his offerings. And the pillar in the midst of the waters, as on the shores of the promised land, may intimate that Christ will leave the memorial of His power and victory in the place of death on the enemy, as in the regions of life and glory—as the graves were opened, as well as the veil rent, when the blood was shed.