Queen’s, June 24th, 1810.
My very dear Friend,
YOU are now, Armstrong, engaged in an employment to which you have been
for years looking forward as the most pleasing in your life; your ardent
spirit could not bear inactivity in your Master’s service, and now your
wishes are granted, and you at last experience the blessedness of
sounding in the ears of a thoughtless and giddy multitude the glad
tidings of reconciliation through the death of our blessed Redeemer. I
need scarcely tell you that you have of late engrossed many of my
thoughts, and been the subject of many of my prayers. I hope that I feel
no _common_ degree of interest when I hear of any true labourer being
called into the vineyard of our Lord; and shall I be less concerned when
one of the dearest friends I have upon earth is called to a similar
employment? You are _entitled_ to my best of wishes; you have them
freely; and I have no doubt but the blessings of God will rest upon your
labours, and that many in that great and dreadful day of account—many
will arise from Melchbourn and Bletsoe, and declare in the ears of an
assembled world,
“I owe it to his care that I am here,
Next to Almighty grace; his faithful hand,
Regardless of the frowns he might incur,
Snatched me, reluctant, from approaching flames,
Ready to catch and burn unquenchable.”
O my friend, when I think of these inestimable blessings as connected
with the sacred office, I long to lay aside the drudgery of mathematics;
but I check myself; the future should employ but little of my thoughts;
how to improve the present should be my principal concern. Much is to be
done here as respects my studies, and much more as to the formation of my
mind, the subjugation of my tempers, and the sanctification of my heart.
I would, therefore, content myself with my present situation, and
endeavour to make it my chief care to prepare for death and judgment.
These awful concerns have, for many weeks past, engaged my mind more
steadily and frequently than for some years before. I seem to myself as
a dying man amidst dying men, and it is my aim to live accordingly. I
have heard you say, when you were at college, that retirement and your
Bible have afforded you some of the most exalted joys you ever witnessed;
these joys have been lately mine. I go up to my little room (which I
have fitted up and consecrated to sacred purposes _alone_), and there I
meet my God, find my Saviour precious, and experience the gracious
influence of the blessed Spirit. When my hours of retirement come round,
I joyfully lay aside everything in which I may be engaged; for I feel, I
know, assuredly and experimentally, that I am going up to commune with
the best, the most gracious and compassionate of friends. There I leave
all my cares and all my sorrows, and come down again to the concerns of
life with an unburdened, soberized, and tranquil mind. Blessed be God
for all his benefits! I had frequently looked forward to this last year
as the most trying of the three, and had imagined that if I found it so
difficult to keep my ground before, I should necessarily give way at
present; but JEHOVAH has been better to me than my fears, and I have
found the truth of that promise, “When thou passest through the waters, I
will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee;
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt, neither
shall the flame kindle upon thee.”
Believe me to be,
Yours, truly and affectionately,