Dear Lizzie [1876]:
Dear sister, Jesus is your helper. Jesus requires that we surrender ourselves unreservedly to Him. Will you tell me just how you do feel? I want to know whether you are indeed wholly the Lord’s. You are precious in His sight, and while you lie there a patient sufferer, how precious to know that Jesus is yours and that His grace will sustain you in your affliction. Something more is required of us all than an intellectual consent that Jesus is the Son of God.
I had a long conversation with Mary upon some of these points. She believed intellectually that Christ came into the world to save sinners. The Pharisees felt no need of a Saviour. Said Christ, “I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” [Mark 2:17]. It is those who feel their need of a Saviour, those who will by faith give the full consent of their hearts to receive Christ because they have personal need of Him. If we do not do this we cannot believe in Jesus in a saving sense.
All our rebellion against God’s plans arises from the fact that salvation is a free gift. Only believe in the merits of the blood of Christ and cling to Jesus as your Saviour. If your mind is convinced in regard to the doctrine, accept that which you do see, receive every ray of light which Heaven has given you. You have nought to do with whether others accept or not. You must believe for yourself and not make others your criterion. You cannot purchase salvation. When you accept Christ it will be under the sense of your inability to save yourself by your own righteousness. Said I, Dear sister, I am acquainted somewhat with your righteousness and your standard of goodness and both are pitiful indeed. They are no better than any poor sinner’s. When you can from the heart sing “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee. . . .In my hand no price I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling” then you have learned the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I told her sin was not man’s misfortune but his guilt. Man was not a sinner because of circumstances, or his education or his temperament, but from deliberate choice. “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved” [John 3:19, 20]. We must meet God in the judgment. What excuse can you there offer why you have not given Him your heart, your best and holiest affections? You put a plaster on your conscience by greedily presenting before those who converse with you, professors who have fallen into sin and disgraced themselves and the church.
I said, Mary, I tell you frankly that it is with great satisfaction you present these marked cases before me as though they were an excuse for your neglect to act upon that which you admit is truth and light. Will you dare to offer any such excuse to your Maker, the Judge of all the world? You are reasoning on Satan’s side of the question. He was an apostate. He fell from his holy state of purity, he became an accuser of those who believed in and accepted Christ.
The hands that were nailed to the cross for you are stretched out to save you. . . . Will you give yourself in trusting faith to Jesus?
Another plea
Dear Sister Lizzie [April 8, 1883]:
I have felt fearful I should never meet you and my remaining sisters in this world again, but it may be that the Lord will grant us another opportunity. I greatly desire this if it is for His glory. I have been fearful one or both of us might fall by death.
I have had special seasons of most earnest prayer that you would take a decided stand for Jesus. I know you love the Saviour, but I want you to acknowledge Him openly as your only hope. I have asked this of the Lord. Will you tell me, dear sister, how you feel in this matter? Do you trust to your morality, or do you rely upon the merits of the blood of Christ? This is my only hope. I dare not trust in any goodness of my own as a sinner. I must come to Jesus with repentance and claim His merits as all-sufficient.
I do not want you to rely upon any human opinion. One says, “If I am only sincere, God will accept me.” Another says, “It matters not what a man believes, if his conduct is only right,” by which he means, if he is tolerably moral and does no criminal action, this will be enough. But all of these are making a fatal mistake. They all take the position that man is not utterly ruined and lost as to require a new nature, a new purpose which Christ alone [remainder missing].
Eight years later
Don’t you believe on Jesus, Lizzie [Feb. 21, 1891]? Do you not believe [that] He is your Saviour? that He has evidenced His love for you in giving His own precious life that you might be saved? All that is required of you is to take Jesus as your own precious Saviour. I pray most earnestly that the Lord Jesus shall reveal Himself to you and to Reuben [Lizzie’s husband]. Your life in this world is not one of pleasure but of pain; and if you will not doubt Jesus but believe that He died to save you, if you will come to Him just as you are, and give yourself to Jesus and grasp His promises by living faith, He will be to you all that you can desire.
To everyone inquiring, “What must I do to be saved?” I answer, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not doubt for a moment but that He wants to save you just as you are. He says to the Jews, “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” [John 5:40]. Let not this be said of Reuben and you, and your helper in your household. Jesus wants to save you, to give you peace and rest and assurance while you live, and eternal life in His kingdom at last. No one will be compelled to be saved. The Lord Jesus forces the will of none. He says to all, Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. The mind and heart given to Jesus Christ will find rest in His love. . . .
Then you, my dear sister, Reuben, and your attendant, have reason to hope in His mercy and to believe on Jesus Christ, that He can save you. Why? Because you are guiltless? No; because you are sinners, and Jesus says, “I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” When the devil whispers to you, There is no hope, tell him you know there is, for “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” What more could God do for you, more than He has done, to make you love Him? Lizzie, believe, simply believe that Jesus means just what He says. Take Him at His word and hang your helpless soul on Jesus Christ. . . .
The hands that were nailed to the cross for you are stretched out to save you. . . . Will you give yourself in trusting faith to Jesus? I long to take you in my arms and lay you on the bosom of Jesus Christ. . . .
You must accept of Jesus. He longs to give you His peace and the light of His countenance. Lizzie, my heart longs to see you trusting in Jesus, for He can give you His grace to bear all your acute sufferings. He loves you. He wants to save you.
