01 June, 2008

Sabbath 1st June

I have come across this work by A T Schofield - Plain papers for young believers. I found it very well written, concise and practical. I especially enjoyed the second and third papers - The Two Natures, and Eternal Life. Reading the Two Natures paper, I was reminded of some good words from The Shorter Catechism Illustrated, by John Whitecross. I have just now looked it up;

"Two or three years before John Newton's death, when his sight was become so dim that he was no longer able to read, an aged friend and brother in the ministry called on him to breakfast. Family prayers following, the portion of Scripture for the day was read to him. It was taken from Boganky's Golden Treasury: 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' It was Newton's custom on these occasions, to make a short familiar exposition on the passage read. After the reading of this text, he paused for some moments, and then uttered the following affecting soliloquy: 'I am not what I ought to be. Ah! how imperfect and deficient. I am not what I wish to be. I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good. I am not what I hope to be; soon, soon, I shall put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was—a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, 'By the grace of God, I am what I am.' Let us pray."