Communication from Bro. Hutchins.
By A. S. Hutchins
BRO. SMITH:—I feel a desire to write you a few lines this morning; and I hardly know how to commence them. The question arises in my mind, Can I say a word to help or encourage you, or any of the readers of the Review? Perhaps the few words following, written more than one hundred years since, may comfort some one who may read them. They have comforted me in some measure. The writer, in speaking on the following text, "Mine iniquities have gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me," [Ps. xxxviii, 4,] says, "It is a sure sign that a man is awakened out of his sleep when he discovers the error of his dream." I think in some degree, since the stirring counsel to the Laodiceans began to be preached, I have been awakened to a sense of my situation. To say that I am fully awake to the solemnity of the time in which we live, I do not. But I firmly resolve to remove every obstacle which lies in the way of the door of my heart being opened, and thereby let the Saviour in. I have confessed, and still do humbly confess, my great lack of patience, my want of meekness, and of christian forbearance toward the erring, in the past; also my severity of language in administering reproofs and admonitions. The Lord abundantly pity, and freely forgive me, is my prayer; and the dear children of God also. I am here reminded that the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing them that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance, to the acknowledging of the truth. 2 Tim. ii, 24, 25. "When a man dives under water he feels no weight of the water, though there may be many tons of it over his head; whereas a tub half full of the same water, taken out of the river and sat upon the same man's head, would be very burdensome to him, and soon make him grow weary of it." May we not gather some instruction from this very familiar figure, respecting our past destitution, wretchedness, and blindness? I think we may. While it could be said of us by the faithful and true Witness, "And knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked," we felt but little troubled or burdened about our situation. The coming of the Lord was put off (may I not say?) further and further, every year; and the spirit of sacrifice was fast failing among us, and we appeared much like the world in many respects. Yet our condition was not especially burdensome to us. But when we learned our true condition, when we became acquainted with the mind of the faithful and true Witness, respecting the position we occupy, and began to arise from our deplorable state of blindness and misery, how heavy, how burdensome did our past sins of omission and commission appear! The thought perhaps here suggests itself to the mind, Well, I never can go through; I may as well stop here! Is it a fact that I have tried thus long to be a christian, and am I now found under five degrees of poverty and wretchedness? and to enhance my deplorable state, I knew it not? But stop not here, only sufficiently long to confess and forsake. Turn and follow the example of our Pattern in his strong and trying temptations. Said the Saviour to the tempter, "It is written" thus and so. Three times he uses this sentence, "It is written." "Then the Devil leaveth him, and behold angels came and ministered unto him." Praise the Lord, O my soul! Now in our strong temptations to stop here, we may meet the enemy with the words of God, and before these he cannot stand. "It is written," "Confess your faults one to another." "It is written," "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them, shall have mercy." "It is written," "Be zealous therefore and repent." Let me here say to each afflicted and oppressed brother and sister, let us try to heed these injunctions, and claim the blessed promise, "Shall have mercy;" and also the very precious promise in Rev. iii, 21. Then the Devil will leave you, and angels will come and minister to you. "Thy Word the choicest rules imparts
To keep the conscience clean."
A. S. HUTCHINS.
Mar. 13th, 1857.