May Your Life and Health Be Long Spared

A letter to C. H. Spurgeon from the faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, on the great preacher's 50th birthday. They rejoiced in the good ministry of the London preacher and expressed their appreciation for him and doctrinal agreement with him. The letter was written June 27, 1884.

The undersigned professors in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, beg leave to offer respectful and hearty congratulations on your fiftieth birthday. We thank God for all that he made you and by his grace enabled you to become and achieve. We rejoice in your great and wonderful work as preacher and pastor, and through your Orphanage and your Pastor's College; as also your numerous writings, so sparkling with genius, so filled with the spirit of the gospel. Especially we delight to think how nobly you have defended and diffused the doctrines of grace; how in an age so eager for novelty and marked by such loosening of belief you have through long years kept the English-speaking world for your audience while never turning aside from the old-fashioned gospel.

And now, honored brother, we invoke upon you the continued blessings of our God. May your life and health be long spared, if it be his will; may Providence still smile on your varied work, and the Holy Spirit richly bless your spoken and written messages to mankind.

Life and Letters of John Albert Broadus, by Archibald Thomas Robertson, 1901, reprint by Gano Books, pp. 341-42.

So Live As to Be Missed

A selection from a letter by John Newton to John Ryland, Jr. The elder Newton, an Anglican, had a lengthy correspondence with the younger Ryland, a Baptist. Ryland’s letters to Newton have not survived but Newton’s letters to Ryland have. In this letter, Newton comments on Andrew Fuller, who had experienced a light stroke. It was an opportunity for Newton to speak of ministering faithfully so as to be missed when removed from the sphere of service to the Lord. The letter was written February 18, 1793.

I sympathize with Mr. Fuller, and shall be glad to hear that he is better. Should he be removed or laid aside it will doubtless be a loss to your denomination, and I suppose beyond that boundary. I hope that he and you and I shall all so live, as to be missed a little when we are gone. But the Lord standeth not in need of sinful man. And he sometimes takes away his most faithful and honoured ministers in the midst of their usefulness, perhaps [for this reason] among other reasons, that he may show us he can do without them. The residue of the Spirit is with him. And believers may confidently adopt Mr. Pope’s maxim, ‘Whatever is, is right.’ Blessed is the servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find so doing, with his loins girded up, and his lamp burning. Give my love to Mr. Fuller and pray for me that I likewise may be faithful to the end.

Wise Counsel: John Newton’s Letter to John Ryland, Jr., edited by Grant Gordon, The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009, letter #59, pp. 279-80.

A Heart of Holy Gratitude

A selection from a letter by Mary Winslow (1774-1854) to her children. She reminds them of the goodness of God in helping her to raise them in a godly home. In the space of a few short days, in the year 1815, she had lost a child in death and her husband. She was left a widow to bring up nine children. She cast herself upon the Lord for help and received a promise in her soul, as she said, “that God was MY God, and my children’s God, and that He would fulfil His word of promise to me and mine. I felt assured that God would not only be a Father to my fatherless ones, but also a Husband to their widowed mother.” No date is given for the letter but it was written when her children were grown.

And now, my beloved children, trace the faithfulness and loving-kindness of God. Compare that period with the present. How was it then? How is it now? Has God not to the letter fulfilled that promise? He has been to you all a Father, and to me, in its fullest sense, the God and Husband of the widow. He has watched over you, spared and protected you, has been your Father, Benefactor, and Friend. Again and again, when you have travelled by land or by sea, when calamity has threatened, or sorrow has bowed you, have I retired to my room and pleaded this promise on your behalf, and He has answered.

I can truly say that in no instance have I called upon the Lord and He has failed me. Oh that He might cause you to lie low in the dust before Him, and give you each a heart of holy gratitude, that the remainder of your days may be devoted to His glory. Beware of tracing you blessings and your deliverances to second causes, lest the Lord Himself rebuke you for this sin.

Heaven Opened: A Selection from the Correspondence of Mrs. Mary Winslow, edited by her son, Octavius Winslow, 1864, reprinted by Reformation Heritage Books, 2001, p. 339.

Cause to Bless and Adore God

A portion of a letter by Henry Venn, Church of England minister, to a friend in the ministry, Rev. James Stillingfleet. Several regular attendees had moved away and numbers were low at Lord’s Day meetings, but he continued to preach faithfully and cry out to God for blessing. Great blessing had attended his ministry in a former church in Yorkshire, but the church he was now minister of in Huntingdonshire, was not as responsive to the Word. The letter was written October 9, 1782.

My small parish is very much altered for the worse, within these few years. Three farmers, in whose families there were some hopeful hearers, are removed; and a fourth is upon the point of removing. They have been succeeded by men of a very profane spirit: scarcely will they ever come to church. To this add the departure of a few, in the faith of Christ, I trust. I preach therefore, now, to a handful of people indeed! However, I have cause to bless and adore God, that I can and do cry unto Him, to awake, and glorify His word; and wait in hope He will, before it is long, come down and work mightily, for His own Name’s sake.

Letters of Henry Venn, by John Venn, first published in 1835, republished by the Banner of Truth, 1993, p. 351.