Anne Dutton's
Letters on Spiritual Subjects
Dear Friend,
I am glad the Lord enables you to believe that all your afflictions are
given in God's mercy, faithfulness and love—herein is the strength of a
believer's spirit for patient suffering. It is my joy likewise, that you
have the blessed experience that when nature is ready to cry out and faint
under affliction's pressing weight, grace is enabled to sing and triumph.
And believe this, that by all the dispensations of Providence, the Lord,
your own God, as the God of love to you in Christ, is bringing you up to
glory in that very way which infinite wisdom and grace devised and
foreordained, that is and shall be most for God's highest praise and your
highest bliss.
As you long to know and love Jesus more, your longing
soul shall be satisfied with an increasing knowledge of Him and love unto
Him here, until that which is perfect, with respect to both, shall come
hereafter. And as Christ now is altogether lovely in your view, though you
get but now and then a glimpse of His glory by faith in this distant state,
oh, what rapturous joy will fill your heart when blessed with sight, when in
His immediate presence you shall see Him as He is!
Believers who are perfectly justified before God have but
an imperfect knowledge and conscience-persuasion of that their complete
justification; and their personal standing in this grace is not fully known
to others, much less are the resplendent glories of Christ's
righteousness—that Godlike dress with which believers are richly
arrayed—comprehended by themselves, or by others with whom they converse, is
our present state of shortness and darkness.
The state of grace, as to sanctification, consists in a
begun fitness, by inherent holiness produced in our hearts and lives by the
regenerating and sanctifying work of the Spirit of grace, for the enjoyment
of Christ and of God in Him; in some glances of His glory cast upon us
through the gospel-glass, in a growing conformity to His image, and in an
answerable employment in His praise. Now, as glory
is grace made perfect, we may hence form some true notions what
glory is, in that it differs not from grace in kind but in degree. But as
our present conceptions about it are very imperfect, we must needs be very
far from thinking or speaking of it perfectly.
The souls of the saints at the death of their bodies, by
the Almighty energy of the Holy Spirit, are at once made perfect in
holiness. All sin, in its being and working, which remained in them before,
is then destroyed utterly, removed out of them totally and forever, and
their begun holiness completed, never more to be defaced. The sanctifying
work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts at first, which was perfect as to
kind and as to parts, as it extended as a principle of grace unto all the
powers of their souls, each of which was in part sanctified, shall then be
completed in degree, and all the powers of their souls sanctified perfectly
as entire faculties. The 'infant principle of grace begun' shall then arrive
to its full perfection, to the measure of the stature of the perfect new
man. And this perfect holiness is, and will be, their perfect, inherent
fitness for the state of glory, in the immediate vision of Christ and of God
in Him to a blissful eternity.
They see God's infinite perfections and glories, and in
all their various displays in nature, grace, and providence, and all in
subservience to God's highest praise, and their highest bliss. They live in
God, and dive continually into that boundless, bottomless, endless sea of
immense felicity, to the ages of eternity! But the glory of separate
spirits, at home with Christ, is, in this regard, much too great to be
conceived or expressed by a mortal's thought or word. "Eye has not seen, nor
ear heard!" Dr. Goodwin well says, "When we are taken to heaven, we shall
see God at once, with respect to the simplicity of His Being, as all that is
in God, is God; but with respect to the immensity of His Being, it will be
like sailing over an eternal sea, where every moment's sail we have a new
horizon." The fresh displays of Jehovah's infinite glories will fill our
finite capacities with rising joys, and present new wonders to our raptured
eyes, through the circling ages of a blessed eternity; for when we see
Christ, and God in Him, it will not be a bare speculation, an unaffecting
sight, but a soul-attracting display, that sweetly, strongly, perpetually,
will draw us into Him, that broad, deep, and endless ocean of glory, for a
soul-filling enjoyment. "And they will see His face, and his name
will be written on their foreheads." Rev. 22:4
And this beatific, facial vision of God and the Lamb,
will be transforming. "When we see Christ, Christ as He is, we shall be like
Him." And this transformation into His image by the vision of His face, as I
humbly think, respects all those internal, innumerable, various and endless
acts of our perfected graces, which shall be excited hereby to a vast
eternity.
And consequent hereupon, we shall be externally employed
in Jehovah's praise—in ascriptions of glory and blessing, salvation and
honor, wisdom and power, unto Him that sits upon the throne, and to the
worthy Lamb forever and ever! And a specimen of this worship of heaven we
have thus given, "And every creature which is in heaven heard I saying,
Blessing and honor, and glory, and power be unto Him who sits upon the
throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever! "
All the innumerable multitude shall continually and
eternally join in the worship of God and the Lamb, with the triumphant shout
of, Hallelujah! to which all the glorious angels round the throne join a
loud, Amen! All the glorified members of Christ's mystical body, from Him
the Head, shall be filled brimful of joy and glory, ineffably and eternally,
and all the streams of bliss, from Him the Fountain, shall flow down upon
all, and by all, into and through each other, and waft them all, in love's
endearment and joint-praises, into God, that vast ocean from whence they
came, that ocean of joy and glory—to a happy eternity. For all the displays
of the glory of God, which shall then be cast upon us through Christ, will
be made in the bright form of love, which will attract our spirits as so
many tongues of fire in continual ascension to join with His infinite and
eternal flame!
Our communion with God, as the God of love, will be full
and immediate, uninterrupted and eternal. Yes, we shall then love God for
Himself, first and principally in all His essential perfections and infinite
glories, and in all their bright displays, chiefly in that God is glorified
thereby. We shall love His glory in our salvation, above our own happiness
therein, and rejoice in our felicity, as it redounds to Jehovah's glory—His
manifestative glory. We shall interest ourselves in God's glory, and rejoice
forever in His essential, immense, and eternal bliss.
And passing out of our little selves into the
great God, we shall live in Him, and bathe in His immense pleasures, that
vast and endless ocean of felicity unknown. And full it must needs be, to
fill all the vessels of mercy to the utmost of their finite capacities, with
ineffable and endless joy and glory, since it is full for God Himself to a
boundless eternity. We shall then, by glory-union, be "in the Son and in the
Father," encompassed round with a vast ocean of bliss, immense and endless,
and that not simply as single persons, but as a body collectively, unto
eternal praise, in which the innumerable company of holy angels will join
with their eternal adorations and loud acclamations!
But, what the joys and glories of Christ's righteousness
upon us, clearly and constantly beheld by us—of perfect holiness in
principle within us; of immediate vision and full fruition of God the Lamb;
of a full conformity to His image in the internal acts of perfected graces;
of an eternal dedication to His eternal praise, together with a full and
eternal communion with saints and angels—will be in their own vast
greatness, nothing less than the state of glory itself can inform us.
This, my dear friend, is a weak essay to lisp out the
ineffable felicity of happy spirits IN a separate state. But oh, how small a
part of it can be told! It is a subject fit for our admiration, but far
surpasses all expression. And until we also are blessed with sight, we are
called to live by faith.
That "your fellowship with the Father, and with His Son
Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit," may more and more increase unto a growing
conformity to the divine image, and a more constant employ in Jehovah's
praise, until you are called to inherit eternal bliss, is my hearty desire.