Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 6 (1889-1890)

Lt 72, 1890

Harris, Albert

Sands, Virginia

November 10, 1890

Previously unpublished.

Dear Friend, Albert Harris

I sent you a letter while I was in Lancaster, and I now write you again, knowing that the Holy Spirit of God has not ceased to draw you. I would be a laborer together with God and would draw also with Christ. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 1

I am distressed over your long neglect of the great salvation Jesus has purchased for you, which He intercedes with you to accept. You seem not to regard His calls. Shall Christ have died for you in vain? I ask you how you can slight His mercy and be indifferent to His compassion and His love? I greatly desire you to give your heart to God, to make diligent work in coming back to God, whom you have separated from. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 2

Do tell me what satisfaction you find in a life of disobedience to Jesus Christ when He has given you every evidence of His love? How can you work on the Sabbath, and what account will you have to render to God for your disobedience of His expressed commands? I know you can have self-control if you will earnestly seek strength of God. You should change your companions. You should do this because such associates do you no good and you do them no good. You enter into temptation and are strengthening and binding yourself about with the cords of wrong habits which will become too strong for you to break. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 3

Will you give to the will and control of Satan the soul, the body and the influence which Christ has purchased with His own blood? Will you choose to continue such a life as you have been living? Oh, turn ye, turn ye; why will you die? Look where your feet are treading. You take not the counsels of the Lord, and you follow your own shallow fancies or the promptings of an unsanctified heart. There will be, even for you, dark and trying days when circumstances will not be as favorable to you as now. Jesus is the lover of your soul, and you may flatter yourself that at any time you can take up the mercies you have abused, but I entreat you to make no delay. Grieve no longer the Spirit of God, lest it shall cease its striving with you. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 4

There is nothing that you can offer to God so acceptable as your heart’s best and holiest affections; nothing can the universe of heaven look upon with such pleasure as a conscientious young man. He may be a power for good. Will you consider how stands your record in the books of heaven? Day after day your life is numbered with the transgressors. You [are] committing robbery toward God. Ye are not your own. You are bought with a price, even the precious blood of the Son of God. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 5

I want you to enlist in the army of the Lord as a soldier of Jesus Christ. You will not be able to resist temptation without a struggle. You will have to bear the taints and sarcasm of the profligate, the spendthrift, but what virtue is all their friendship? What profit have you derived from them? Have they in their influence made you a noble man in the sight of a holy God? All these evil things you may conquer if you will look to Jesus and trust in Jesus. He will heal all these stings of the serpent. You may look and live. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 6

It has been the fashion with you to heed the suggestions of companions who are profligate. This leads you to a life of folly and sin. God owns you. You are His property purchased with the price of His blood. Let no more of your life be spent in uselessness as far as God and heaven is concerned. Let not the record, the account kept of your neglect of God’s mercies and the turning away from His love, swell the list of figures that were stout against you. Will not the past suffice of ingratitude, of disregard of God’s claims? Is it not time [that] by repentance and prayer, you return to your heavenly Father? 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 7

Now give yourself to God and begin to work steadily and perseveringly for Jesus. Accept Him now as your personal Saviour. Make no half-hearted work, but give yourself to God. Believe that if you will ask Him for His pardon, He will give it you freely. Why let the years of your life pass, in so useless a way? Why spend your money for that which is not bread? Why, O, why, have you taken so little thought that God will require of you the talents He has lent you, with usury? 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 8

I was much gratified to see you looking so well, healthwise. This is a blessing from God for which you should render thanksgiving and praise to His holy name, who preserves you in your work that Satan shall not bring upon you accident, and shall not deprive you of the use of your limbs or what is still more valuable, your reason. He is [a] Watcher on your path continually, that the unfruitful tree shall not be cut down because of the prayers of your faithful mother and until mercy shall have been exhausted and He sees that you are joined to your idols. Then the word will go forth, “Cut the fruitless tree down for it is only a cumberer of the ground.” [Luke 13:7.] 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 9

How much of your wages, which is God’s money, have you returned to Him for the care and love He has exercised toward you in long forbearance and continual mercy? Think of the money that has passed through your hands and how little real good it has done you. How little have you helped your mother. From the light God has given to me, it has not been a tithe of what you have received from her. What can be worse than ingratitude toward your good mother? 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 10

Now I cannot endure that your record shall stand as it now is in the books of heaven. First, determine to give yourself to the Lord; next that you will render to the Lord His own in tithes and offerings, and thus disappoint the devil and no longer waste the substance of the Lord in selfish enjoyment and pleasure from which you reap no benefits. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 11

If you cannot keep your money invest it dollar by dollar in some wise enterprise. Lay out a certain portion each week. Send it to me, every dollar you can spare after helping your aged mother. I will send you my note and will let the interest accumulate and then ask you to donate it to [the] blessed work of putting books on present truth into families who are unable to buy them. You can, in this way, see an object before you of good. I will ask you now to donate a sum that you may choose for the benefit of those who wish to have a set of my books in their families and are not able to purchase them. You can do missionary work in this way. Carefully count out the wages you receive and then lay aside a certain portion every week and let me use it to make books, and I will give you my note for this money and you can thereby help me and I can help you. Will you do it? I am really in earnest. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 12

When I have been shown the means that has come into your hands and how little you have standing on the record books of heaven of this means being used for any wise end or any good purpose, my heart aches. I know you must meet this record in the judgment with shame and remorse. But change this order of things now. Your dear mother has been neglected. Money [has] gone foolishly to please your fancies and for your amusement which would have been a great blessing to her, and would have been a blessing to you. Shall this course of action continue? May the Lord awaken you to a sense of your duty. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 13

You have now and then done a little for your Mother, but a trifle, but you might have done much more if you had loved her and felt your obligations to her. Will you now seek the Lord? Will you make [your] mother’s heart glad? Will you cause rejoicing in heaven among the angels of God that you have committed the keeping of your soul to God as unto a faithful Creator? Why do the angels rejoice because a soul is saved, a sinner turned from the error of his way to seek the righteousness of Christ? Because Christ has not lost the soul for whom He died. Will it make Christ rejoice that you are saved? It will. Why? because He has not died for you in vain. There is more joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine that need no repentance. He gave His life that He might redeem you from the power of Satan, from eternal ruin. He wants you to be happy. He wants you to have a home with Him in His kingdom. He wants you to have a crown of glory, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 14

Now, my friend, I reach you my hand in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to help you, that your feet shall tread the narrow but royal path that leads to heaven and eternal bliss. You shall have my prayers. You shall have words of encouragement with pen and voice, and what more can I say? Jesus waits to receive you. His voice is heard in entreaty and invitation, “Come unto Me.” [Matthew 11:28.] “Let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me; and he shall make peace with Me.” Isaiah 27:5. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 15

While the hatred of sin with God is strong and full, His love for sinners is stronger still. His love is without a parallel. Satan has worked upon the minds of human beings to carry out the line of action commenced in heaven, and carried out in Eden, to make man believe that God does not love him, that He is a tyrant, revengeful and vindictive. The father of lies has worked on this line until the character of God has been so grossly misrepresented that men know not God. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 16

Jesus came to the world to represent the Father, to reveal His love, His forgiving power. Satan has been sowing enmity in the heart of man against God. He has tried to make good his lies; he has so perverted the character of God in the ideas of man and induced them to perpetuate all kinds of wickedness that Jesus Christ might fail and be discouraged in His work and the forbearance of and goodness of God worn out with the rebellion and stubbornness of the hearts of men. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 17

He [Satan] has thought possibly he might extinguish the last spark of mercy from God, and exasperate His justice to universally destroy the race, that he should then more ably cast reflection upon God. For thousands of years he has had almost full control of man by his deceiving, deluding power and his complicated machinery, keeping in motion the whole agency of evil, provoking every passion, seeking to control every intellect, and the whole mass of humanity seemed [to] lose a knowledge of God. But the Lord sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world, “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” “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.” John 3:16. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 18

“For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 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 every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.” John 3:17-21. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 19

Do not in appearance and influence be saying to the Lord, “Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” Job 21:14. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 20

The Lord Jesus invites you through His humble servant to return unto the Lord, to cease to do evil, to learn to do well. I feel anxious for your soul. I would make any effort in my power to save you. While many despise both the message and messenger, I have no evidence but that you have the kind, tender feelings toward me that all your actions have expressed. I cannot bear to have one soul perish, and have felt something of the Spirit that moved the heart of Christ when He exclaimed in broken utterances in an agony of tears as He looked over Jerusalem, “Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!” Luke 19:42. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 21

Here He pauses. Shall He pronounce the irrevocable sentence that when the sun shall set behind [the] hills, Jerusalem’s day of grace and mercy [shall be] past? Oh, how His heart yearned over the city, “but now they are hid from thine eyes.” A night settled upon them from which the gloom was never to be lifted. “For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side. And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” Luke 19:43, 44. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 22

Jesus gave His life for you. He has done all for you that a God could do, and what will be the end of those who neglect this great salvation? 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 23

In the death of Christ you have a testimony of His love for you. I value your soul because I see what Christ valued it. Then, I beg of you, do not withhold from Christ your soul. It is the purchase of His blood. God will give to man an evidence, overwhelming evidence, that He will accept his repentance, He will forgive his transgressions, and in pitying tenderness He invites you to come unto Him that you might have life. Shall He say, “Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” John 5:40. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 24

Jesus will accept you if you will only come. I leave these lines with you. I know not how you received my former appeal to you, but I trust you have candidly considered the things written in love for your soul. Please write to me. Address your letter to Brooklyn Mission, you can learn the address and I will be so pleased to hear from you. 6LtMs, Lt 72, 1890, par. 25