We have
been dealing with several births and pending births, and I looked up again this
letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to his Godchild written on July 13, 1834 , twelve days before his death.
My dear Godchild,
Years must
pass before you will be able to read, with an understanding heart, what I now
write. But I trust that the all-gracious
God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, who by His
only-begotten Son (all mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you from
the evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light, out
of death, but into life, out of sin, but into righteousness, even into the
“Lord our Righteousness”; I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of
your dear parents, and be with you as the Spirit of health and growth in body
and mind!…
I have
know what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more
refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can bestow; and with
all the experience that more than threescore years can give I now, on the eve
of my departure, declare to you…that health is a great blessing, competence
obtained by honourable industry a great blessing, and a great blessing it is to
have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of
all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a
Christian. But I have been likewise
through a large portion of my later life a sufferer sorely afflicted with
bodily pains, languors, and manifold infirmities; and for the last three or
four years have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a sickroom, and
at this moment in great weakness and heaviness write from a sick-bed, hopeless
of a recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal; and I, thus on the
very brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you that the Almighty
Redeemer, most gracious in His promises to them that truly seek Him, is
faithful to perform what He hath promised, and has preserved under all my pains
and infirmities, the inward peace that passeth all understanding, with the
supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His Spirit from
me in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the Evil One!
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And where
is my faith?
Yours & His,
DED
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