THE REV. MARTIN HEIKOOP HIS LIFE AND LABORS

(Continued)

About this time the baby of his family had reached the age when she should be weaned from her mother’s breast. The doctor had insisted that this was absolutely necessary for mother and child.

One night as Heikoop lay meditating about his condition, the baby was crying for her mother’s breast. Displeased with its insistent crying which interrupted his rest, the father picked up the baby and placed it at her mother’s breast, saying, “There then, have your wish!”

While the child was now quietly nursing, these words from Psalm 103 came to his soul:

“His love is like a father’s to his children.

Tender and kind to all who fear His Name.”

With these words and with this family incident he was shown what the condition of his soul was. In his spiritual life the time for weaning had come, the time that he should not live only on the felt presence of God, but live by faith on strong meat. Hence the reason for the change in the life of his soul did not lie in any special sin, but in the allwise provision of his heavenly Father.

Just as his child had cried insistently for her mother’s breast and could not understand the necessity of weaning, so he had cried to God for the breasts of comfort without understanding God’s purpose. He also noticed the great contrast in which the Lord and he had exercised their fatherhood. He had been displeased with her crying and given her her wish, thus withholding the benefit of the weaning from her. Yet the Lord had shown His fatherly love by withholding the pleasure from his child and granting the necessary benefit.

By a path of conflicts also in respect to his office in the church, and by an act of faith which kept him poor in himself, the Lord would teach him that he still had a dual nature. The sinful nature that deceitful heart with which God’s people must struggle all their lives, again made itself more manifest.

In church life there were at times difficulties such as all church officers experience. Heikoop, however found them very hard to take. Besides this outward struggle, there was a voice within saying, “All your activity is only for self. There is nothing in it of the work of God.” Now he was told that the Lord had long since departed from the Church in Netherlands. It no longer existed as an institution of God. God’s judgment rested so heavily upon her because of all the schisms that the ministration of the Spirit was entirely withdrawn. Only the outward form without the essence of the church was there. Also the church he went to was but the work of men. How could they speak then of called ministers. Since the days of Van der Groe there had not been any. His own impression that he had accepted his office as elder from the Lord and that he would later be called to the ministry were only figments of his imagination.

With these and many other voices within, too many and unnecessary to enumerate, he struggled for a whole week. And he lent his ear to the accuser of the brethren. He even started to doubt the reality of those things which the Lord had given him to experience so recently.

Martin was less talkative among his friends, looked gloomy and was sullen. But they knew that was his character and accepted him as such. However, no one knew what was going on within his heart.

Sunday came. It was his turn to conduct the morning service. But he decided to take a definite stand and stay home. After all, the sooner that church disappeared, the better it was.

In the church, at least in the consistory room they did not understand his absence. They had seen him the day before. It must be something unusual that detained him.

In the afternoon some of his friends went to see what the trouble was. To their surprise they found him feeling quite all right in his everyday clothes. One of the men asked him why he had not attended the morning service.

(To be continued)

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