A SMALL MEMENTO OF FREDERICK TRYON

My dear Friend,

… I am persuaded that we err in looking too much within; we expect that if we were right in the Lord’ s eyes we should be different and feel different to what we do. We make confessions of our sinfulness and unworthiness, and mourn over our barrenness, but we err in not laying more stress upon the Father’ s report of His Son, and of what He gave in giving Him —

“Pore not on thyself too long,
Lest it sink thee lower;
Look to Jesus, kind as strong,
Mercy joined with power.”

We make too little of God’s Word, as if that might only feed a notional religion; and we think we make more use of our doctrinal knowledge than we do practically, hence we glance over parts which need daily use. Christ is daily bread; His blood cleanses from all sin — each day, every day. His righteousness never fades, and we can never do without it. Our frames vary; He never changes. We need to turn the Word of God into food for prayer. Satan is ever ready to draw us from the faithful Word to our own thoughts, founded on our feelings. The very evil we should resist we are prone to yield to as if the only safe way.

To the last breath we shall be sinners; our only refuge is in the blood and righteousness of God’s dear Son. Our love.

Yours very truly,

F.T.

A PATERNAL PRAYER-CHAMBER

In his autobiography, Dr. John Paton, missionary to New Hebrides, describes the effects of his father’ s prayer-chamber. May the Lord grant many interceding parents also among us.

Our home included a mid-room, or chamber, called the “closet.” The closet was a very small apartment betwixt the other two rooms, having room only for a bed, a little table, and a chair, with a diminutive window shedding a diminutive light on the scene. This was the sanctuary of that cottage home. Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and “shut to the door”; and we children got to understand, by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about), that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place. We occasionally heard the echoes of a voice, pleading as for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tip-toe, not to disturb the holy colloquy. The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light, as of a new-born smile, that always was dawning on my father’ s face: it was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which he lived. Never, in temple or cathedral, in mountain or in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof.

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