“I heartily sympathize with you in your complaints; but I see you in safe hands. The Lord loves you, and will take care of you.
He who raises the dead, can revive your spirits when you are cast down. He who sets bounds to the sea, and says ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further,’ can limit and moderate that gloom which sometimes distresses you.
He knows why He permits you to be thus exercised. I cannot assign the reasons, but I am sure they are worthy of His wisdom and love, and that you will hereafter see and say, He has done all things well.
If I was as wise as your philosopher, I might say a great deal about a melancholy complexion; but I love not to puzzle myself with second causes, while the first cause is at hand, which sufficiently accounts for every phenomenon in a believer’s experience.
Your constitution, your situation, your temper, your distemper, all that is either comfortable or painful in your lot, is of His appointment.
The hairs of your head are all numbered: the same power which produced the planet Jupiter is necessary to the production of a single hair, nor can one of them fall to the ground without His notice, any more than the stars can fall from their orbits.
In providence, no less than in creation, he is Maximus in minimis, ‘Great in little things.’ Therefore fear not; only believe.
Our sea may sometimes be stormy, but we have an infallible Pilot, and shall infallibly gain our port.
I am,
John Newton”
–John Newton, “Letter IX – November 27, 1778” in The Works of John Newton, vol. 2, Ed. Richard Cecil (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 247–248.
