# “Take hold of Christ’s hand” by Jonathan Edwards

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2025/01/31/take-hold-of-christs-hand-by-jonathan-edwards/
- Published: 2025-01-31T12:00:00-06:00
- Author: tollelege

_Northampton, June 3, 1741_

“Dear Child,

As you desired me to send you in writing some directions, how to conduct yourself
in your Christian course, I would now answer your request.

The sweet remembrance of the great things I have lately seen at Suffield, and the
dear affections for those persons I have there conversed with, that give good evidences
of a saving work of God upon their hearts, inclines me to do anything that lies 
in my power to contribute to the spiritual joy and prosperity of God’s people there.

And what I write to you, I would also say to other young women there, that are your
friends and companions and the children of God; and therefore desire you would communicate
it to them as you have opportunity…

6. Be always greatly abased for your remaining sin, and never think that you lie
low enough for it, but yet don’t be at all discouraged or disheartened by it; for
though we are exceeding sinful, yet we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous, the preciousness of whose blood, and the merit of whose righteousness
and the greatness of whose love and faithfulness does infinitely overtop the highest
mountains of our sins…

8. Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber
of the soul’s peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever
was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan’s whole building, and is the most
difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts,
and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under 
the disguise of humility…

9. That you may pass a good judgment of the frames you are in, always look upon 
those the best discourses and the best comforts that have most of these two effects,
viz. those that make you least, lowest, and most like a little child; and secondly,
those that do most engage and fix your heart in a full and firm disposition to deny
yourself for God, and to spend and be spent for him…

18. In all your course, walk with God and follow Christ as a little, poor, helpless
child, taking hold of Christ’s hand, keeping your eye on the mark of the wounds 
on His hands and side, whence came the blood that cleanses you from sin and hiding
your nakedness under the skirt of the white shining robe of His righteousness…

19. Pray much for the church of God and especially that He would carry on His glorious
work that he has now begun; and be much in prayer for the ministers of Christ, and
particularly I would beg a special interest in your prayers, and the prayers of 
your Christian companions, both when you are alone and when you are together, for
your affectionate friend, that rejoices over you, and desires to be your servant,

In Jesus Christ,

Jonathan Edwards”

–Jonathan Edwards, [_Letters and Personal Writings_](https://amzn.to/40xz3Iq) (ed.
George S. Claghorn and Harry S. Stout; vol. 16; [_The Works of Jonathan Edwards_](https://amzn.to/40xz3Iq);
New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1998), 16: 91, 92-93, 93, 95.. Edwards
wrote this advice to Deborah Hatheway, an eighteen-year-old new convert to Christ
who was without a pastor, in a letter of counsel on June 3, 1741.

More quotes from [Jonathan Edwards](https://tollelege.net/category/jonathan-edwards/)