Grace be with you.
Your affectionate brother, in our Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen.
[CXXXI.—To Jean Brown.]
(HIS WISDOM IN OUR TRIALS—REJOICE IN TRIBULATION.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am glad that ye go on at Christ's back, in this dark and cloudy time. It were good to sell other things for Him; for when all these days are over, we shall find it our advantage that we have taken part with Christ. I confidently believe that His enemies shall be His footstool, and that He will make green flowers dead, withered hay, when the honour and glory shall fall off them, like the bloom or flower of a green herb shaken with the wind. It were not wisdom for us to think that Christ and the Gospel would come and sit down at our fireside; nay, but we must go out of our own warm houses, and seek Christ and His Gospel. It is not the sunny side of Christ that we must look to, and we must not forsake Him for want of that; but must set our face against what may befall us in following on, till He and we be through the briers and bushes, on the dry ground. Our soft nature would be borne through the troubles of this miserable life in Christ's arms; and it is His wisdom, who knoweth our mould, that His bairns go wet-shod and cold-footed to heaven. Oh, how sweet a thing were it for us to learn to make our burdens light, by framing our hearts to the burden, and making our Lord's will a law!
I find Christ and His cross not so ill to please, nor yet such troublesome guests, as men call them; nay, I think patience should make the water which Christ giveth us good wine, and His dross good metal. And we have cause to wait on; for, ere it be long, our Master will be at us, and bring this whole world out, before the sun and daylight, in their blacks and whites. Happy are they who are found watching. Our sand-glass is not so long as we need to weary; time will eat away and root out our woes and sorrow. Our heaven is in the bud, and growing up to an harvest. Why then should we not follow on, seeing our span-length of time will come to an inch? Therefore I commend Christ to you, as your last-living, and longest-living Husband, and the staff of your old age. Let Him now have the rest of your days. And think not much of a storm upon the ship that Christ saileth in: there shall no passenger fall overboard, but the crazed ship and the sea-sick passenger shall come to land safe.