Aberdeen, June 16, 1637.
[CLXXXV.—To Marion M'Naught.]
(LONGING TO BE RESTORED TO HIS CHARGE.)
D EARLY BELOVED IN OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Few know the heart of a stranger and prisoner. I am in the hands of mine enemies. I would that honest and lawful means were essayed for bringing me home to my charge, now when Mr. A. R. and Mr. H. R. are restored. It concerneth you of Galloway most, to use supplications and addresses for this purpose, and try if by fair means I can be brought back again. As for liberty, without I be restored to my flock, it is little to me; for my silence is my greatest prison. However it be, I wait for the Lord; I hope not to rot in my sufferings: Lord, give me submission to wait on. My heart is sad that my days flee away, and I do no service to my Lord in His house, now when His harvest and the souls of perishing people require it. But His ways are not like my ways, neither can I find Him out. Oh that He would shine upon my darkness, and bring forth my morning light from under the thick cloud that men have spread over me! Oh that the Almighty would lay my cause in a balance and weigh me, if my soul was not taken up, when others were sleeping, how to have Christ betrothed with a bride, in that part of the land! But that day that my mouth was most unjustly and cruelly closed, the bloom fell off my branches, and my joy did cast the flower. Howbeit, I have been casting myself under God's feet, and wrestling to believe under a hidden and covered Lord; yet my fainting cometh before I eat, and my faith hath bowed with the sore cast, and under this almost insupportable weight! Oh that it break not! I dare not say that the Lord hath put out my candle, and hath casten water upon my poor coal, and broken the stakes of my tabernacle; but I have tasted bitterness, and eaten gall and wormwood, since that day on which my Master laid bonds upon me to speak no more. I speak not this because the Lord is unco to me, but because beholders, that stand on dry land, see not my sea-storm. The witnesses of my sad cross are but strangers to my sad days and nights. Oh that Christ would let me alone, and speak love to me, and come home to me, and bring summer with Him! Oh that I might preach His beauty and glory, as once I did, before my clay-tent be removed to darkness! and that I might lift Christ off the ground! and my branches might be watered with the dew of God, and my joy in His work might grow green again, and bud, and send out a flower! But I am but a short-sighted creature, and my candle casteth not light afar off. He knoweth all that is done to me; how that when I had but one joy, and no more, and one green flower that I esteemed to be my garland, He came in one hour and dried up my flower at the root, and took away mine only eye, and my one only crown and garland. What can I say? Surely my guiltiness hath been remembered before Him, and He was seeking to take down my sails, and to land the flower of my delights, and to let it lie on the coast, like an old broken ship, that is no more for the sea. But I praise Him for this waled stroke. I welcome this furnace; God's wisdom made choice of it for me, and it must be best, because it was His choice. Oh that I may wait for Him till the morning of this benighted kirk break out! This poor, afflicted kirk had a fair morning, but her night came upon her before her noon-day, and she was like a traveller, forced to take house in the morning of his journey. And now her adversaries are the chief men in the land; her ways mourn; her gates languish: her children sigh for bread; and there is none to be instant with the Lord, that He would come again to His house, and dry the face of His weeping spouse, and comfort Zion's mourners, who are waiting for Him. I know that He will make corn to grow upon the top of His withered Mount Zion again.
Remember my bonds, and forget me not. Oh that my Lord would bring me again amongst you with abundance of the Gospel of Christ! But, oh, that I may set down my desires where my Lord biddeth me! Remember my love in the Lord to your husband; God make him faithful to Christ! and my blessing to your three children. Faint not in prayer for this kirk. Desire my people not to receive a stranger and intruder upon my ministry. Let me stand in that right and station that my Lord Jesus gave me.
Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord and Master,