Worthy Sir, I beseech you in the Lord to give your soul no rest till ye have real assurance, and Christ's rights confirmed and sealed to your soul. The common faith, and country-holiness, and week-day zeal, that is among people, will never bring men to heaven. Take pains for your salvation; for in that day, when ye shall see many men's labours and conquests and idol-riches lying in ashes, when the earth and all the works thereof shall be burnt with fire, oh how dear a price would your soul give for God's favour in Christ! It is a blessed thing to see Christ with up-sun, and to read over your papers and soul-accounts with fair day-light. It will not be time to cry for a lamp when the Bridegroom is entered into His chamber, and the door shut. Fy, fy upon blinded and debased souls, who are committing whoredom with this idol-clay, and hunting a poor, wretched, hungry heaven, a hungry breakfast, a day's meat from this hungry world, with the forfeiting of God's favour, and the drinking over their heaven (over the board, as men used to speak), for the laughter and sports of this short forenoon! All that is under this vault of heaven, and betwixt us and death, and on this side of sun and moon, is but toys, night-visions, head-fancies, poor shadows, watery froth, godless vanities at their best, and black hearts, and salt and sour miseries, sugared over and confected with an hour's laughter or two, and the conceit of riches, honour, vain, vain court, and lawless pleasures. Sir, if ye look both to the laughing side and to the weeping side of this world, and if ye look not only upon the skin and colour of things, but into their inwards, and the heart of their excellency, ye shall see that one look of Christ's sweet and lovely eye, one kiss of His fairest face, is worth ten thousand worlds of such rotten stuff, as the foolish sons of men set their hearts upon. Oh, Sir, turn, turn your heart to the other side of things, and get it once free of these entanglements, to consider eternity, death, the clay bed, the grave, awsome judgment, everlasting burning quick in hell, where death would give as great a price (if there were a market, wherein death might be bought and sold) as all the world. Consider heaven and glory. But, alas! why speak I of considering those things, which have not entered into the heart of man to consider? Look into those depths (without a bottom) of loveliness, sweetness, beauty, excellency, glory, goodness, grace, and mercy, that are in Christ; and ye shall then cry down the whole world, and all the glory of it, even when it is come to the summer-bloom; and ye shall cry, "Up with Christ, up with Christ's Father, up with eternity of glory!" Sir, there is a great deal less sand in your glass than when I saw you, and your afternoon is nearer even-tide now than it was. As a flood carried back to the sea, so doth the Lord's swift post, Time, carry you and your life with wings to the grave. Ye eat and drink, but time standeth not still; ye laugh, but your day fleeth away; ye sleep, but your hours are reckoned and put by hand. Oh how soon will time shut you out of the poor, and cold, and hungry inn of this life! And then what will yesterday's short-born pleasures do to you, but be as a snow-ball melted away many years since? Or worse! for the memory of these pleasures useth to fill the soul with bitterness. Time and experience will prove this to be true; and dying men, if they could speak, would make this good. Lay no more on the creatures than they are able to carry. Lay your soul and your weights upon God. Make Him your only, only Best-beloved. Your errand to this life is to make sure an eternity of glory to your soul, and to match your soul with Christ. Your love, if it were more than all the love of angels in one, is Christ's due: other things worthy in themselves, in respect of Christ, are not worth a windlestraw, or a drink of cold water. I doubt not but in death ye shall see all things more distinctly, and that then the world shall bear no more bulk than it is worth, and that then it shall couch and be contracted into nothing; and ye shall see Christ longer, higher, broader, and deeper than ever He was. O blessed conquest, to lose all things, and to gain Christ! I know not what ye have, if ye want Christ! Alas! how poor is your gain, if the earth were all yours in free heritage, holding it of no man of clay, if Christ be not yours! Oh, seek all midses, lay all oars in the water, put forth all your power, and bend all your endeavours, to put away and part with all things, that ye may gain and enjoy Christ. Try and search His word, and strive to go a step above and beyond ordinary professors; and resolve to sweat more and run faster than they do, for salvation. Men's midway, cold, and wise courses in godliness, and their neighbour-like, cold, and wise pace to heaven, will cause many a man to want his lodging at night, and to lie in the fields. I recommend Christ and His love to your seeking; and yourself to the tender mercy and rich grace of our Lord.
Remember my love in Christ to your wife. I desire her to learn to make her soul's anchor fast upon Christ Himself. Few are saved. Let her consider what joy the smiles of God in Christ will be, and what the love-kisses of sweet, sweet Jesus, and a welcome home to the New Jerusalem from Christ's own mouth will be to her soul, when Christ will fold together the clay tent of her body, and lay it by His hand for a time, till the fair morning of the general resurrection. I avouch before God, man, and angel, that I have not seen, nor can imagine, a lover to be comparable to lovely Jesus. I would not exchange or niffer Him with ten heavens. If heaven could be without Him, what could we do there? Grace, grace be with you.
Your soul's eternal well-wisher,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[CXCI.—To Cassincarrie.]
[The mansion of Cassincarrie is a mile from Creetown, in Kirkmabreck parish. It stands near the road, just after you pass the stone quarries that help to build Liverpool. It is so directly opposite Wigtown, that from the windows we might suppose the godly proprietor looking across, and praying for the martyrs Margaret Wilson and Margaret M'Lachlan, in 1685.[309] This correspondent of Rutherford was probably the son of John Mure of Cassincarrie, who was the second son of John Mure of Rowallan. Had he been John Mure of Cassincarrie, elder, he would now have been on the borders of ninety years of age, as his eldest brother, William Mure of Rowallan, died in 1616, aged sixty-nine; and in that case, Rutherford would doubtless have enforced his solemn admonitions by pointed allusions to his advanced period of life. His son, therefore, is very likely the person to whom this letter is addressed (Robertson's "Ayrshire Families," vol. iii. p. 361).]