[Lady Kilconquhar, whose maiden name was Helen Murray, being the third daughter of Sir Archibald Murray of Blackbarony, was the wife of Sir John Carstairs of Kilconquhar, in the county of Fife. Her mother, Margaret Maule, was of the family of Panmure. Their youngest daughter, Bethia, in 1656, married Thomas Rigg of Athernie. The house of Kilconquhar (called Kinneucher by the people) is near the loch and the village, with Elie not far off on one side, and Balcarras on the other. The loch with its swans, the woods, and the sea so near, make it a pleasant spot.]
(THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUL MOST URGENT—FOLLY OF THE WORLD—CHRIST ALTOGETHER LOVELY—HIS PEN FAILS TO SET FORTH CHRIST'S UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I am glad to hear that ye have your face homewards towards your Father's house, now when so many are for a home nearer hand. But your Lord calleth you to another life and glory than is to be found hereaway; and, therefore, I would counsel you to make sure the charters and rights which ye have to salvation. You came to this life about a necessary and weighty business, to tryste with Christ anent your precious soul, and the eternal salvation of it. This is the most necessary business ye have in this life; and your other adoes beside this are but toys, and feathers, and dreams, and fancies. This is in the greatest haste, and should be done first. Means are used in the Gospel to draw on a meeting betwixt Christ and you. If ye neglect your part of it, it is as if ye would tear the contract before Christ's eyes, and give up the match, that there may be no more communing about that business. I know that other lovers beside Christ are in suit of you, and your soul hath many wooers; but I pray you to make a chaste virgin of your soul, and let it love but one. Most worthy is Christ alone of all your soul's love, howbeit your love were higher than the heaven, and deeper than the lowest of this earth, and broader than this world. Many, alas! too many, make a common strumpet of their soul for every lover that cometh to the house. Marriage with Christ would put your love and your heart by the gate, out of the way, and out of the eye of all other unlawful suitors; and then you have a ready answer for all others, "I am already promised away to Christ; the match is concluded, my soul hath a husband already, and it cannot have two husbands." Oh, if the world did but know what a smell the ointments of Christ cast, and how ravishing His beauty (even the beauty of the fairest of the sons of men) is, and how sweet and powerful His voice is, the voice of that one Well-beloved! Certainly, where Christ cometh, He runneth away with the soul's love, so that it cannot be commanded. I would far rather look but through the hole of Christ's door, to see but the one half of His fairest and most comely face (for He looketh like heaven!), suppose I should never win in to see His excellency and glory to the full, than enjoy the flower, the bloom, and the chiefest excellency of the glory and riches of ten worlds. Lord, send me, for my part, but the meanest share of Christ that can be given to any of the indwellers of the New Jerusalem. But I know my Lord is no niggard: He can, and it becometh Him well to give more than my narrow soul can receive. If there were ten thousand thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all. Christ is a well of life; but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom? This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one. And oh, what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely, ravishing One, is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the garden of Eden in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness, in one: oh, what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths. Oh, but Christ is heaven's wonder, and earth's wonder! What marvel that His bride saith (Cant. v. 16), "He is altogether lovely!" Oh that black souls will not come and fetch all their love to this fair One! Oh, if I could invite and persuade thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand of Adam's sons, to flock about my Lord Jesus, and to come and take their fill of love! Oh, pity for evermore, that there should be such a one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency and sweetness, and so few to take Him! Oh, oh, ye poor, dry, and dead souls, why will ye not come hither with your toom vessels, and your empty souls, to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your toom vessels? Oh that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, so pinched, so ebb, and so void of all happiness. And yet men will not take Him! They lose their love miserably, who will not bestow it upon this lovely One. Alas! these five thousand years, Adam's fools, his waster (Prov. xviii. 9) heirs, have been wasting and lavishing out their love and their affections upon black lovers, and black harlots, upon bits of dead creatures, and broken idols, upon this and that feckless creature; and have not brought their love and their heart to Jesus. Oh, pity, that Fairness hath so few lovers! Oh, wo, wo to the fools of this world, who run by Christ to other lovers! Oh, misery, misery, misery, that comeliness can scarce get three or four hearts in a town or country! Oh that there is so much spoken, and so much written, and so much thought of creature vanity; and so little spoken, so little written, and so little thought of my great, and incomprehensible, and never enough wondered at Lord Jesus! Why should I not curse this forlorn and wretched world, that suffereth my Lord Jesus to lie His lone? O damned souls! O miskenning world! O blind, O beggarly and poor souls! O bewitched fools! what aileth you at Christ, that you run so from Him? I dare not challenge providence, that there are so few buyers, and so little sale for such an excellent one as Christ. (O the depth, and, O the height of my Lord's ways, that pass finding out!) But oh, if men would once be wise, and not fall so in love with their own hell as to pass by Christ, and misken Him! But let us come near, and fill ourselves with Christ, and let His friends drink, and be drunken, and satisfy our hollow and deep desires with Jesus. Oh, come all and drink at this living well; come, drink and live for evermore; come, drink and welcome! "Welcome," saith our fairest Bridegroom. No man getteth Christ with ill will; no man cometh and is not welcome. No man cometh and rueth his voyage; all men speak well of Christ who have been at Him: men and angels who know Him will say more than I dow do, and think more of Him than they can say. Oh, if I were misted and bewildered in my Lord's love! Oh, if I were fettered and chained to it! Oh, sweet pain, to be pained for a sight of Him! Oh, living death, oh, good death, oh, lovely death, to die for love of Jesus! Oh that I should have a sore heart, and a pained soul, for the want of this and that idol! Wo, wo to the mistakings of my miscarrying heart, that gapeth and crieth for creatures, and is not pained, and cut, and tortured, and in sorrow, for the want of a soul's-fill of the love of Christ! Oh that Thou wouldst come near, my Beloved! O my fairest One why standeth Thou afar! Come hither, that I may be satiated with Thy excellent love. Oh for a union! oh for a fellowship with Jesus! Oh that I could buy with a price that lovely One, even suppose that hell's torments for a while were the price! I cannot believe but Christ will rue upon His pained lovers, and come and ease sick hearts, who sigh and swoon for want of Christ. Who dow bide Christ's love to be nice? What heaven can be there liker to hell, than to lust, and green, and dwine, and fall a swoon for Christ's love, and to want it? Is not this hell and heaven woven through-other? Is not this pain and joy, sweetness and sadness, to be in one web, the one the weft, the other the warp? Therefore, I would that Christ would let us meet and join together, the soul and Christ in each other's arms. Oh what meeting is like this, to see blackness and beauty, contemptibleness and glory, highness and baseness, even a soul and Christ, kiss each other! Nay, but when all is done, I may be wearied in speaking and writing; but, oh, how far am I from the right expression of Christ or His love? I can neither speak nor write feeling, nor tasting, nor smelling: come feel, and smell, and taste Christ and His love, and ye shall call it more than can be spoken. To write how sweet the honeycomb is, is not so lovely as to eat and suck the honeycomb. One night's rest in a bed of love with Christ will say more than heart can think, or tongue can utter. Neither need we fear crosses, nor sigh nor be sad for anything that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ. Our crosses will never draw blood of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and peace of conscience. Our joy is laid up in such a high place, as temptations cannot climb up to take it down. This world may bost Christ, but they dare not strike; or, if they strike, they break their arm in fetching a stroke upon a rock. Oh that we could put our treasures in Christ's hand, and give him our gold to keep, and our crown. Strive, Mistress, to thring through the thorns of this life, to be at Christ. Tine not sight of Him in this cloudy and dark day. Sleep with Him in your heart in the night. Learn not at the world to serve Christ, but speer at Himself the way; the world is a false copy, and a lying guide to follow.
Remember my love to your husband. I wish all to him that I have written here. The sweet presence, the long-lasting good-will of our God, the warmly and lovely comforts of our Lord Jesus, be with you. Help me His prisoner in your prayers; for I remember you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, August 8, 1637