Aberdeen, Sept. 7, 1637.
[CCXXXVIII.—To the Lady Gaitgirth.]
(CHRIST AN EXAMPLE IN BEARING CROSSES—THE EXTENT TO WHICH CHILDREN SHOULD BE LOVED—WHY SAINTS DIE.)
M UCH HONOURED AND CHRISTIAN LADY,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I long to hear how it goeth with you and your children.
I exhort you not to lose breath, nor to faint in your journey. The way is not so long to your home as it was; it will wear to one step or an inch at length, and ye shall come ere long to be within your arm-length of the glorious crown. Your Lord Jesus did sweat and pant ere He got up that mount; He was at "Father, save Me!" with it. It was He who said, "I am poured out like water; all My bones are out of joint." Christ was as if they had broken Him upon the wheel: "My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels." "My strength is dried up like a potsherd" (Ps. xxii. 14, 15). I am sure ye love the way the better that His holy feet trod it before you. Crosses have a smell of crossed and pained Christ. I believe that your Lord will not leave you to die your lone in the way. I know that ye have sad hours, when the Comforter is hid under a vail, and when ye inquire for Him, and find but a toom nest. This, I grant, is but a cold "good-day," when the seeker misseth Him whom the soul loveth; but even His unkindness is kind, His absence lovely, His mask a sweet sight, till God send Christ Himself, in His own sweet presence. Make His sweet comforts your own, and be not strange and shame-faced with Christ. Homely dealing is best for Him; it is His liking. When your winter storms are over, the summer of your Lord shall come. Your sadness is with child of joy; He will do you good in the latter end.
Take no heavier lift of your children than your Lord alloweth. Give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If your Lord take any of them home to His house, before the storm come on, take it well. The owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees before midsummer, and ere they get the harvest-sun: and it would not be seemly that his servant, the gardener, should chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at any season He pleaseth. They are not lost to you; but are laid up so well as that they are coffered in heaven, where our Lord's best jewels lie. They are all free goods that are there; death can have no law to arrest anything that is within the walls of the New Jerusalem.
All the saints, because of sin, are like old rusty horologues that must be taken down, and the wheels scoured and mended, and set up again in better case than before. Sin hath rusted both soul and body: our dear Lord by death taketh us down to scour the wheels of both, and to purge us perfectly from the root and remainder of sin; and we shall be set up in better case than before. Then pluck up your heart; heaven is yours! and that is a word which few can say.
Now, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and the very God of peace, confirm and establish you, to the day of the appearance of Christ our Lord.