M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I shall be glad to hear that your soul prospereth, and that fruit groweth upon you, after the Lord's husbandry and pains, in His rod that hath not been a stranger to you from your youth. It is the Lord's kindness that He will take the scum off us in the fire. Who knoweth how needful winnowing is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven, that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and self-love, and idol-love, and world-love, must be hammered off us, that we may thring in, stooping low, and creeping through that narrow and thorny entry.
And now for myself, I find it the most sweet and heavenly life to take up house and dwelling at Christ's fireside, and set down my tent upon Christ, that Foundation-stone, who is sure and faithful ground and hard under foot. Oh if I could win to it, and proclaim myself not the world's debtor, nor a lover obliged to it, and that I mind not to hire or bud this world's love any longer; but defy both the kindness and feud of God's whole creation whatsomever! especially the lower vault and clay part of God's creatures, this vain earth! For what hold I of His world? A borrowed lodging and some years' house-room, and bread and water, and fire, and bed and candle, are all a part of the pension of my King and Lord; to whom I owe thanks, and not to a creature. I thank God that God is God, and Christ is Christ, and the earth the earth, and the devil the devil, and the world the world, and that sin is sin, and that everything is what it is; because He hath taught me in my wilderness not to shuffle my Lord Jesus, nor to intermix Him with creature-vanities, nor to spin or twine Christ or His sweet love in one web, or in one thread, with the world and the things thereof. Oh, if I could hold and keep Christ all alone, and mix Him with nothing! Oh, if I could cry down the price and weight of my cursed self, and cry up the price of Christ, and double, and triple, and augment, and heighten to millions the price and worth of Christ! I am (if I durst speak so, and might lawfully complain) so hungredly tutored by Christ Jesus my liberal Lord, that His nice love, which my soul would be in hands with, flieth me; and yet I am trained on to love Him, and lust, and long, and die for His love whom I cannot see. It is a wonder to pine away with love for a covered and hid lover, and to be hungered with His love, so as a poor soul cannot get his fill of hunger for Christ. It is hard to be hungered of hunger,[393] whereof such abundance for other things is in the world. But sure, if we were tutors, and stewards, and masters, and lord-carvers of Christ's love, we should be more lean and worse fed than we are. Our meat doeth us the more good, that Christ keepeth the keys, and that the wind and the air of Christ's sweet breathing, and of the influence of His Spirit, is locked up in the hands of the good pleasure of Him who "bloweth where He listeth."
I see there is a sort of impatient patience required in the want of Christ as to His manifestations, and waiting on. They thrive who wait on His love, and the blowing of it, and the turning of His gracious wind; and they thrive who, in that on-waiting, make haste and din and much ado for their lost and hidden Lord Jesus. However it be, God feed me with Him any way. If He would come in, I shall not dispute the matter, where He get a hole, or how He opened the lock. I should be content that Christ and I met, suppose He should stand on the other side of hell's lake and cry to me, "Either put in your foot and come through, or else ye shall not have Me at all." But what fools are we in the taking up of Him and of His dealing! He hath a gate of His own beyond the thoughts of men, that no foot hath skill to follow Him. But we are still ill scholars, and will go in at heaven's gates wanting the half of our lesson; and shall still be bairns, so long as we are under time's hands, and till eternity cause a sun to arise in our souls that shall give us wit. We may see how we spill and mar our own fair heaven and our salvation, and how Christ is every day putting in one bone or other, in these fallen souls of ours, in the right place again; and that on this side of the New Jerusalem, we shall still have need of forgiving and healing grace. I find crosses Christ's carved work that He marketh out for us, and that with crosses He figureth and portrayeth us to His own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut, Lord carve, Lord wound, Lord do anything that may perfect Thy Father's image in us, and make us meet for glory.
Pray for me (I forget not you) that our Lord would be pleased to lend me house-room to preach His righteousness, and tell what I have heard and seen of Him. Forget not Zion that is now in Christ's caums, and in His forge. God bring her out new work. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 4, 1638.