Your son Lindsay[451] is well: I receive letters from him almost every week.
Yours at all obedience in God,
S. R.
London, May 25, 1644.
[CCCX.—To Mistress Taylor, on her son's death. [Her son was a parishioner of Mr. Blair.]
(SUGGESTIONS FOR COMFORT UNDER SORROW.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—Though I have no relation worldly or acquaintance with you, yet (upon the testimony and importunity of your elder son now at London, where I am, but chiefly because I esteem Jesus Christ in you to be in place of all relations) I make bold, in Christ, to speak my poor thoughts to you concerning your son lately fallen asleep in the Lord, who was sometime under the ministry of the worthy servant of Christ, my fellow-labourer, Mr. Blair, by whose ministry I hope he reaped no small advantage. I know that grace rooteth not out the affections of a mother, but putteth them on His wheel who maketh all things new, that they may be refined: therefore, sorrow for a dead child is allowed to you, though by measure and ounce-weights. The redeemed of the Lord have not a dominion, or lordship, over their sorrow and other affections, to lavish out Christ's goods at their pleasure. "For ye are not your own, but bought with a price;" and your sorrow is not your own. Nor hath He redeemed you by halves; and therefore, ye are not to make Christ's cross no cross. He commandeth you to weep: and that princely One, who took up to heaven with Him a man's heart to be a compassionate High Priest, became your fellow and companion on earth by weeping for the dead (John xi. 35). And, therefore, ye are to love that cross, because it was once at Christ's shoulders before you: so that by His own practice He hath over-gilded and covered your cross with the Mediator's lustre. The cup ye drink was at the lip of sweet Jesus, and He drank of it; and so it hath a smell of His breath, and I conceive that ye love it not the worse that it is thus sugared. Therefore, drink, and believe the resurrection of your son's body. If one coal of hell could fall off the exalted head, Jesus (Jesus the Prince of the kings of the earth!), and burn me to ashes, knowing I were a partner with Christ, and a fellow-sharer with Him (though the unworthiest of men), I think that I should die a lovely death in that fire with Him. The worst things of Christ, even His cross, have much of heaven from Himself; and so hath your Christian sorrow, being of kin to Christ in that kind. If your sorrow were a bastard (and not of Christ's house because of the relation ye have to Him, in conformity to His death and sufferings), I should the more compassionate your condition; but the kind and compassionate Jesus, at every sigh you give for the loss of your now glorified child (so I believe, as is meet), with a man's heart crieth, "Half mine."
I was not a witness to his death, being called out of the kingdom; but, if you will credit those whom I do credit (and I dare not lie), he died comfortably. It is true, he died before he did so much service to Christ on earth, as I hope and heartily desire that your son Mr. Hugh (very dear to me in Jesus Christ) will do. But that were a real matter of sorrow if this were not to counterbalance it, that he hath changed service-houses, but hath not changed services or Master. "And there shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him" (Rev. xxii. 3). What he could have done in this lower house, he is now upon that same service in the higher house; and it is all one: it is the same service and the same Master, only there is a change of conditions. And ye are not to think it a bad bargain for your beloved son, where he hath gold for copper and brass, eternity for time.