Edinburgh, May 27, 1653.
[CCCXLII.—For the Right Honourable and truly worthy Colonel Gilbert Ker.]
(DEADNESS—HOPES OF REFRESHMENT—DISTANCE FROM GOD—NEARNESS DELIGHTED IN.)
M UCH HONOURED IN THE LORD,—How it is with you may appear by your letters to some with us; but it is the complaint of not a few of such as were in Christ before me, that most of us inhabit and dwell in a parched land. The people of the Lord are like a land not rained upon. Though some dare not deny that this is the garden of the Beloved, and the vineyard that the Lord doth keep and water every moment, yet, oh! where are the sometime quickening breathings and influences from heaven that have refreshed His hidden ones?
The causes of His withdrawings are unknown to us. One thing cannot be denied, but that ways of high sovereignty and dominion of grace are far out of the sight of angels and men; yea, and so above the fixed way of free promises (such as, "This do, and He shall breathe and blow upon His garden"), as He hath put forth a declaration to His hidden ones in Scotland, that smarting, wrestlings, prayings, complaining, gracious missing, cannot earn the visits from on high, nor fetch down showers upon the desert. It may be, when we are saying in our graves, "Our bones are dry, and our hope gone," that temporal and spiritual deliverance may come both together; and that He will cause us feel, both the one way and the other, the good of His reign who shortly cometh to the throne. "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth." "In His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth." "He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper." "He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in His sight" (Ps. lxxii. 6-16). And though we cannot pray home a sweet season that way, yet Christ must bring summer with Him when He cometh. "There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon."
I know not if I apply prophecies as I would, rather than as they are. When the one Shepherd is set over them, even He who shall stand (oh how much do we lie!) and feed in the strength of the Lord, the isles (and this the greatest of them), which wait for His law, are to look for that; "And I will make them, and the places round about My hill, a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season: there shall be showers of blessing" (Ezek. xxxiv. 26). How desirable must every drop of such a shower be! And, "I will be as the dew to Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon" (Hosea xiv. 5, 6). And, "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" (Isa. lv. 13). "I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree, and the oil-tree" (Isa. xli. 19). "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring." And it shall be no lost labour or fruitless husbandry; "They shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water-courses" (Isa. xliv. 3, 4). But when this shall be in Scotland (and it must be) is better to believe than prophesy; and quietly to hope and sit still (for that is yet our strength), than to quarrel with Him, that the wheels of this chariot move leisurely.
Yet this can hardly say anything to us who do so much please ourselves in our deadness, and are almost gone from godly thirst and missing too, being half-satisfied with our witheredness. No doubt we have marred His influences, and have not seconded nor smiled upon His actings upon us. Nor have we been much of his strain who doth eight times breathe out that suit, "Quicken me, quicken me" (Ps. cxix.). So much are we desirous to be acted upon by the Lord as blocks and stones; and so prodigal are we of His motions, as if they were no better to be husbanded. But it is good that it is not in our power to blast and undo His breathings; His wind bloweth where He listeth. Could we but lean, and cast a quiet spirit under the dewings and showerings of Him that every moment watereth His vineyard, how happy and blessed were we! We neither open nor discern His knocking, nor do we feel His hand put in through the keyhole, nor can we give any spiritual account of the walkings and motions of Christ, when He standeth behind the wall, when He cometh skipping over the mountains, when He cometh to His garden and feasteth, when He feedeth among the lilies, when His spikenard casteth a smell, when He knocketh and withdraweth, and is nowhere to be found. Oh, how little a portion of God we see! How little study we God! How rarely read we God, or are versed in the lively apprehensions of that great unknown All in All, the glorious Godhead, and the Godhead revealed in Christ! We dwell far from the well, and complain but dryly of our dryness and dulness. We are rather dry than thirsty.