LXXXVIII.--_To_ JANET KENNEDY.
[This seems to be the wife of Mr. John Fergushill; see Letter
CXII.]
(_CHRIST TO BE KEPT AT EVERY SACRIFICE--HIS INCOMPARABLE LOVELINESS._)
MISTRESS,--Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Ye are not a little
obliged to His rich grace, who hath separated you for Himself, and for
the promised inheritance with the saints in light, from this condemned
and guilty world. Hold fast Christ, contend for Him; it is a lawful
plea to go to holding and drawing for Christ; and it is not possible
to keep Christ peaceably, having once gotten Him, except the devil
were dead. It must be your resolution to set your face against Satan's
northern tempests and storms, for salvation. Nature would have heaven
to come to us while sleeping in our beds. We would all buy Christ, so
being we might make price ourselves. But Christ is worth more blood
and lives than either ye or I have to give Him. When we shall come
home, and enter to the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and
when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory,
and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings, then shall we see
life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to
glory; and that our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our
first night's welcome-home to heaven. Oh, what then shall be the
weight of every one of Christ's kisses! Oh, how weighty, and of what
worth shall every one of Christ's love-smiles be! Oh, when once He
shall thrust a wearied traveller's head betwixt His blessed breasts,
the poor soul will think one kiss of Christ hath fully paid home forty
or fifty years' wet feet, and all its sore hearts, and light (2 Cor.
iv. 17) sufferings it had in following after Christ! Oh,
thrice-blinded souls, whose hearts are charmed and bewitched with
dreams, shadows, feckless things, night-vanities, and night-fancies of
a miserable life of sin! Shame on us who sit still, fettered with the
love and liking of the loan of a piece of dead clay! Oh, poor fools,
who are beguiled with painted things, and this world's fair weather,
and smooth promises, and rotten, worm-eaten hopes! May not the devil
laugh to see us give out our souls, and get in but corrupt and
counterfeit pleasures of sin? O for a sight of eternity's glory, and a
little tasting of the Lamb's marriage-supper! Half a draught, or a
drop of the wine of consolation, that is up at our banqueting-house,
out of Christ's own hand, would make our stomachs loathe the brown
bread and the sour drink of a miserable life. Oh, how far are we
bereaved of wit, to chafe, and hunt, and run, till our souls be out of
breath, after a condemned happiness of our own making! And do we not
sit far in our own light to make it a matter of bairn's play, to skink
and drink over[183] paradise, and the heaven that Christ did sweat
for, even for a blast of smoke, and for Esau's morning breakfast? O
that we were out of ourselves, and dead to this world, and this world
dead and crucified to us! And, when we should be close out of love and
conceit of any masked and farded lover whatsoever, then Christ would
win and conquer to Himself a lodging in the inmost yolk of our heart.
Then Christ should be our night-song and morning-song; then the very
noise and din of our Well-beloved's feet, when He cometh, and His
first knock or rap at the door, should be as news of two heavens to
us. O that our eyes and our soul's smelling should go after a blasted
and sun-burnt flower, even this plastered, fair-outsided world: and
then we have neither eye nor smell for the Flower of Jesse, for that
Plant of renown, for Christ, the choicest, the fairest, the sweetest
rose that ever God planted! Oh, let some of us die to smell the
fragrance of Him; and let my part of this rotten world be forfeited
and sold for evermore, providing I may anchor my tottering soul upon
Christ! I know that it is sometimes at this, "Lord, what wilt Thou
have for Christ?" But, O Lord, canst Thou be budded, and propined with
any gift for Christ? O Lord, can Christ be sold? or rather, may not a
poor needy sinner have Him for nothing? If I can get no more, oh, let
me be pained to all eternity, with longing for Him! The joy of
hungering for Christ should be my heaven for evermore. Alas, that I
cannot draw souls and Christ together! But I desire the coming of His
kingdom, and that Christ, as I assuredly hope He will, would come upon
withered Scotland, as rain upon the new-mown grass. Oh, let the King
come! Oh, let His kingdom come! Oh, let their eyes rot in their
eyeholes (Zech. xiv. 12), who will not receive Him home again to reign
and rule in Scotland. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,