ABERDEEN, _May 1, 1637_.
[266] The sense may be, "My sins against light which was at work even
when I was in the act of sinning."
CLXIX.--_To the_ LAIRD OF CARLETON.
(_GOD'S WORKING INCOMPREHENSIBLE--LONGING AFTER ANY DROP OF CHRIST'S
FULNESS._)
WORTHY SIR,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your
letter, and am heartily glad that our Lord hath begun to work for the
apparent delivery of this poor oppressed kirk. Oh that salvation would
come for Zion!
I am for the present hanging by hope, waiting what my Lord will do
with me, and if it will please my sweet Master to send me amongst you
again, and keep out a hireling from my poor people and flock. It were
my heaven till I come home, even to spend this life in gathering in
some to Christ. I have still great heaviness for my silence, and my
forced standing idle in the market, when this land hath such a
plentiful, thick harvest. But I know that His judgments, who hath done
it, pass finding out. I have no knowledge to take up the Lord in all
His strange ways, and passages of deep and unsearchable providences.
For the Lord is before me, and I am so bemisted that I cannot follow
Him; He is behind me, and following at the heels, and I am not aware
of Him; He is above me, but His glory so dazzleth my twilight of short
knowledge, that I cannot look up to Him. He is upon my right hand, and
I see Him not; He is upon my left hand, and within me, and goeth and
cometh, and His going and coming are a dream to me; He is round about
me, and compasseth all my goings, and still I have Him to seek. He is
every way higher, and deeper, and broader than the shallow and ebb
handbreadth of my short and dim light can take up; and, therefore, I
would that my heart could be silent, and sit down in the
learnedly-ignorant wondering at the Lord, whom men and angels cannot
comprehend. I know that the noon-day light of the highest angels, who
see Him face to face, seeth not the borders of His infiniteness. They
apprehend God near hand; but they cannot comprehend Him. And,
therefore, it is my happiness to look afar off, and to come near to
the Lord's back parts, and to light my dark candle at His brightness,
and to have leave to sit and content myself with a traveller's light,
without the clear vision of an enjoyer. I would seek no more till I
were in my country, than a little watering and sprinkling of a
withered soul, with some half out-breakings and half out-lookings of
the beams, and small ravishing smiles of the fairest face of a
revealed and believed-on Godhead. A little of God would make my soul
bank-full. Oh that I had but Christ's odd off-fallings; that He would
let but the meanest of His love-rays and love-beams fall from Him, so
as I might gather and carry then with me! I would not be ill to please
with Christ, and vailed visions of Christ; neither would I be dainty
in seeing and enjoying of Him: a kiss of Christ blown over His
shoulder, the parings and crumbs of glory that fall under His table in
heaven, a shower like a thin May-mist of His love, would make me
green, and sappy, and joyful, till the summer-sun of an eternal glory
break up (Song ii. 17). Oh that I had anything of Christ! Oh that I
had a sip, or half a drop, out of the hollow of Christ's hand, of the
sweetness and excellency of that lovely One! Oh that my Lord Jesus
would rue upon me, and give me but the meanest alms of felt and
believed salvation! Oh, how little were it for that infinite sea, that
infinite fountain of love and joy, to fill as many thousand thousand
little vessels (the like of me) as there are minutes of hours since
the creation of God! I find it true that a poor soul, finding half a
smell of the Godhead of Christ, hath desires (paining and wounding the
poor hearts so with longings to be up at Him) that make it sometimes
think, "Were it not better never to have felt anything of Christ, than
thus to lie dying twenty deaths, under these felt wounds, for the want
of Him?" Oh, where is He? O Fairest, where dwellest Thou? O
never-enough admired Godhead, how can clay win up to Thee? how can
creatures of yesterday be able to enjoy Thee? Oh, what pain is it,
that time and sin should be so many thousand miles betwixt a loved and
longed-for Lord and a dwining and love-sick soul, who would rather
than all the world have lodging with Christ! Oh, let this bit of love
of ours, this inch and half-span length of heavenly longing, meet with
Thy infinite love! Oh, if the little I have were swallowed up with the
infiniteness of that excellency which is in Christ! Oh that we little
ones were in at the greatest Lord Jesus! Our wants should soon be
swallowed up with His fulness.
Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,