ABERDEEN, _June 16, 1637_.
CLXXXV.--_To_ MARION M'NAUGHT.
(_LONGING TO BE RESTORED TO HIS CHARGE._)
DEARLY BELOVED IN OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST,--Grace, mercy, and peace be
to you. Few know the heart of a stranger and prisoner. I am in the
hands of mine enemies. I would that honest and lawful means were
essayed for bringing me home to my charge, now when Mr. A. R. and Mr.
H. R. are restored. It concerneth you of Galloway most, to use
supplications and addresses for this purpose, and try if by fair means
I can be brought back again. As for liberty, without I be restored to
my flock, it is little to me; for my silence is my greatest prison.
However it be, I wait for the Lord; I hope not to rot in my
sufferings: Lord, give me submission to wait on. My heart is sad that
my days flee away, and I do no service to my Lord in His house, now
when His harvest and the souls of perishing people require it. But His
ways are not like my ways, neither can I find Him out. Oh that He
would shine upon my darkness, and bring forth my morning light from
under the thick cloud that men have spread over me! Oh that the
Almighty would lay my cause in a balance and weigh me, if my soul was
not taken up, when others were sleeping, how to have Christ betrothed
with a bride, in that part of the land! But that day that my mouth was
most unjustly and cruelly closed, the bloom fell off my branches, and
my joy did cast the flower. Howbeit, I have been casting myself under
God's feet, and wrestling to believe under a hidden and covered Lord;
yet my fainting cometh before I eat, and my faith hath bowed with the
sore cast, and under this almost insupportable weight! Oh that it
break not! I dare not say that the Lord hath put out my candle, and
hath casten water upon my poor coal, and broken the stakes of my
tabernacle; but I have tasted bitterness, and eaten gall and wormwood,
since that day on which my Master laid bonds upon me to speak no more.
I speak not this because the Lord is unco to me, but because
beholders, that stand on dry land, see not my sea-storm. The witnesses
of my sad cross are but strangers to my sad days and nights. Oh that
Christ would let me alone, and speak love to me, and come home to me,
and bring summer with Him! Oh that I might preach His beauty and
glory, as once I did, before my clay-tent be removed to darkness! and
that I might lift Christ off the ground! and my branches might be
watered with the dew of God, and my joy in His work might grow green
again, and bud, and send out a flower! But I am but a short-sighted
creature, and my candle casteth not light afar off. He knoweth all
that is done to me; how that when I had but one joy, and no more, and
one green flower that I esteemed to be my garland, He came in one hour
and dried up my flower at the root, and took away mine only eye, and
my one only crown and garland. What can I say? Surely my guiltiness
hath been remembered before Him, and He was seeking to take down my
sails, and to land the flower of my delights, and to let it lie on the
coast, like an old broken ship, that is no more for the sea. But I
praise Him for this waled stroke. I welcome this furnace; God's wisdom
made choice of it for me, and it must be best, because it was His
choice. Oh that I may wait for Him till the morning of this benighted
kirk break out! This poor, afflicted kirk had a fair morning, but her
night came upon her before her noon-day, and she was like a traveller,
forced to take house in the morning of his journey. And now her
adversaries are the chief men in the land; her ways mourn; her gates
languish: her children sigh for bread; and there is none to be instant
with the Lord, that He would come again to His house, and dry the face
of His weeping spouse, and comfort Zion's mourners, who are waiting
for Him. I know that He will make corn to grow upon the top of His
withered Mount Zion again.
Remember my bonds, and forget me not. Oh that my Lord would bring me
again amongst you with abundance of the Gospel of Christ! But, oh,
that I may set down my desires where my Lord biddeth me! Remember my
love in the Lord to your husband; God make him faithful to Christ! and
my blessing to your three children. Faint not in prayer for this kirk.
Desire my people not to receive a stranger and intruder upon my
ministry. Let me stand in that right and station that my Lord Jesus
gave me.
Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord and Master,