ABERDEEN, _Sept. 7, 1637_.
CCXXXVIII.--_To the_ LADY GAITGIRTH.
(_CHRIST AN EXAMPLE IN BEARING CROSSES--THE EXTENT TO WHICH CHILDREN
SHOULD BE LOVED--WHY SAINTS DIE._)
MUCH HONOURED AND CHRISTIAN LADY,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to
you.--I long to hear how it goeth with you and your children.
I exhort you not to lose breath, nor to faint in your journey. The way
is not so long to your home as it was; it will wear to one step or an
inch at length, and ye shall come ere long to be within your
arm-length of the glorious crown. Your Lord Jesus did sweat and pant
ere He got up that mount; He was at "Father, save Me!" with it. It was
He who said, "I am poured out like water; all My bones are out of
joint." Christ was as if they had broken Him upon the wheel: "My heart
is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels." "My strength is
dried up like a potsherd" (Ps. xxii. 14, 15). I am sure ye love the
way the better that His holy feet trod it before you. Crosses have a
smell of crossed and pained Christ. I believe that your Lord will not
leave you to die your lone in the way. I know that ye have sad hours,
when the Comforter is hid under a vail, and when ye inquire for Him,
and find but a toom nest. This, I grant, is but a cold "good-day,"
when the seeker misseth Him whom the soul loveth; but even His
unkindness is kind, His absence lovely, His mask a sweet sight, till
God send Christ Himself, in His own sweet presence. Make His sweet
comforts your own, and be not strange and shame-faced with Christ.
Homely dealing is best for Him; it is His liking. When your winter
storms are over, the summer of your Lord shall come. Your sadness is
with child of joy; He will do you good in the latter end.
Take no heavier lift of your children than your Lord alloweth. Give
them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where
Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If
your Lord take any of them home to His house, before the storm come
on, take it well. The owner of the orchard may take down two or three
apples off his own trees before midsummer, and ere they get the
harvest-sun: and it would not be seemly that his servant, the
gardener, should chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at
any season He pleaseth. They are not lost to you; but are laid up so
well as that they are coffered in heaven, where our Lord's best jewels
lie. They are all free goods that are there; death can have no law to
arrest anything that is within the walls of the New Jerusalem.
All the saints, because of sin, are like old rusty horologues that
must be taken down, and the wheels scoured and mended, and set up
again in better case than before. Sin hath rusted both soul and body:
our dear Lord by death taketh us down to scour the wheels of both, and
to purge us perfectly from the root and remainder of sin; and we shall
be set up in better case than before. Then pluck up your heart; heaven
is yours! and that is a word which few can say.
Now, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and the very God of peace,
confirm and establish you, to the day of the appearance of Christ our
Lord.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,