(_PART WITH ALL FOR CHRIST--NO UNMIXED JOY HERE._)
MISTRESS,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--I hope ye know what
conditions passed betwixt Christ and you, at your first meeting. Ye
remember that He said, your summer days would have clouds, and your
rose a prickly thorn beside it. Christ is unmixed in heaven, all
sweetness and honey. Here we have Him with His thorny and rough cross;
yet I know no tree that beareth sweeter fruit than Christ's cross,
except I would raise a lying report on it. It is your part to take
Christ, as He is to be had in this life. Sufferings are like a wood
planted round about His house, over door and window. If we could hold
fast our grips of Him, the field were won. Yet a little while, and
Christ shall triumph. Give Christ His own short time to spin out these
two long threads of heaven and hell to all mankind, for certainly the
thread will not break; and when He hath accomplished His work in Mount
Zion, and hath refined His silver, He will bring new vessels out of
the furnace, and plenish His house, and take up His house again.
I counsel you to free yourself of clogging temptations, by overcoming
some, and contemning others, and watching over all. Abide true and
loyal to Christ, for few now are fast to Him. They give Christ blank
paper for a bond of service and attendance, now when Christ hath most
ado. To waste a little blood with Christ, and to put our part of this
drossy world in pawn over in His hand, as willing to quit it for Him,
is the safest cabinet to keep the world in. But those who would take
the world and all their flitting on their back, and run away from
Christ, shall fall by the way, and leave their burden behind them, and
be taken captive themselves. Well were my soul to have put all I have,
life and soul, over into Christ's hands. Let Him be forthcoming for
all.
If any ask how I do? I answer, None can be but well that are in
Christ: and if I were not so, my sufferings had melted me away in
ashes and smoke. I thank my Lord, that He hath something in me that
His fire cannot consume.
Remember my love to your husband; and show him from me, that I desire
he may set aside all things, and make sure work of salvation, that it
be not a-seeking when the sand-glass is run out, and time and eternity
shall tryst together. There is no errand so weighty as this. Oh that
he would take it to heart! Grace be with you.
Yours, in Christ Jesus his Lord,