(_GOD THE FIRST CAUSE--THE END OF AFFLICTION._)
WORTHY FRIEND,--I desire to suffer with you, in the loss of a loving
and good wife, now gone before (according to the method and order of
Him of whose understanding there is no searching out) whither ye are
to follow. He that made yesterday to go before this day, and the
former generation, in birth and life, to have been before this present
generation, and hath made some flowers to grow and die and wither in
the month of May, and others in June, cannot be challenged in the
order He hath made of things without souls; and some order He must
keep also here, that one might bury another. Therefore I hope ye shall
be dumb and silent, because the Lord hath done it.
What creatures or under-causes do, in sinful mistakes, is ordered in
wisdom by your Father, at whose feet your own soul and your heaven
lieth; and so the days of your wife. If the place she hath left were
any other than a prison of sin, and the home she is gone to any other
than where her Head and Saviour is King of the land, your grief had
been more rational. But I trust your faith of the resurrection of the
dead in Christ to glory and immortality, will lead you to suspend your
longing for her, till the morning and dawning of that day when the
archangel shall descend with a shout, to gather all the prisoners out
of the grave, up to Himself. To believe this is best for you; and to
be silent, because He hath done it, is your wisdom.
It is much to come out of the Lord's school of trial wiser, and more
experienced in the ways of God; and it is our happiness, when Christ
openeth a vein, that He taketh nothing but ill blood from His sick
ones. Christ hath skill to do; and (if our corruption mar not) the art
of mercy in correcting. We cannot of ourselves take away the tin, the
lead, and the scum that remaineth in us; and if Christ be not
Master-of-work, and if the furnace go its lone (He not standing nigh
the melting of His own vessel), the labour were lost, and the Founder
should melt in vain. God knoweth some of us have lost much fire,
sweating, and pains, to our Lord Jesus; and the vessel is almost
marred, the furnace and rod of God spilled, "the daylight[455] burnt,
and the reprobate metal not taken away," so as some are to answer to
the Majesty of God for the abuse of many good crosses, and rich
afflictions lost without the quiet fruit of righteousness. It is a sad
thing when the rod is cursed, that never fruit shall grow on it. And
except Christ's dew fall down, and His summer-sun shine, and His grace
follow afflictions to cause them to bring forth fruit to God, they are
so fruitless to us, that our evil ground (rank and fat enough for
briers) casteth up a crop of noisome weeds. "The rod" (as the prophet
saith) "blossometh, pride buddeth forth, violence riseth up into a rod
of wickedness" (Ezek. vii. 10, 11). And all this hath been my case
under many rods since I saw you.
[455] The allusion is to Jer. vi. 29, and in that passage "daylight"
is a variation from our common version. Could Rutherford have been
reading Jeremiah in the Septuagint Greek version? There the word is
φυσητὴρ, "blowpipe," or "_bellows_;" but we might suppose
that his eye mistook the word for φωστὴρ, "lightgiver,"
"_window-light_." The Scotch phrase, "to burn daylight," means to
waste time and opportunity.
Grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,