The Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Part 2)

To Marion M’Naught: Her Prayers for Scotland Not Forgotten

Worthy and dearest friend in the Lord, I rejoice that you are sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Don’t lose heart; keep going, keep believing. Even if the people around you, your husband, and your friends prove weak, your strength does not fail, because it comes from a source that never runs dry. These cries are rising up, and they will bring down mercy. I urge you, and all those with you, to press on without fear or faltering. Keep believing, and don’t accept defeat. If you give up, the battle is lost; but if you continue, your enemies will crumble like a tottering wall and a fence about to fall. I write this plainly (and I ask you to keep this letter): utter ruin awaits your adversaries and all who hate the daughter of Scotland. The bride will sing again, as she did in the days of her youth. Salvation will be her walls and her defenses. The dry olive tree will bud again, and dry dead bones will live; for the Lord will speak life into those dry bones, the Spirit will come upon them, and we will live.

I rejoice to hear of John Carson! I will not forget him. Please give my greetings to Grizel and Jean Brown. Your husband has grieved me; but be courageous in the Lord. I send my blessings to Samuel and William. Tell them that I urge them to seek God while they are young.

Grace is yours.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

ABERDEEN, July 8, 1637.

S. R.

To my Lady Culross: Christ’s Way of Showing Himself; Yearning After Him

MADAM, Grace, mercy, and peace be with you. Your letter has finally reached me, and it has been a great comfort. I find that my Lord Jesus does not come in the precise way I expect Him; He has a way of His own. How far His ways are above mine! I see so little of Him. The best thing I can do is not try to teach Him how to act, but to surrender completely to His will, whether He comes or goes, whether things ebb or flow, and however He chooses to work His grace. I lack nothing except a greater weight of Christ’s love to carry. I would walk through hell itself, through everything the damned endure, just to have a full and satisfying feast of Christ’s love, for He has bound me with that love and then withdrawn, leaving me like a man in chains.

How I grieve that I was so careless, rash, empty, and faithless in my unbelieving thoughts about Christ’s love! But what can a soul do, locked out and dispossessed, its rights forfeited and lost, except bring false charges against Christ’s love? I know that you yourself, Madam, along with many others, will stand as witnesses against me if I do not repent of my unbelief. I have been shopping for the Pope’s goods, looking for some payment for grace within myself. I have not learned, as I should, to place everything I have, my entire store and treasure, into Christ’s hands. Instead, I have wanted a reserve of my own, and before I knew it, I had taken up the role of the Law’s advocate, seeking to be justified by my own works. I forgot that grace is the only crown worn in heaven on the heads of the glorified. And now I find myself half rejoicing that I have this sickness for Christ to work on. Since I must have wounds, my soul is at least glad to give my Physician, Christ, a day’s work. I hope to let Christ fulfill His own calling, for healing the sick suits Him perfectly.

My ebbing is very low, and the tide is far out when my Beloved withdraws from me. In those moments I cry out, “Oh, what cruelty, to put out the poor man’s one eye!” For next to Christ Himself, this was my greatest joy: to preach my Well-beloved. Then I linger around Christ’s house like a stranger, peering in at His window, casting my love and longing over the wall until God sends something better. I am often content to let my petition wait in heaven until the day of my departure, provided I had assurance that mercy would be written on the back of it. I could bear the waiting; but when I draw back a tired arm and an empty hand, it takes everything in me to keep my thoughts in order. I cannot seem to find a way into Christ’s love. When I have done all I can, I want nothing more than to yield to His current and row with Christ rather than against Him. Yet as long as I live, I see that Christ’s kingdom within me will not be peaceful, for so many thoughts rise up against His honor and His kingly authority. I have surely not expressed the full measure of His sweet kindness to me. I hold back from doing so, for fear of being seen as seeking my own glory; but His breath has carried the fragrance of the merchant’s spices and the King’s spikenard. I find myself forming new thoughts of heaven, because the map and picture of heaven He now allows me to glimpse is so beautiful and so sweet. I am convinced that we are miserly and restrained in our seeking. I truly believe we have no idea how much may be obtained in this life; there is something beyond everything we have yet seen, something that persistent seeking would eventually find. Oh, that my love-sickness would drive me to urgent business, crying and knocking while the whole world lies asleep! But the honest truth is that since I came here, I have been left wondering: after all my pleading to have my fill of Christ’s love, I have received no clear sign, and I have come away from Him still crying, “Hunger! Hunger!” It seems Christ lets me see the food in my most desperate hunger, yet gives me none of it. When I draw near the apple, He pulls back His hand and withdraws, drawing me to follow; and then, when I am within arm’s reach of it again, He breaks away once more toward the gate, and I am left to seek Him all over again. He does not seem to pity my wasting and fainting for love of Him. I sometimes dare to lay my hunger before Him to be judged: whether I would not gladly buy Him at the cost of a thousand years in the hottest furnace in hell, if only I might enjoy Him at the end of it. But my hunger is fed by want and absence. I hunger and I do not have; yet my comfort is to lie still and wait, and to place my poor soul and all my sufferings into Christ’s hands. Let Him make of me whatever He will, so long as He is glorified in my salvation, for I know I was made for Him. Oh, that my Lord would win His own gracious end in me! I cannot rest while I stand at such a distance. Oh, if only I were near Him and with Him, that this poor soul might at last be satisfied with Himself!

Your son-in-law, W. G., is now truly honored for the sake of his Lord and Master. When the Lord is purifying Zion, it is a good sign that W. G. is a true branch of the vine, that the Lord begins His work by pruning him first. He is strong in his Lord, as he has written to me, and his wife is his encourager, which should be a source of joy for you.

As for your son, who is your grief: your Lord waited on both you and me until we were ready, and then He brought us in. Your part is to pray and wait on Him. When your son is ready, the Lord will speak to him. Who can command the Lord’s wind to blow when and where it will? I know that this will work for your good in the end. This is one of the rivers you could not cross on your way to heaven, and now it lies behind you. I remember you, your son, and your household in my prayers as best I can; but I am believed to be something, when in truth I am nothing but an empty reed. My needs are my greatest riches, because Christ supplies them.

Please give my warmest love to your brother. I know he pleads with his wayward mother over her apostasy. I know also that you are kind to my worthy Lady Kenmure, a woman beloved of the Lord, who has been very mindful of my imprisonment. May the Lord grant her and her child mercy in the day of Christ! Great men are cold and indifferent when it comes to helping me; the sound of chains worn for Christ frightens them. But let my Lord break all my idols, and I will still bless Him. I am grateful to my Lord Lorn, and I wish him mercy.

Remember my imprisonment with praises, and pray for me, that my Lord may transform the north through my bonds and sufferings.

Grace be with you.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

ABERDEEN, 1637.

S. R.

To Alexander Gordon of Knockgray: The Church’s State; Believers Purified by Affliction

Dear Brother, grace, mercy, and peace be with you. There is no doubt that our mother church has a Father, and that she will not die without an heir; her enemies will not make Mount Zion their inheritance. We can see that wherever Zion’s enemies go, even if they dig miles underground, our Lord finds them out. He has vengeance stored up for them, and the poor and needy will not be forgotten forever. Our hope was drooping and withering, and people were asking, “What can God possibly make out of the old dry bones of this buried church?” The prelates and their followers were like a grave piled on top of us. It seems our Lord is about to open our graves, and intends to raise His two slain witnesses on the third day. Oh, how long must I wait to hear our weeping Lord Jesus sing again, to triumph and rejoice and divide the spoil!

I find it genuinely hard to keep believing when the course of providence runs directly against our faith, when confused souls in a dark night can’t tell east from west, and our compass seems to fail us entirely. Anyone can be a believer in daylight; a clear day seems to be made entirely of faith and hope. What kind of test is it to hold gold briefly over a flame? But to keep gold perfectly yellow in the heart of the fire, to be poured from vessel to vessel and yet cause our furnace to ring out with the praises of the Lord, that is something else altogether. I know my Lord did not make me for the fire, even though He has fitted me, to some degree, to endure it. I bless His holy name that I have not grown pale, that I have not lost the color of gold, and that His fire has refined me and made me more pliable, so that my Lord may pour me into whatever vessel He chooses. For very little, I would gladly give up my share of this world’s laughter, surrender my claim on time, and part ways with the pleasures of this world entirely.

I know a man who marveled at seeing anyone laugh or play in this life. Surely this is what our Lord asks of us: that we hold no real joy in the perishing things of the present world. Above all else, I see that we may simply rest in Christ, settle ourselves in Him, and laugh at the trinkets children are chasing down here. The people of this world remind me of children caught in a dangerous storm at sea, playing and delighting in the white foam of the waves that are rolling in to swallow them. In the same way, people make foolish sport with the bright, surface pleasures of a stormy world that will ultimately destroy them. But what business do we have with their games? If Solomon declared that laughter was madness (Eccl 2:2), what are we to say about this world’s laughing and amusing itself with gold and silver, honors, royal courts, and sweeping conquests? Only this: that these are poor souls who, at the height and fury of a fever, have lost their minds. So let a straw, a fig, stand for all created pleasures and joys found outside of Christ. In fact, I believe this world, even at its finest and most glorious, when it has reached the very peak of its excellence and is in full bloom, could be bought for next to nothing and would barely be worth a drink of water. There is nothing better than to regard it as our crucified idol, that is, as something dead and slain, as Paul did: “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). So let pleasures be crucified, and riches be crucified, and courts and honors be crucified. Since the apostle says the world is crucified to him, we may sentence this world to the fate of a hanged man and send it to the gallows. And who will pay much for a hanged man? We should think just as little of a hanged and crucified world. Yet what a sweet smell this dead carcass has to so many fools in the world, and how many admirers and suitors this hanged carcass attracts! Fools are pulling it down from the gallows and fighting over it. Oh, when will we learn to be people who are truly dead to the world, and to have had our fill of things that enjoy only a brief summer season in this life? If we could see our Father’s house, that great and glorious city, the New Jerusalem, shining above sun and moon, we would cry out to be carried across the water, held in Christ’s arms, and brought out of this borrowed prison.

Grace be with you.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

ABERDEEN, 1637.

S. R.

To Fulwood, the Younger: Vanity of the World; Christ’s Coming

MUCH HONOURED SIR, Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. On the strength of what this worthy bearer has told me about you, I felt compelled to send you a word. The fact that we are one in Christ is acquaintance enough.

My deepest desire for you is this: that you would, in the fear of God, hold your brief sliver of time up against the vast expanse of eternity, and compare your present thoughts about this fair, blooming, green world with the thoughts you will have of it when corruption and worms have made their home in your eye sockets, consumed your flesh, and reduced that body to dry bones. If you do this honestly, I am confident that the vanity of this world will become far clearer to you than it is now, and I am persuaded you will conclude that all of humanity’s striving after this clay idol deserves nothing but laughter. So come close, and take a long look at the transparent beauty that is in Christ, a beauty so inexhaustible it could occupy the love of ten thousand million worlds and angels and keep them all fully engaged. I am genuinely grieved that people refuse to pour their whole love upon that royal and princely Beloved, that high and lofty One, because any love that runs in any other direction is love gone to waste. As for myself, if I had ten loves and ten souls, how glad I would be if He would break in upon me and take possession of every one of them. It grieves me deeply that He and I are still so far apart. I hope we will one day share the same country and the same house together. Truly, the ache of longing for Jesus makes the wait feel long, so very long, until the dawn of that day. Oh, that He would cut short the years and months and hours, and leap over time itself, so that we might meet.

I want to declare before all people and angels, Sir, that the truth you profess is the way, and the only way, to our true home. Every other path is a detour. What I suffer for is the very apple of Christ’s eye: His honor as Lawgiver and King of His church. I consider death a small price to pay before I would ever abandon it.

Please, Sir, I beg you in the Lord’s name, do not make Christ’s court any emptier by withdrawing from Him (it is already too sparse). I will stake my very heaven on this: He will win His case, and the fools who argue against Him will lose the wager, which is their share of salvation, unless they take a hard look at where they’re headed. Sir, free grace, which costs us nothing, is a jewel our Lord gives to very few. Stand firm in the hope to which you have been called. Our Master will break through the clouds and be upon us quickly, clearing our cause and bringing us all out into the open, our guilt and innocence laid bare for all to see. Clean garments, in the Bridegroom’s eyes, are worth everything. Step over this sliver of worldly glory into our Lord’s new world of grace, and you will laugh at the empty trifles that others are chasing like children grasping at feathers in the wind. I am fully convinced that this inn where men are building their nests is not worth a drink of cold water. It is a damp and smoke-filled house, and we had better get out before we choke on the fumes. Oh, if only my adversaries could know how sweet my sighs for Christ are, and what it means for a sinner to rest his head against Christ’s chest and be completely overwhelmed by His love! I cannot make paper speak the height, the breadth, and the depth of it. I have no scale large enough to weigh the worth of my Lord Jesus. Ten heavens would not serve as the beam of a balance to measure Him. I must simply give up trying to praise Him adequately. Even angels see only a fraction of who He is. Oh, if only that glorious One would remove the veil from His face, that I might see Him clearly! Even a kiss from Him through the veil is half a heaven. O day, dawn quickly! O time, run fast! O Bridegroom, come swiftly, that we may meet! O heavens, split open, that that bright face may break through the clouds! Oh that the harvest were ripe and this world ready for His sickle! Sir, please remember a prisoner’s chains in your prayers. Grace be with you.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

ABERDEEN, July 10, 1637.

S. R.

To His Parishioners: Care for Their Souls; Delight in Christ; Warning Against Error

DEARLY BELOVED AND LONGED-FOR IN THE LORD, my crown and my joy in the day of Christ: Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am desperately eager to know whether the long-discussed union between you and Christ still holds, and whether you are pressing on to know the Lord. You fill my thoughts by day and by night. Even while you sleep, I lie awake fearing for your souls, afraid they may have slipped from the Rock. Next to my Lord Jesus and this broken church, you carry the greatest share of both my sorrow and my joy. You are the reason for the tears, the anxiety, the fear, and the daily prayers of a prisoner of Christ who is weighed down with burdens. Just as I am in chains for my high and exalted One, my royal and princely Master, my Lord Jesus, so my sorrow will lack nothing to complete it, and I will be driven to ask, “What is the point of my life?” if you follow the voice of a stranger, one who enters the sheepfold not through Christ the door, but by climbing in some other way. If a man builds hay and stubble on the golden foundation of Christ Jesus (already laid among you), and you follow him, I can assure you: that man’s work will burn and will never survive God’s fire. Both you and he will be in danger of everlasting burning unless you repent. Oh, if any pain, any sorrow, any loss I could suffer for Christ and for you might be pledged to purchase Christ’s love toward you! If only I could lay down my dearest joys, second only to Christ my Lord, as a barrier between you and eternal destruction! If I had paper as wide as heaven and earth, and ink as vast as the sea and every river and spring on earth, and were able to write out the love, the worth, the excellence, the sweetness, and the full praise of our dearest and most beautiful Beloved, Christ, and if you could then read and understand it all, what more could I ask? What greater achievement could my ministry among you have than to make a marriage between the little bride in this place and the Bridegroom? How rich a prisoner I would be if I could obtain from my Lord, before whom I stand on your behalf, the salvation of every one of you! What a prize it would be to see you caught in Christ’s net! Then I would have cast out my Lord’s lines and His net to a rich return. Then every aching chest, every sore back, every worn-out body spent in speaking to you early and late would have been well spent. My witness is above: your heaven would be two heavens to me, and your salvation would feel like two salvations. I would willingly sign an agreement suspending my own entrance into heaven for many hundreds of years, if it pleased God, as long as you were safely settled in the upper rooms of our Father’s house before me. I call heaven and earth to witness against you. I call as witnesses that sun and daylight that shone on us, and the very timber and walls of that church, that I drew up a fair contract of marriage between you and Christ, that I carried offers back and forth between the Bridegroom and you, and your own conscience bore you witness, and your own mouths confessed, that many fair appointments and meetings were arranged between Christ and you at communion feasts and on other occasions. Bracelets, jewels, rings, and love-letters were sent to you by the Bridegroom. You were told what a generous inheritance you would receive, what a house your Husband would provide, and what the Bridegroom’s excellence, sweetness, might, and power were like: the eternal glory of His kingdom, the extraordinary depth of His love, the love of One who sought His dark bride through pain, fire, shame, death, and the grave, who crossed a salt sea for her, bore the full curse of the law, and was made a curse for you. And you consented. You said, “Yes, I take Him.” Now I urge you: beware of the new and foreign leaven of human invention, ideas that go beyond and against the word of God and contradict the oath of this church, which is now making its way among you. I taught you about the superstition and idolatry of kneeling at the moment of receiving the Lord’s Supper, of making the sign of the cross in baptism, and of observing days invented by men, with no warrant from Christ our perfect Lawgiver. Do not accept the surplice, the vestment of the mass-priest, the garment of Baal’s priests. The abominable bowing before wooden altars is coming upon you. Hate idols and keep yourselves far from them. Under no circumstances should you sit through the reading of the new, parentless Service-Book, which is full of gross heresies, popish and superstitious errors, without any warrant from Christ, and which tends toward the destruction of preaching. You owe no obedience to the illegitimate canons; they are unlawful, blasphemous, and superstitious. Every ceremony that lies in Antichrist’s foul womb, the merchandise of that great mother of fornications, the church of Rome, must be refused. You can see where they are leading you. Stand firm in the teaching you have received. From me you heard the whole counsel of God. Do not sew patches onto Christ’s robe. Take Christ as He is, in His poverty and losses, persecuted by men, and be content to sigh and press your way up the mountain with Christ’s cross on your back. Let me be counted a false prophet (and your conscience once said otherwise) if your Lord Jesus will not stand by you, sustain you, and defend your cause against your enemies.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

ABERDEEN, July 10, 1637.

S. R.

[A second letter to the same parishioners, three days later.]

I have heard reports that grieve my soul deeply: since I left you, many among you have turned back from the good old path and returned to what they once abandoned. Let me speak directly to these people. It was not without God’s special guidance that the very first words I ever spoke to you were these: “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind” (John 9:39). Is it possible that our first meeting again may be when we both stand before the dreadful Judge of the world? In the name and authority of the Son of God, my great King and Master, I am writing now to formally summon those men. I call their souls and bodies to account on the day we all must appear. Their eternal condemnation is already written and sealed in heaven, by the hand of the great Judge of the living and the dead, against everyone who steals and swears falsely by God’s name (Zech 5:2-3). I declare eternal burning, hotter than the flames of Sodom, upon those who are consumed by the filthy lusts of fornication, adultery, incest, and similar wickedness. There is no room, not so much as a foot of space, for such vile people within the clean Jerusalem. Many of you brush all of this aside with the words, “God forgive us, we know no better.” I repeat my old answer: the Judge is coming in flaming fire, with all His mighty angels, to bring vengeance on all those who do not know God and do not believe (2 Thess 1:8). I have told you many times that complacency will destroy you. Everyone claims to have faith, as if the number of people alive today equals the number of saints in heaven. Everyone believes, you say, which means every unclean soul is apparently pure enough and good enough for the clean and holy Jerusalem above. Every person claims conversion and the new birth, but it hasn’t truly come. They never spent a single agonizing night over their sin; their conversion arrived in a pleasant dream. In short, by this reasoning, hell will be empty on the day of judgment and heaven packed to overflowing! But it is neither easy nor common to truly believe and be saved. Many will find themselves standing at heaven’s gates in the end (Luke 13:25), and when they reach for their faith, they will pull out nothing at all, or as you yourselves sometimes say, a hollow pretense. What a devastating disappointment that will be. I beg you, I charge you in the name of Christ: make your hold on Christ and salvation absolutely sure.

I know there are believers among you, and I write to you now, you poor, broken-hearted believers: every comfort Christ offers in the Old and New Testaments belongs to you. What a Father and Husband you have! If only I had the pen, the ink, and the mind to write about Him as He deserves! Let heaven and earth be melted down into solid, pure gold, and still that gold would not weigh even a thousandth part of Christ’s love for a soul, even for me, a poor prisoner. What a vast and astonishing love this is! Let men and angels combine every ounce of their strength into one effort, and they still could not lift it from the ground or measure its weight. Ten thousand worlds, as many worlds as angels could count, and then a whole new creation of angels multiplying those numbers further, would not together form even one side of a scale capable of weighing Christ’s excellence, sweetness, and love. Imagine ten earths pressed into one, and a rose growing larger than all those worlds combined. Think of the beauty it would hold, the fragrance it would pour out. Yet a single breath from the most beautiful Rose in all of God’s paradise, from Christ Jesus our Lord Himself, one glance from that most glorious face, would surpass in beauty and fragrance everything that creation could ever imagine or produce. I am left wondering how anyone can bear to stay away from Christ.

I would count myself truly blessed if I could make a public proclamation and gather the whole world around Christ: every person alive on this earth, Jew and Gentile alike, and all who will ever be born until the last trumpet sounds. I would have them all flock to Him, standing in wonder, gazing at His beauty and sweetness. His fire burns hotter than any other fire, His love is sweeter than any common love, and His beauty surpasses everything else. When I am weighed down and sorrowful, a single loving glance from Him would do me more good than I can say. Oh, if only you would fall in love with Him! How blessed I would be, how glad my soul would be to help you love Him! Yet even if we all loved Him together, we could never love Him enough. He is the Son of the Father’s love, the very delight of God; the Father’s love rests entirely on Him. Oh, if all of humanity would gather every bit of love they possess and pour it out on Him! Invite Him in, and bring Him home to your households through morning and evening prayer, as I have so often urged you. Especially now, don’t leave Him without a place to stay in your homes or let Him wander in the cold, shut out of pulpits and churches as He is. If you are willing to take hold of heaven by force, pressing into the wind for Christ and His cross, then hear me: I am someone who has had real experience of Christ’s cross, and I can tell you that Christ has always been kind to me. In fact, He surpasses Himself in kindness, if I may put it that way, whenever I suffer for His sake.

You have my word on this: Christ’s cross is not nearly as terrible as people make it out to be. It is sweet, light, and full of comfort. I would not trade the visits of His love, the very breath of Christ’s presence when He draws near, or my Lord’s tender smiles and loving embrace in the midst of my sufferings for Him, not for a mountain of gold, not for all the honors, prestige, and splendor of the velvet-robed churchmen. Christ holds the yoke and the heart of my love. “I am my Beloved’s, and my Well-beloved is mine.”

Oh, how I wish you were all bound to Christ! My dearly beloved in the Lord, I wish I could change my voice, that I had a tongue shaped by my Lord’s own hands and the gift of speaking about Christ, so that I could show you the worth, the greatness, the height, and the glory of that most beautiful and renowned Bridegroom! I beg you, by the mercies of the Lord, by the sighs, tears, and shed blood of our Lord Jesus, by the salvation of your poor and precious souls: press on toward that mountain, so that you and I may meet before the Lamb’s throne among the congregation of the firstborn. Lord, let that be our meeting place! Let you and I reach out our hands together, and pluck and eat the fruit from the tree of life, and feast together, and drink together from that pure river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Oh, how brief is your handful of days here! Your small measure of time is shorter now than when you and I last parted. Eternity is coming, rushing toward us on wings; and then every person’s deeds, both dark and light, will be brought into the open. Oh, how low your opinion will be of this fair-looking but rotten-hearted apple, this empty and worthless world, when the worms make their home in your eye sockets, and eat the flesh from your cheeks, and reduce that body to a pile of dry bones! Do not think that the ordinary path of serving God, the way your neighbors and others do it, will carry you to heaven. Few are saved. The devil’s court is crowded and vast; he holds the greatest number of mankind as his subjects. I know this world is a forest of thorns on your road to heaven, but you must walk through it. Draw close to the Lord; hold fast to Christ; listen to His voice alone. Bless His name; honor and keep holy His day; keep the new commandment, “Love one another” (John 13:34); let the Holy Spirit dwell in your bodies, and be clean and holy. Do not love the world; do not lie; love and follow truth; learn to know God. Keep in mind what I taught you, for God will call you to account for it when I am far from you. Turn away from all evil and every appearance of evil; pursue good diligently, seek peace and follow after it; honor your king and pray for him. Remember me to God in your prayers, for I do not forget you. I told you often while I was with you, and now I write it again: heavy, sad, and severe is the stroke of the Lord’s wrath that is coming upon Scotland. Woe, woe to this faithless land! For they will take the cup of God’s wrath from His hands, and drink, and reel, and fall, and not rise again. Come quickly into your stronghold, you prisoners of hope, and hide yourselves there until the Lord’s anger passes! Do not follow the pastors of this land, for the light has gone out on them. As the Lord lives, they are leading you away from Christ and from the good old way. Yet the Lord will protect the holy city, and cause this withered church to bud again like a rose, like a field blessed of the Lord.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. The prayers and blessings of a prisoner of Christ, bound for Him and for you, be with you all. Amen.

Your lawful and loving pastor,

ABERDEEN, July 13, 1637.

S. R.

To the Lady Kilconquhar: Christ Altogether Lovely; the Soul’s Interests Most Urgent

Mistress, grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I’m glad to hear that you have turned your face homeward toward your Father’s house, at a time when so many are content with a home much closer at hand. But your Lord is calling you to a different life and a greater glory than anything found in this world, and so I urge you to secure the title and the rights you hold to salvation. You came into this life for a necessary and weighty purpose: to keep your appointment with Christ concerning your precious soul and its eternal salvation. This is the most urgent business you have in this life, and everything else you attend to is, by comparison, mere toys, feathers, dreams, and fancies. This matter is the most pressing of all and should be dealt with first. The Gospel provides the means to bring about a meeting between Christ and you. If you neglect your part in it, it is as though you would tear up the contract before Christ’s eyes and abandon the arrangement, so that there can be no further discussion of the matter. I know that other suitors besides Christ are pursuing you, and that your soul has many admirers. But I urge you to keep your soul a chaste virgin and let it love only one. Christ alone is most worthy of all your soul’s love, even if that love were higher than heaven, deeper than the lowest depths of the earth, and broader than the whole world. Too many, alas, make a common strumpet of their soul for every lover who comes to the door. Marriage with Christ would place your love and your heart out of reach, out of the way, and out of sight of every unlawful suitor. Then you would have a ready answer for all others: “I am already promised to Christ. The arrangement is settled, my soul already has a husband, and it cannot have two.” Oh, if the world only knew what fragrance the ointments of Christ release, how ravishing His beauty is (even the beauty of the fairest of the sons of men), and how sweet and powerful His voice is, the voice of that one Well-beloved! Wherever Christ comes, He captures the soul’s love so completely that it can no longer be directed elsewhere. I would far rather peer through the keyhole of Christ’s door and catch only a glimpse of one half of His fairest and most glorious face (for He looks like heaven itself!) than to possess the finest flower, the fullest bloom, and the greatest glory and riches of ten worlds combined, even if I were never permitted to enter and behold His excellence in full. Lord, give me, for my part, even the smallest share of Christ that can be given to any of the citizens of the New Jerusalem. But I know my Lord is no miser. He can give, and it suits Him well to give, far more than my narrow soul can receive. If there were ten thousand million worlds, and as many heavens filled with men and angels, Christ would not be stretched to supply all our needs and fill us all completely. Christ is a well of life, but who can fathom how deep it goes? This soul of ours has love and cannot help but love something beautiful. And oh, what a beautiful One, what a singular One, what an excellent, lovely, ravishing One is Jesus! Gather the beauty of ten thousand worlds of paradises like the Garden of Eden into one. Bring together all trees, all flowers, all fragrances, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness into one: oh, what a fair and magnificent thing that would be! And yet it would stand in relation to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, as a single raindrop stands to all the seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths. Oh, Christ is heaven’s wonder and earth’s wonder! No marvel, then, that His bride declares, “He is altogether lovely” (Song 5:16). Oh, that dark souls will not come and bring all their love to this beautiful One! Oh, if only I could invite and persuade thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand of Adam’s children, to flock around my Lord Jesus and come and take their fill of love! Oh, how brief is your handful of days here! Your small measure of time is shorter now than when you and I last parted. Eternity is coming, rushing toward us on wings; and then every person’s deeds, both dark and light, will be brought into the open. Oh, how low your opinion will be of this fair-looking but rotten-hearted apple, this empty and worthless world, when the worms make their home in your eye sockets, and eat the flesh from your cheeks, and reduce that body to a pile of dry bones! Oh, that so much is spoken, so much written, and so much thought about the vanity of created things, and so little spoken, so little written, and so little thought about my great, incomprehensible, and never sufficiently marveled-at Lord Jesus! Why should I not curse this forsaken and wretched world that leaves my Lord Jesus to lie alone? Oh, damned souls! Oh, ignorant world! Oh, blind, beggarly, and impoverished souls! Oh, bewitched fools! What is your objection to Christ, that you run so far from Him? But let us draw near and fill ourselves with Christ, and let His friends drink and be satisfied, and let us quench our hollow and deep desires with Jesus. Oh, come, all of you, and drink at this living well. Come, drink and live forever. Come, drink and be welcome. “Welcome,” says our fairest Bridegroom. No one comes to Christ against his will. No one comes and is turned away. No one comes and regrets the journey. All who have been to Him speak well of Him. Men and angels who know Him will say more than I am able to say, and think more of Him than they can express. Oh, if only I were lost and bewildered in my Lord’s love! Oh, if only I were bound and chained to it! Oh, what a sweet pain, to ache for a sight of Him! Oh, what a living death, what a good death, what a lovely death, to die for love of Jesus! Oh, that I should have a sore heart and a pained soul over the loss of this or that idol! Woe to the errors of my wayward heart, which gapes and cries out for created things and is not pained, cut, tortured, and filled with sorrow for the want of a soul’s fill of the love of Christ! Oh, that You would come near, my Beloved! Oh, my fairest One, why do You stand so far away? Come close, that I may be satisfied with Your excellent love. Oh, for union! Oh, for fellowship with Jesus! Oh, that I could purchase that lovely One at any price, even if hell’s torments for a season were the cost! I cannot believe that Christ will not take pity on His aching lovers and come to ease the sick hearts that sigh and faint for want of Him. Who can bear it when Christ’s love plays hard to get? What heaven could be more like hell than to long and pine and waste away for Christ’s love and be denied it? Is this not hell and heaven woven together? Is this not pain and joy, sweetness and sadness, bound into one fabric, the one the weft and the other the warp? Therefore, I long for Christ to let us meet and be joined together, the soul and Christ in each other’s arms. Oh, what meeting is like this: to see darkness and beauty, contemptibleness and glory, highness and lowness, a soul and Christ, kiss each other! But when all is said and done, I may grow weary in speaking and writing, and yet how far I remain from any adequate expression of Christ or His love. I can neither speak nor write feeling, nor tasting, nor smelling. Come, then, feel and smell and taste Christ and His love, and you will call it more than can ever be spoken. To write about how sweet the honeycomb is falls far short of actually eating and savoring it. One night’s rest in a bed of love with Christ will say more than the heart can think or the tongue can utter. Nor need we fear hardships, or sigh, or be sorrowful over anything on this side of heaven, if we have Christ. Our crosses will never draw blood from the joy of the Holy Spirit and the peace of conscience. Our joy is stored in so high a place that temptation cannot climb up to pull it down. This world may threaten Christ, but it dares not strike. And if it does strike, it breaks its own arm in swinging at a rock. Oh, that we could place our treasures in Christ’s hand and give Him our gold and our crown to keep. Strive, Mistress, to press through the thorns of this life to reach Christ. Don’t lose sight of Him in this cloudy and dark day. Sleep with Him in your heart through the night. Don’t look to the world to learn how to serve Christ; ask Him directly for the way. The world is a false copy and a lying guide to follow.

Remember my love to your husband. I wish for him everything I have written here. The sweet presence, the enduring goodwill of our God, and the warm and lovely comforts of our Lord Jesus be with you. Help me, His prisoner, in your prayers, for I remember you.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

ABERDEEN, August 8, 1637.

S. R.