To a Gentlewoman after the Death of Her Husband — Letter 24

Dear and loving sister, I know you are minding your sweet country and not taking your inn (the place of your banishment) for your home. This life is not worthy to be the thatch or outer wall of your Lord Jesus's paradise, that he did sweat for you, and that he keeps for you. Short and silly and shortsighted were our hope, if it could not look over the water to our best heritage, and if it stayed only at home about the doors of our clay house. I marvel not, my dear sister, that you complain that you come short of your old wrestlings you had for a blessing, and that now you find it not so. Children are but hired to learn their lesson when they first go to school; and it is enough that those who run a race see the gold only at the starting place, and possibly they see little more of it, or nothing at all, till they win to the race's end and get the gold in the palm of their hand. Our Lord makes delicacies and dainties of his sweet presence and love-visits to his own, but Christ's love under a veil is love. If you get Christ, however not in the sweet and pleasant way you would have him, it is enough, for the well-beloved comes not our way; he must choose his own path himself. For worldly things, seeing they are meadows and fair flowers in your way to heaven, a smell in the passing is sufficient. He that would reckon and count all the stones in his way, in a journey of three or four hundred miles, and write up in his account book all the herbs and flowers growing in his way, might come short of his journey. You cannot stay in your inch of time to lose your day (seeing you are in haste, and the night and your afternoon will not wait) in setting your heart on this vain world. It were your wisdom to read your account book and to have in readiness your business against the time you come to death's waterside. I know your lodging is taken; your forerunner Christ has not forgotten that; and therefore you must set yourself to your one thing, which you cannot well lack. In that our Lord took your husband to himself, I know it was that he might make room for himself. He cuts off your love to the creature, that you might learn that God only is the right owner of your love. Sorrow, loss, sadness, death, or the worst things that are (except sin) — but Christ knows well what to make of them, and can put his own in the crosses' common, that we shall be obliged to affliction and thank God who taught us to make our acquaintance with such a rough companion, who can haul us to Christ. You must learn to make evils your great good, and to spin out comforts, peace, joy, communion with Christ, out of your troubles that are Christ's wooers sent to speak for you to himself. It is easy to get good words and a comfortable message from our Lord, even from such rough sergeants as various temptations. Thanks to God for crosses. When we count and reckon our losses in seeking God, we find godliness is great gain. Great partners of a shipful of gold are glad to see the ship come to the harbor; surely we and our Lord Jesus together have a shipful of gold coming home, and our gold is in that ship. Some are so in love (or rather in lust) with this life, that they sell their part of the ship for a little thing. I would counsel you to buy hope, but sell it not. And give not away your crosses for nothing; the inside of Christ's cross is white and joyful, and the far end of the black cross is a fair and glorious heaven of ease. And seeing Christ has fastened heaven to the far end of the cross, and he will not loose the knot himself, and none else can (for when Christ casts a knot, all the world cannot loose it), let us then count it exceeding joy when we fall into various temptations. Thus recommending you to the tender mercy and grace of our Lord, I rest.

Aberdeen. Your loving brother, S. R.