To the Lady Kilconquhar — Letter 29

Mistress.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am glad to hear that you have your face homeward towards your father's house, now when so many are for a home nearer at hand. But your Lord calls you to another life and glory than is to be found here. And therefore I would counsel you to make sure the charters and rights which you have to salvation. You came to this life about a necessary and weighty business — to tryst with Christ regarding your precious soul and the eternal salvation of it. This is the most necessary business you have in this life, and your other affairs beside this are but toys and feathers and dreams and fancies. This is the greatest haste and should be done first. Means are used in the gospel to draw on a meeting between Christ and you. If you neglect your part of it, it is as if you would tear the contract before Christ's eyes and give up the match, that there shall be no more communing about that business. I know other lovers besides Christ are in suit of you, and your soul lacks not many wooers. But I pray you make a chaste virgin of your soul and let it love but one. Most worthy is Christ alone of all your soul's love, however your love were higher than the heaven and deeper than the lowest of this earth, and broader than this world. Many — alas, too many — make a common strumpet of their soul for every lover that comes to the house. Marriage with Christ would put your love and your heart by the gate, out of the way and out of the eyes of all other unlawful suitors. And then you had a ready answer for all others: 'I am already promised away to Christ; the match is concluded; my soul has a husband already, and it cannot have two husbands.' Oh if the world did but know what a smell the ointments of Christ cast, and how ravishing his beauty — 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! Certainly where Christ comes, he runs away with the soul's love, so that they cannot command it. I would far rather look but through the hole of Christ's door, to see but the one half of his fairest and most comely face (for he looks like heaven), suppose I should never win in to see his excellency and glory to the full, than to enjoy the flower and bloom and chiefest excellency of the glory and riches of ten worlds. Lord, send me for my part but the meanest share of Christ that can be given to any of the inhabitants of the new Jerusalem. But I know my Lord is no niggard; he can, and it becomes him well, to give more than my narrow soul can receive. If there were ten thousand thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants and to fill us all. Christ is a well of life, but who knows how deep it is to the bottom? This soul of ours has love and cannot but love some fair one. And O what a fair one, what an only one, what an excellent, lovely, ravishing one is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises like the garden of Eden in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness in one — O what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it should be less to that fair and dearest well-beloved Christ than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths. O but Christ is heaven's wonder and earth's wonder! What marvel that his bride says (Song of Solomon 5:16): 'he is altogether lovely.' Oh that black souls will not come and fetch all their love to this fair one! O if I could invite and persuade thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand of Adam's sons to flock about my Lord Jesus, and to come and take their fill of love! Oh pity, forevermore, that there should be such a one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency and sweetness, and so few to take him. Oh, oh, you poor, dry and dead souls, why will you not come here with your empty vessels and your empty souls to this huge and fair and deep and sweet well of life, and fill all your empty vessels! Oh that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, so pinched, so shallow, and so void of all happiness, and yet men will not take him! They lose their love miserably who will not bestow it upon this lovely one. Alas, these five thousand years, Adam's fools, his waster-heirs, have been wasting and lavishing out their love and their affections upon black lovers and black harlots, upon bits of dead creatures and broken idols, upon this and that feckless creature, and have not brought their love and their heart to Jesus. O pity, that fairness has so few lovers! O woe, woe to the fools of this world, who run past Christ to other lovers! Oh misery, misery, misery, that comeliness can scarce get three or four hearts in a town or a country! Oh that there is so much spoken and so much written and so much thought of creature-vanity, and so little spoken, so little written, so little thought of my great and incomprehensible and never-enough-wondered-at Lord Jesus. Why should I not curse this forlorn and wretched world, that suffers my Lord Jesus to lie alone? O damned souls, O unknowing world, O blind and beggarly and poor souls, O bewitched fools, what ails you at Christ, that you run so from him? I dare not challenge providence, that there are so few buyers and so little sale for such an excellent one as Christ. O the depth, and O the height of my Lord's ways, that pass finding out. But oh if men would once be wise, and not fall so in love with their own hell, as to pass by Christ and not know him! But let us come near and fill ourselves with Christ, and let his friends drink and be drunk, and satisfy our hollow and deep desires with Jesus. Oh come all and drink at this living well; come, drink and live forevermore, come, drink and welcome. Welcome, says our fairest bridegroom; no man gets Christ with ill will; no man comes and is not welcome; no man comes and regrets his voyage. All men speak well of Christ who have been at him; men and angels who know him will say more than I can do, and think more of him than they can say. O if I were bewildered in my Lord's love! Oh if I were fettered and chained to it! O sweet pain to be pained for a sight of him! O living death, O good death, O lovely death to die for love of Jesus! Oh that I should have a sore heart and a pained soul for the wanting of the love of this and that idol! Woe, woe to the mistakings of my miscarrying heart, that gapes and cries for creatures, and is not pained and cut and tortured and in sorrow for the want of a soul's-fill of Christ. Oh that you would come near, my beloved. O my fairest one, why do you stand afar? Come here that I may be satisfied with your excellent love. O for a union, O for a fellowship with Jesus! O that I could buy with a price that lovely one, suppose hell's torments for a while were the price! I cannot believe but Christ will take pity upon his pained lovers and come and ease sick hearts, who sigh and swoon for the want of Christ. Who can abide Christ's love to be coy? What heaven can there be more like to hell, than to lust and yearn and pine and fall in a swoon for Christ's love, and to want it? Is not this hell and heaven woven through each other? Is not this pain and joy, sweetness and sadness to be in one web, the one the weft, the other the warp? Therefore I would Christ would let us meet and join together, the soul and Christ in each other's arms. O what meeting is like this, to see blackness and beauty, contemptibleness and glory, highness and baseness — even a soul and Christ kiss one another! But truly, when all is done I may be wearied in speaking and writing, but O how far am I from the right expression of Christ or his love. I can neither speak nor write feeling, nor calling, nor smelling. Come, feel and smell and taste Christ and his love, and you shall call it more than can be spoken. To write how sweet the honeycomb is, is not so lovely as to eat and suck the honeycomb. A night's rest in a bed of love with Christ will say more than heart can think or tongue can utter. Neither need we fear crosses, or sigh, or be sad for anything that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ. Our crosses will never draw blood of the joy of the Holy Spirit and peace of conscience. Our joy is laid up in such a high place as temptations cannot climb up to take it down. This world may touch Christ, but they dare not strike; or if they strike, they break their arm in fetching a stroke upon a rock. O that we could put our treasure in Christ's hand, and give him our gold to keep, and our crown. Strive, Mistress, to throng through the thorns of this life to be at Christ. Lose not sight of him in this cloudy and dark day. Sleep with him in your heart in the night. Learn not at the world to serve Christ, but ask at himself the way; the world is a false copy and a lying guide to follow. Remember my love to your husband; I wish all to him that I have written here. The sweet presence, the long-lasting goodwill of our God, the warm and lovely comforts of our Lord Jesus be with you. Help me, his prisoner, in your prayers, for I remember you.

Aberdeen, August 8, 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.