To His Reverend and Very Dear Brother Mr. George Gillespie — Letter 78

Much honored and Christian Lady.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to hear how it goes with you and your children. I exhort you not to lose breath or to faint in your journey. The way is not so long to your home as it was; it will wear down to one step or an inch at last, and you shall come before long to be within arm's length of the glorious crown. Your Lord Jesus sweated and panted before he got up that mount; he was at 'Father, save me' with it. It was he who said in Psalm 22:14: 'I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint' — Christ was as if they had broken him on the wheel — 'my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels.' Verse 15: 'My strength is dried up like a potsherd.' I am sure you love the way the better that his holy feet trod it before you. Crosses have a fragrance of a crossed and pained Christ. I believe your Lord will not leave you to die alone in the way. I know you have sad hours when the Comforter is hid under a veil, and when you inquire for him and find but an empty nest. This I grant is but a cold good-day when the seeker misses him whom the soul loves. But even his unkindness is kind, his absence lovely, his mask a sweet sight, until God sends Christ himself in his own sweet presence. Make his sweet comforts your own, and be not strange and shy with Christ; homely dealing is best for him — it is his liking. When your winter storms are over, the summer of your Lord shall come. Your sadness is with child of joy; he will do you good in the latter end. Take no heavier burden of your children than your Lord allows. Give them room beside your heart, but not in the very center of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your children. If your Lord takes any of them home to his house before the storm comes on, take it well. The owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees before midsummer and before they get the harvest sun, and it would not be fitting for his servant, the gardener, to chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck his own fruit at whatever season he pleases. They are not lost to you; they are laid up so safely as to be stored in heaven, where our Lord's best treasures lie. They are all freely given goods that are there; death can have no legal claim to anything that is within the walls of the new Jerusalem. All the saints, because of sin, are like old rusty clocks that must be taken down, their wheels scoured and mended, and set up again in better condition than before. Sin has rusted both soul and body; our dear Lord by death takes us down to scour the wheels of both, and to purge us perfectly from the root and remainder of sin, and we shall be set up in better condition than before. Then pluck up your heart — heaven is yours, and that is a word few can say. Now the great Shepherd of the sheep, and the very God of peace, confirm and establish you to the day of the appearing of Christ our Lord.

Aberdeen, September 7, 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.