To Robert Glendining — Letter 98
My dear friend.
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I thank you most kindly for your care of me, and your love and respectful kindness to my brother in his distress. I pray the Lord that you may find mercy in the day of Christ. I entreat you, sir, to consider the times you live in, and that your soul is of more worth to you than the whole world, which in the day of the last trumpet shall lie in white ashes like an old castle burnt to nothing. Remember that judgment and eternity are before you. My dear and worthy friend, let me entreat you in Christ's name, and by the salvation of your soul, and by your appearance before the dreadful and sin-avenging judge of the world — make your accounts ready. Read them before you come to the water's edge, for your afternoon will wear short and your sun will fall low and go down. You know that for a long time now your Lord has waited on you. Oh, how comfortable a thing shall it be to you when time shall be no more, and your soul shall depart out of the house of clay into vast and endless eternity, to have your soul dressed and prepared for your Bridegroom! No loss is comparable to the loss of the soul; there is no hope of regaining that loss. Oh, how joyful would my soul be to hear that you would start on the way, and contend for the crown, and leave all vanities, and make Christ your garland! Let your soul put away its old lovers and let Christ have your whole love. I have some experience to write to you of this. My witness is in heaven — I would not exchange my chains and bonds for Christ and my sighs for ten worlds' glory. I judge this clay idol that Adam's sons are selling their souls for to be not worth a drink of cold water. Oh, if your soul were in my soul's place, how sick with love you would be for that fairest one, that fairest among the sons of men! May flowers and morning vapors and summer mist do not pass so fast away as these worm-eaten pleasures that we follow. We build castles in the air, and night dreams are the day idols that we dote on. Salvation, salvation is our only truly necessary thing. Sir, call home your thoughts to this work, to inquire for your Beloved. This earth is the portion of bastards; seek the son's inheritance, and let Christ's truth be dear to you. I pledge my salvation on it that this is the honor of Christ's kingdom — the cause I now suffer for — and that this is the way to life. When you and I shall lie as lumps of pale clay upon the cold ground, the pleasures that we now naturally love shall be less than nothing in that day. Dear brother, fulfill my joy and take yourself to Christ without further delay. You will be glad at length to seek him or do infinitely worse. Remember my love to your wife. Grace be with you.
Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.
