When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.
~ Job 22:29
Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.
~ 1 Thessalonians 5:14
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
~ Matthew 25:36
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
~ Galatians 6:2
Letters of Samuel Rutherford With a Sketch of His Life, by Samuel Rutherford. Here are a few of his letters. 1627.
II.—To a Christian Gentlewoman on the death of her daughter
(CHRIST’S SYMPATHY WITH, AND PROPERTY IN US—REASONS FOR RESIGNATION.)
MISTRESS,—My love in Christ remembered to you. I was indeed sorrowful at my departure from you, especially since ye were in such heaviness after your daughter’s death. Yet I do persuade myself, ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour; for Isaiah saith, “In all your afflictions He is afflicted” (Isa. 63:9). O blessed Second who suffereth with you! and glad may your soul be even to walk in the fiery furnace with one like unto the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God. Courage! up your heart! When ye do tire, He will bear both you and your burden (Ps. 55:22). Yet a little while and ye shall see the salvation of God. Remember of what age your daughter was, and that just so long was your lease of her. If she was eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, I know not; but sure I am, seeing her term was come, and your lease run out, ye can no more justly quarrel your great Superior for taking His own at His just term day, than a poor farmer can complain that his master taketh a portion of his own land to himself when his lease is expired. Good mistress, if ye would not be content that Christ would hold from you the heavenly inheritance which is made yours by His death, shall not that same Christ think hardly of you if ye refuse to give Him your daughter willingly, who is a part of His inheritance and conquest? I pray the Lord to give you all your own, and to grace you with patience to give God His also. He is an ill debtor who payeth that which he hath borrowed with a grudge. Indeed, that long loan of such a good daughter, an heir of grace, a member of Christ (as I believe), deserveth more thanks at your Creditor’s hands, than that ye should gloom and murmur when He craveth but His own. I believe you would judge them to be but thankless neighbours who would pay you a sum of money after this manner. But what? Do you think her lost, when she is but sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty? Think her not absent who is in such a friend’s house. Is she lost to you who is found to Christ? If she were with a dear friend, although you should never see her again,your care for her would be but small. Oh, now, is she not with a dear Friend? and gone higher, upon a certain hope that ye shall, in the Resurrection, see her again, when (be ye sure) she shall neither be hectic nor consumed in body? You would be sorry either to be, or to be esteemed, an atheist; and yet, not I, but the Apostle, thinketh those to be hopeless atheists who mourn excessively for the dead (Thess. 4:13). But this is not a challenge on my part. I do speak this only fearing your weakness; for your daughter was a part of yourself; and, therefore, nature in you, being as it were cut and halved, will indeed be grieved. But ye have to rejoice, that when a part of you is on earth, a great part of you is glorified in heaven. Follow her, but envy her not; for indeed it is self-love in us that maketh us mourn for them that die in the Lord. Why? Because for them we cannot mourn, since they are never happy till they be dead; therefore we mourn for our own private respect. Take heed, then, that in showing your affection in mourning for your daughter, ye be not, out of self-affection, mourning for yourself. Consider what the Lord is doing in it. Your daughter is plucked out of the fire, and she resteth from her labours; and your Lord, in that, is trying you, and casting you in the fire. Go through all fires to your rest; and now remember that the eye of God is upon the bush burning and not consumed; and He is gladly content that such a weak woman as you should send Satan away, frustrate of his design. Now honour God, and shame the strong roaring lion, when ye seem weakest. Should such an one as ye faint in the day of adversity? Call to mind the days of old. The Lord yet liveth. Trust in Him, although He should slay you. Faith is exceeding charitable, and believeth no evil of God. Now is the Lord laying, in the one scale of the balance, your making conscience of submission to His gracious will, and in the other, your affection and love to your daughter. Which of the two will ye then choose to satisfy? Be wise, then; and as I trust ye love Christ better than a sinful woman, pass by your daughter, and kiss the Lord’s rod. Men do lop the branches off their trees round about, to the end they may grow up high and tall. The Lord hath this way lopped your branch in taking from you many children, to the end you should grow upward, like one of the Lord’s cedars, setting your heart above, where Christ is, at the right hand of the Father. What is next, but that your Lord cut down the stock after He hath cut the branches? Prepare yourself; you are nearer your daughter this day than you were yesterday. While ye prodigally spend time in mourning for her, ye are speedily posting after her. Run your race with patience. Let God have His own; and ask of Him, instead of your daughter which He hath taken from you, the daughter of faith, which is patience; and in patience possess your soul. Lift up your head: ye do not know how near your redemption doth draw, Thus recommending you to the Lord, who is able to establish you, I rest, your loving and affectionate friend in the Lord Jesus,
S. R.
ANWOTH, April 23, 1628.
KENMURE HOUSE.
III.—To the VISCOUNTESS OF KENMURE, on occasion of illness and spiritual depression
[LADY JANE CAMPBELI, Viscountess of Kenmure, was the third daughter of Archibald Campbell, seventh Earl of Argyle, and sister to the Marquis of Argyle who was beheaded in 1661. She was a woman distinguished, in her day, for the depth of her piety, and her warm attachment to the Presbyterian interest in Scotland. Nor was she less distinguished for generosity and munificence, than for piety. Her bounty was in a particular manner extended to those whom suffering for conscience, sake had reduced to poverty or exile. In the year 1628 she was married to Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, afterwards Viscount Kenmure and Lord Gordon of Lochinvar, which is not far from Carsphairn. This union did not last many years. In 1634 she became a widow, his Lordship having died at Kenmure Castle, on the 12th of September that year, in the 35th year of his age. But her sorrow on this occasion was alleviated by the Christian resignation and faith which he was enabled to exercise under his last illness. To this noble man she had two daughters, who died in infancy, one about the beginning of the year 1629, and the other in 1634, as may be gathered from allusions to these bereavements, contained in two consolatory letters written to her by Rutherford in these years. She had also, by the same marriage, a son, John, second Viscount of Kenmure, who, however, died under age and unmarried, in August 1649. This event forms the subject of a letter written to her by Rutherford the 1st of October that year. She married a second husband, on the 21st of September 1640, the Hon. Sir Henry Montgomery of Giffen, second son of Alexander, fifth Earl of Eglinton; but this marriage was without issue. Sir Henry’s religious views were congenial to her own; and he is described as an “active and faithful friend of the Lord’s kirk.” She was soon left a widow a second time, in which state she lived till a very venerable age, having survived the Restoration a number of years, as appears from the fact that Livingstone, at the time of his death (which took place at Rotterdam in 1672), speaks of her as the oldest acquaintance he then had alive in Scotland. She was a regular correspondent of Rutherford, the last of whose letters to her is dated July the 24th, 1661, after the execution of her brother above mentioned. Nor after Mr. Rutherford’s death was she unmindful of his widow. “Madam,” says Mr. M’Ward, in a letter to her, “Mrs. Rutherford gives me often an account of the singular testimony which she met with of your Ladyship’s affection to her and her daughter.”
Kenmure Castle is well seen from the road that leads along the banks of the Ken. The loch, the river, the old baronial house, combine to attract notice. It is built on an insulated knoll, well wooded all around. It is four miles from Dalry, and the approach is through an avenue of lime-trees. The old garden has a hedge of very lofty beech trees, and a curious dial with a Latin inscription, dated “1623. Joannes Bonar fecit”—the name of the person who (it is said) brought it from the Continent.
(ACQUIESCENCE IN GOD’S PURPOSE—FAITH IN EXERCISE— ENCOURAGEMENT IN VIEW OF SICKNESS AND DEATH—PUBLIC AFFAIRS.)
MADAM,—All dutiful obedience in the Lord remembered. I have heard of your Ladyship’s infirmity and sickness with grief; yet I trust ye have learned to say, “It is the Lord, let Him do whatsoever seemeth good in His eyes.” It is now many years since the apostate angels made a question, whether their will or the will of their Creator should be done; and since that time, froward mankind hath always in that same suit of law compeared to plead with them against God, in daily repining against His will. But the Lord being both party and judge, hath obtained a decreet, and saith, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure (Isa. 46:10). It is then best for us, in the obedience of faith, and in an holy submission, to give that to God which the law of His almighty and just power will have of us. Therefore, Madam, your Lord willeth you, in all states of life, to say, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven:” and herein shall ye have comfort, that He, who seeth perfectly through all your evils, and knoweth the frame and constitution of your nature, and what is most healthful for your soul, holdeth every cup of affliction to your head, with His own gracious hand. Never believe that your tender- hearted Saviour, who knoweth the strength of your stomach, will mix that cup with one drachm-weight of poison. Drink then with the patience of the saints, and the God of patience bless your physic.
I have heard your Ladyship complain of deadness, and want of the bestirring power of the life of God. But courage! He who walked in the garden, and made a noise that made Adam hear His voice, will also at some times walk in your soul, and make you hear a more sweet word. Yet, ye will not always hear the noise and the din of His feet, when He walketh. Ye are, at such a time, like Jacob mourning at the supposed death of Joseph, when Joseph was living. The new creature, the image of the second Adam, is living in you; and yet ye are mourning at the supposed death of the life of Christ in you. Ephraim is bemoaning and mourning (Jer. 31:18), when he thinketh God is far off and heareth not; and yet God is like the bridegroom (Song 2:9), standing only behind a thin wall and laying to His ear; for He saith Himself, “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself.” I have good confidence, Madam, that Christ Jesus, whom your soul through forests and mountains is seeking, is within you. And yet I speak not this to lay a pillow under your head, or to dissuade you from a holy fear of the loss of your Christ, or of provoking and “stirring up the Beloved before He please,” by sin. I know, in spiritual confidence, the devil will come in, as in all other good works, and cry “Half mine;” and so endeavour to bring you under a fearful sleep, till He whom your soul loveth be departed from the door, and have left off knocking. And, therefore, here the Spirit of God must hold your soul’s feet in the golden mid-line, betwixt confident resting in the arms of Christ, and presumptuous and drowsy sleeping in the bed of fleshly security. Therefore, worthy lady, so count little of yourself, because of your own wretchedness and sinful drowsiness, that ye count not also little of God, in the course of His unchangeable mercy. For there be many Christians most like unto young sailors, who think the shore and the whole land doth move, when the ship and they themselves are moved; just so, not a few do imagine that God moveth and saileth and changeth places, because their giddy souls are under sail, and subject to alteration, to ebbing and flowing. But “the foundation of the Lord abideth sure.” God knoweth that ye are His own. Wrestle, fight, go forward, watch, fear, believe, pray; and then ye have all the infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ within you.
Ye have now, Madam, a sickness before you; and also after that a death. Gather then now food for the journey. God give you eyes to see through sickness and death, and to see something beyond death. I doubt not but that, if hell were betwixt you and Christ, as a river which ye behoved to cross ere you could come at Him, but ye would willingly put in your foot, and make through to be at Him, upon hope that He would come in Himself, in the deepest of the river, and lend you His hand. Now, I believe your hell is dried up, and ye have only these two shallow brooks, sickness and death, to pass through; and ye have also a promise that Christ shall do more than meet you, even that He shall come Himself, and go with you foot for foot, yea and bear you in His arms. O then! O then! for the joy that is set before you; for the love of the Man (who is also “God over all, blessed for ever”), that is standing upon the shore to welcome you, run your race with patience. The Lord go with you. Your Lord will not have you, nor any of His servants, to exchange for the worse. Death in itself includeth both the death of the soul and the death of the body; but to God’s children the bounds and the limits of death are abridged and drawn into a more narrow compass. So that when ye die, a piece of death shall only seize upon you, or the least part of you shall die, and that is the dissolution of the body; for in Christ ye are delivered from the second death; and, therefore, as one born of God, commit not sin (although ye cannot live and not sin), and that serpent shall but eat your earthly part.
As for your soul, it is above the law of death. But it is fearful and dangerous to be a debtor and servant to sin; for the count of sin ye will not be able to make good before God, except Christ both count and pay for you. I trust also, Madam, that ye will be careful to present to the Lord the present estate of this decaying kirk. For what shall be concluded in Parliament anent her, the Lord knoweth. Sure I am, the decree of a most fearful parliament in heaven is at the very point of coming forth, because of the sins of the land. For “we have cast away the law of the Lord, and despised the words of the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. 5:24). “Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; truth is fallen in the streets, and equity cannot enter” (Isa. 59:14). Lo! the prophet, as if he had seen us and our kirk, resembleth Justice to be handled as an enemy holden out at the ports of our city [so is she banished!], and Truth to a person sickly and diseased, fallen down in a deadly swooning fit in the streets, before he can come to an house. “The priests have caused many to stumble at the law, and have corrupted the covenant of Levi” (Mal. 2:3). “But what will they do in the end?” Therefore give the Lord no rest for Zion. Stir up your husband, your brother, and all with whom ye are in favour and credit, to stand upon the Lord’s side against Baal. I have good hope that your husband loveth the peace and prosperity of Zion. The peace of God be upon him, for his intended courses anent the establishment of a powerful ministry in this land. Thus, not willing to weary your Ladyship further, I commend you now, and always, to the grace and mercy of that God who is able to keep you, that ye fall not. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Your Ladyship’s servant at all dutiful obedience in Christ, S. R.
ANWOTH, July 27, 1628.
IV.—To the Elect and Noble Lady, my LADY KENMURE, on occasion of the death of her infant daughter
(TRIBULATION THE PORTION OF GOD’S PEOPLE, AND INTENDED TO WEAN THEM FROM THE WORLD.)
MADAM,—Saluting your Ladyship with grace and mercy from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ,—I was sorry, at my departure, leaving your Ladyship in grief, and would still be grieved at it, if I were not assured that ye have One with you in the furnace, whose visage is like unto the Son of God. I am glad that ye have been acquainted from your youth with the wrestlings of God, and that ye get scarce liberty to swallow down your spittle, being casten from furnace to furnace, knowing if ye were not dear to God, and if your health did not require so much of Him, He would not spend so much physic upon you. All the brethren and sisters of Christ must be conform to His image and copy in suffering (Rom. 8:29). And some do more vively resemble the copy than others. Think, Madam, that it is a part of your glory to be enrolled among those whom one of the elders pointed out to John, “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Behold your Forerunner going out of the world all in a lake of blood, and it is not ill to die as He did. Fulfil with joy the remnant of the grounds and “remainders of the afflictions of Christ” in your body (Col. 1:24). Ye have lost a child: nay she is not lost to you who is found to Christ. She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star, which going out of our sight doth not die and evanish, but shineth in another hemisphere. Ye see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that she hath gotten of eternity; and ye have to rejoice that ye have now some plenishing up in heaven. Build your nest upon no tree here; for ye see God hath sold the forest to death; and every tree whereupon we would rest is ready to be cut down, to the end we may fly and mount up, and build upon the Rock, and dwell in the holes of the Rock. What ye love besides Jesus, your husband, is an adulterous lover. Now it is God’s special blessing to Judah, that He will not let her find her paths in following her strange lovers. “Therefore, behold I will hedge up her way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them” (Hos. 2:6, 7). O thrice happy Judah, when God buildeth a double stone wall betwixt her and the fire of hell! The world, and the things of the world, Madam, is the lover ye naturally affect beside your own husband Christ. The hedge of thorns and the wall which God buildeth in your way, to hinder you from this lover, is the thorny hedge of daily grief, loss of children, weakness of body, iniquity of the time, uncertainty of estate, lack of worldly comfort, fear of God’s anger for old unrepented-of sins. What lose ye, if God twist and plait the hedge daily thicker? God be blessed, the Lord will not let you find your paths. Return to your first husband. Do not weary, neither think that death walketh towards you with a slow pace. Ye must be riper ere ye be shaken. Your days are no longer than Job’s, that were “swifter than a post, and passed away as the ships of desire, and as the eagle that hasteth for the prey” (9:25, 26, margin). There is less sand in your glass now than there was yesternight. This span-length of ever- posting time will soon be ended. But the greater is the mercy of God, the more years ye get to advise, upon what terms, and upon what conditions, ye cast your soul in the huge gulf of never-ending eternity. The Lord hath told you what ye should be doing till He come. “Wait and hasten,” saith Peter, “for the Coming of our Lord.” All is night that is here, in respect of ignorance and daily ensuing troubles, one always making way to another, as the ninth wave of the sea to the tenth; therefore sigh and long for the dawning of that morning, and the breaking of that day of the Coming of the Son of Man, when the shadows shall flee away. Persuade yourself the King is coming; read His letter sent before Him, “Behold, I come quickly” (Rev. 3:11). Wait with the wearied night-watch for the breaking of the eastern sky, and think that ye have not a morrow. As the wise father said, who, being invited against to-morrow to dine with his friend, answered, “Those many days I have had no morrow at all.” I am loth to weary you. Show yourself a Christian, by suffering without murmuring, for which sin fourteen thousand and seven hundred were slain (Numb. 16:49). In patience possess your soul. They lose nothing who gain Christ. Thus remembering my brother’s and my wife’s humble service to your Ladyship, I commend you to the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus, assuring you that your day is coming, and that God’s mercy is abiding you. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours in the Lord Jesus at all dutiful obedience, S. R.
ANWOTH, Jan. 15, 1629.
VI.—For MARION M’NAUGHT, on occasion of the illness of his wife. An excerpt.
LOVING AND DEAR SISTER,—If ever you would pleasure me, entreat the Lord for me, now when I am so comfortless, and so full of heaviness, that I am not able to stand under the burthen any longer. The Almightyhath doubled His stripes upon me, for my wife is so sore tormented night and day, that I have wondered why the Lord tarrieth so long. My life is bitter unto me, and I fear the Lord be my contrair party. It is (as I now know by experience) hard to keep sight of God in a storm, especially when He hides Himself, for the trial of His children. If He would be pleased to remove His hand, I have a purpose to seek Him more than I have done. Happy are they that can win away with their soul. I am afraid of His judgments. I bless my God that there is a death, and a heaven. I would weary to begin again to be a Christian, so bitter is it to drink of the cup that Christ drank of, if I knew not that there is no poison in it. God give us not of it till we vomit again, for we have sick souls when God’s physic works not. Pray that God would not lead my wife into temptation. Woe is my heart, that I have done so little against the kingdom of Satan in my calling; for he would fain attempt to make me blaspheme God in His face. I believe, I believe, in the strength of Him who hath put me in His work, he shall fail in that which he seeks. I have comfort in this, that my Captain, Christ, hath said, I must fight and overcome the world, and with a weak, spoiled, weaponless devil, “the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 16:33, and 14:30). Desire Mr. Robert to remember me, if he love me. Grace, grace be with you, and all yours.
Remember Zion. There is a letter procured from the King by Mr. John Maxwell to urge conformity, to give the communion at Christmas in Edinburgh. Hold fast that which you have, that no man take the crown from you. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours in the Lord,
S. R.
ANWOTH, Nov. 17, 1629.
VII.—To my LADY KENMURE
(THE EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT—COMMUNION WITH CHRIST—FAITH IN THE PROMISES.)
MADAM,—I have longed exceedingly to hear of your life and health, and growth in the grace of God. I lacked the opportunity of a bearer, in respect I did not understand of the hasty departure of the last, by whom I might have saluted your Ladyship, and therefore I could not write before this time. I entreat you, Madam, let me have two lines from you concerning your present condition. I know ye are in grief and heaviness; and if it were not so, ye might be afraid, because then your way should not be so like the way that (our Lord saith) leadeth to the New Jerusalem. Sure I am, if ye knew what were before you, or if ye saw but some glances of it, ye would with gladness swim through the present floods of sorrow, spreading forth your arms out of desire to be at land. If God have given you the Earnest of the Spirit, as part of payment of God’s principal sum, ye have to rejoice; for our Lord will not lose His earnest, neither will He go back or repent Him of the bargain. If ye find at some time a longing to see God, joy in the assurance of that sight, howbeit that feast be but like the Passover, that cometh about only once a year. Peace of conscience, liberty of prayer, the doors of God’s treasure cast up to the soul, and a clear sight of Himself looking out, and saying, with a smiling countenance, “Welcome to Me, afflicted soul;” this is the earnest that He giveth sometimes, and which maketh glad the heart, and is an evidence that the bargain will hold. But to the end ye may get this earnest, it were good to come oft into terms of speech with God, both in prayer and hearing of the word. For this is the house of wine, where ye meet with your Well-Beloved. Here it is where He kisseth you with the kisses of His mouth, and where ye feel the smell of His garments; and they have indeed a most fragrant and glorious smell. Ye must, I say, wait upon Him, and be often communing with Him, whose lips are as lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, and by the moving thereof He will assuage your grief; for the Christ that saveth you is a speaking Christ; the church knoweth Him by His voice (Song 2:8), and can discern His tongue amongst a thousand. I say this to the end ye should not love those dumb masks of antichristian ceremonies, that the church where ye are for a time hath cast over the Christ whom your soul loveth. This is to set before you a dumb Christ. But when our Lord cometh, He speaketh to the heart in the simplicity of the Gospel.
I have neither tongue nor pen to express to you the happiness of such as are in Christ. When ye have sold all that ye have, and bought the field wherein this pearl is, ye will think it no bad market; for if ye be in Him, all His is yours, and ye are in Him; therefore, “because He liveth, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). And what is that else, but as if the Son had said, “I will not have heaven except My redeemed ones be with Me: they and I cannot live asunder. Abide in Me, and I in you.” O sweet communion, when Christ and we are through-other, and are no longer two! “Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, to behold My glory that Thou hast given Me” (John 17:24). Amen, dear Jesus, let it be according to that word. I wonder that ever your heart should be cast down, if ye believe this truth. I and they are not worthy of Jesus Christ, who will not suffer forty years’ trouble for Him, since they have such glorious promises. But we fools believe those promises as the man that read Plato’s writings concerning the immortality of the soul: so long as the book was in his hand he believed all was true, and that the soul could not die; but so soon as he laid by the book, he began to imagine that the soul is but a smoke or airy vapour, that perisheth with the expiring of the breath. So we at starts do assent to the sweet and precious promises; but, laying aside God’s book, we begin to call all in question. It is faith indeed to believe without a pledge, and to hold the heart constant at this work; and when we doubt, to run to the Law and to the Testimony, and stay there. Madam, hold you here: here is your Father’s testament,—read it; in it He hath left to you remission of sins and life everlasting. If all that ye have here be crosses and troubles, down-castings, frequent desertions, and departure of the Lord, who is suiting you in marriage, courage! He who is wooer and suitor should not be an household man with you till ye and He come up to His Father’s house together. He purposeth to do you good at your latter end (Deut. 8:16), and to give you rest from the days of adversity (Ps. 94:13). “It is good to bear the yoke of God in your youth” (Lam. 3:27). “Turn in to your stronghold as a prisoner of hope” (Zech. 9:12). “For the vision is for an appointed time; but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Hab. 2:3). Hear Himself saying, “Come, My people” (rejoice, He calleth on you!), “enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself, as it were for a little moment, till the indignation be past” (Isa. 26:20). Believe, then, believe and be saved; think not hard if ye get not your will, nor your delights in this life; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but Himself. God forbid that ye should rejoice in anything but in the cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14).
Our church, Madam, is decaying,—she is like Ephraim’s cake (Hos. 7:9); “and grey hairs are here and there upon her, and she knoweth it not.” She is old and grey-haired, near the grave, and no man taketh it to heart. Her wine is sour and is corrupted. Now if Phinehas’s wife did live she might travail in birth and die, to see the ark of God taken, and the glory depart from our Israel. The power and life of religion is away. “Woe be to us! for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out” (Jer. 6:4). Madam, Zion is the ship wherein ye are carried to Canaan; if she suffer shipwreck, ye will be cast overboard upon death and life, to swim to land upon broken boards. It were time for us, by prayer, to put upon our master-pilot, Jesus, and to cry, “Master, save us; we perish.” Grace, grace be with you. We would think it a blessing to our kirk to see you here; but our sins withhold good things from us. The great Messenger of the Covenant preserve you in body and spirit.
Yours in the Lord,
S. R.
ANWOTH, Feb. 1, 1630.
VIII.—For MARION M’NAUGHT, on occasion of his wife’s illness
(WRESTLINGS WITH GOD.)
MISTRESS,—My love in Jesus Christ remembered. I am in good health; honour to my Lord; but my wife’s disease increaseth daily, to her great torment and pain night and day. She has not been in God’s house since our communion, neither out of her bed. I have hired a man to Edinburgh to Doctor Jeally and to John Hamilton. I can hardly believe her disease is ordinary, for her life is bitter to her; she sleeps none, but cries as a woman travailing in birth. What will be the event, He that hath the keys of the grave knoweth. I have been many times, since I saw you, that I have besought the Lord to loose her out of body, and to take her to her rest. I believe the Lord’s tide of afflictions will ebb again; but at present I am exercised with the wrestlings of God, being afraid of nothing more than this, that God has let loose the tempter upon my house. God rebuke him and his instruments. Because Satan is not cast out but by fasting and prayer, I entreat you remember our estate to our Lord, and entreat all good Christians whom ye know, but especially your pastor,2 to do the same. It becomes us still to knock, and to lie at the Lord’s door, until we die knocking. If He will not open, it is more than He has said in His word. But He is faithful. I look not to win away to my home without wounds and blood. Welcome, welcome cross of Christ, if Christ be with it. I have not a calm spirit in the work of my calling here, being daily chastised; yet God hath not put out my candle, as He does to the wicked. Grace, grace be with you and all yours.
Yours in the Lord, S. R.
ANWOTH.
IX.—For MARION M’NAUGHT, recommending a friend to her love
(PRAYERS ASKED.)
MISTRESS,—My love in Christ remembered. At the desire of this bearer, whom I love, I thought to request you if ye can help his wife with your advice, for she is in a most dangerous and deadly-like condition. For I have thought she was changed in her carriage and life, this sometime bypast, and had hope that God would have brought her home; and now, by appearance, she will depart this life, and leave a number of children behind her. If ye can be entreated to help her, it is a work of mercy. My own wife is still in exceeding great torment night and day. Pray for us, for my life was never so wearisome to me. God hath filled me with gall and wormwood; but I believe (which holds up my head above the water), “It is good for a man,” saith the Spirit of God, “that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lam. 3:27).
I do remember you. I pray you be humble and believe; and I entreat you in Jesus Christ, pray for John Stuart and his wife, and desire your husband to do the same. Remember me heartily to Jean Brown. Desire her to pray for me and my wife: I do remember her. Forget not Zion. Grace, grace upon them, and peace, that pray for Zion. She is the ship we sail in to Canaan. If she be broken on a rock, we will be cast overboard, to swim to land betwixt death and life. The grace of Jesus be with your husband and children.
Yours in Christ, S. R. ANWOTH.
X.—For MARION M’NAUGHT
(SUBMISSION, PERSEVERANCE, AND ZEAL RECOMMENDED.)
WELL-BELOVED AND DEAR SISTER IN CHRIST,—I could not get an answer written to your letter till now, in respect of my wife’s disease; and she is yet mightily pained. I hope that all shall end in God’s mercy. I know that an afflicted life looks very like the way that leads to the kingdom; for the Apostle hath drawn the line and the King’s market-way, “through much tribulation, to the kingdom” (Acts 14:22; 1 Thess. 3:4). The Lord grant us the whole armour of God.
Ye write to me concerning your people’s disposition, how that their hearts are inclined toward the man ye know, and whom ye desire most earnestly yourself. He would most gladly have the Lord’s call for transplantation; for he knows that all God’s plants, set by His own hand, thrive well; and if the work be of God, He can make a stepping-stone of the devil himself for setting forward the work. For yourself, I would advise you to ask of God a submissive heart. Your reward shall be with the Lord, although the people be not gathered (as the prophet speaks); and suppose the word do not prosper, God shall account you “a repairer of the breaches.” And take Christ caution, ye shall not lose your reward. Hold your grip fast. If ye knew the mind of the glorified in heaven, they think heaven come to their hand at an easy market, when they have got it for threescore or fourscore years wrestling with God. When ye are come thither, ye shall think, “All I did, in respect of my rich reward, now enjoyed of free grace, was too little.” Now then, for the love of the Prince of your salvation, who is standing at the end of your way, holding up in His hand the prize and the garland to the race-runners, Forward, forward; faint not. Take as many to heaven with you as ye are able to draw. The more ye draw with you, ye shall be the welcomer yourself. Be no niggard or sparing churl of the grace of God; and employ all your endeavours for establishing an honest ministry in your town, now when ye have so few to speak a good word for you. I have many a grieved heart daily in my calling. I would be undone, if I had not access to the King’s chamber of presence, to show Him all the business. The devil rages, and is mad to see the water drawn from his own mill; but would to God we could be the Lord’s instruments to build the Son of God’s house.
Pray for me. If the Lord furnish not new timber from Lebanon to build the house, the work will cease. I look to Him, who hath begun well with me. I have His handwrite, He will not change. Your daughter is well, and longs for a Bible. The Lord establish you in peace. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours at all power in Christ, S. R.
ANWOTH.
XI.—To my LADY KENMURE
(GOD’S INEXPLICABLE DEALINGS WITH HIS PEOPLE WELL ORDERED—WANT OF ORDINANCES—CONFORMITY TO CHRIST— TROUBLES OF THE CHURCH—DEATH OF MR. RUTHERFORD’S WIFE.)
MADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you. I received your Ladyship’s letter, in the which I perceive your case in this world smelleth of a fellowship and communion with the Son of God in His sufferings. Ye cannot, ye must not, have a more pleasant or more easy condition here, than He had, who “through afflictions was made perfect” (Heb. 2:10). We may indeed think, Cannot God bring us to heaven with ease and prosperity? Who doubteth but He can? But His infinite wisdom thinketh and decreeth the contrary; and we cannot see a reason of it, yet He hath a most just reason. We never with our eyes saw our own soul; yet we have a soul. We see many rivers, but we know not their first spring and original fountain; yet they have a beginning. Madam, when ye are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore of glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see, in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God’s wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, “If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoying of this crown of glory.” It is your part now to believe, and suffer, and hope, and wait on; for I protest, in the presence of that all- discerning eye, who knoweth what I write and what I think, that I would not want the sweet experience of the consolations of God for all the bitterness of affliction. Nay, whether God come to His children with a rod or a crown, if He come Himself with it, it is well. Welcome, welcome, Jesus, what way soever Thou come, if we can get a sight of Thee! And sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bedside and draw by the curtains, and say, “Courage, I am Thy salvation,” than to enjoy health, being lusty and strong, and never to be visited of God.
Worthy and dear lady, in the strength of Christ, fight and overcome. Ye are now yourself alone, but ye may have, for the seeking, three always in your company, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I trust they are near you. Ye are now deprived of the comfort of a lively ministry; so was Israel in their captivity; yet hear God’s promise to them: “Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God, although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come” (Ezek. 11:16). Behold a sanctuary! for a sanctuary, God Himself in the place and room of the temple of Jerusalem! I trust in God, that carrying this temple about with you, ye shall see Jehovah’s beauty in His house.
We are in great fears of a great and fearful trial to come upon the kirk of God; for these, who would build their houses and nests upon the ashes of mourning Jerusalem, have drawn our King upon hard and dangerous conclusions against such as are termed Puritans, for the rooting of them out. Our prelates (the Lord take the keys of His house from these bastard porters!) assure us that, for such as will not conform, there is nothing but imprisonment and deprivation. The spouse of Jesus will ever be in the fire; but I trust in my God she shall not consume, because of the good-will of Him who dwelleth in the Bush; for He dwelleth in it with good-will. All sorts of crying sins without controlment abound in our land. The glory of the Lord is departing from Israel, and the Lord is looking back over His shoulder, to see if any one will say, “Lord, tarry,” and no man requesteth Him to stay. Corrupt and false doctrine is openly preached by the idol- shepherds of the land. For myself, I have daily griefs, through the disobedience unto, and contempt of, the word of God. I was summoned before the High Commission by a profligate person in this parish, convicted of incest. In the business, Mr. Alexander Colvill2 (for respect to your Ladyship) was my great friend, and wrote a most kind letter to me. The Lord give him mercy in that day. Upon the day of my compearance, the sea and winds refused to give passage to the Bishop of St. Andrews. I entreat your Ladyship, thank Mr. Alexander Colvill with two lines of a letter.
My wife now, after long disease and torment, for the space of a year and a month, is departed this life. The Lord hath done it; blessed be His name. I have been diseased of a fever tertian for the space of thirteen weeks, and
am yet in the sickness, so that I preach but once on the Sabbath with great difficulty. I am not able either to visit or examine the congregation. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Your Ladyship’s at all obedience, S. R.
ANWOTH, June 26, 1630.
XII.—For MARION M’NAUGHT
(GOD MIXETH THE CUP—THE WICKED HAVE THEIR REWARD— FAITHFULNESS—FORBEARANCE—TRIALS.)
WELL-BELOVED AND DEAR SISTER,— My love in the Lord Jesus remembered. I understand that you are still under the Lord’s visitation, in your former business with your enemies, which is God’s dealing. For, till He take His children out of the furnace that knoweth how long they should be tried, there is no deliverance; but after God’s highest and fullest tide, that the sea of trouble is gone over the souls of His children, then comes the gracious long-hoped-for ebbing and drying up of the waters. Dear sister, do not faint; the wicked may hold the bitter cup to your head, but God mixeth it, and there is no poison in it. They strike, but God moves the rod; Shimei curseth, but it is because the Lord bids Him. I tell you, and I have it from Him before whom I stand for God’s people, that there is a decreet given out, in the great court of the highest heavens, that your present troubles shall be dispersed as the morning cloud, and God shall bring forth your righteousness, as the light of the noontide of the day. Let me intreat you, in Christ’s name, to keep a good conscience in your proceedings in that matter, and beware of yourself: yourself is a more dangerous enemy than I, or any without you. Innocence and an upright cause is a good advocate before God, and shall plead for you, and win your cause. And count much of your Master’s approbation and His smiling. He is now as the king that is gone to a far country. God seems to be from home (if I may say so), yet He sees the ill servants, who say, “Our Master deferreth His coming,” and so strike their fellow-servants. But patience, my beloved; Christ the King is coming home; the evening is at hand, and He will ask an account of His servants. Make a fair, clear count to Him. So carry yourself as at night you may say, Master, I have wronged none; behold, you have your own with advantage. O! your soul then will esteem much of one of God’s kisses and embracements, in the testimony of a good conscience. The wicked, howbeit they be casting many evil thoughts, bitter words, and sinful deeds behind their back, yet they are, in so doing, clerks to their own process, and doing nothing all their life but gathering dittayes against themselves; for God is angry at the wicked every day. And I hope your present process shall be sighted one day by Him, who knoweth your just cause; and the bloody tongues, crafty foxes, double-ingrained hypocrites, shall appear as they are before His majesty, when He shall take the mask off their faces. And O, thrice happy shall your soul be then, when God finds you covered with nothing but the white robe of the saint’s innocence, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
You have been of late in the King’s wine-cellar, where you were welcomed by the Lord of the inn, upon condition that you walk in love. Put on love, and brotherly kindness, and long-suffering; wait as long upon the favour and turned hearts of your enemies as your Christ waited upon you, and as dear Jesus stood at your soul’s door, with dewy and rainy locks, the long cold night. Be angry, but sin not. I persuade myself, that holy unction within you, which teacheth you all things, is also saying, “Overcome evil with good.” If that had not spoken in your soul, at the tears of your aged pastor, you would not have agreed, and forgiven his foolish son, who wronged you; but my Master bade me tell you, God’s blessing shall be upon you for it; and from Him I say, Grace, grace, grace, and everlasting peace be upon you. It is my prayer for you, that your carriage may grace and adorn the Gospel of that Lord who hath graced you. I heard your husband also was sick; but I beseech you in the bowels of Jesus, welcome every rod of God, for I find not in the whole book of God a greater note of the child of God, than to fall down and kiss the feet of an angry God. And when He seems to put you away from Him, and loose your hands that grip Him, to look up in faith, and say, “I shall not, I will not, be put away from Thee. Howbeit Thy Majesty draw to free Thyself of me, yet, Lord, give me leave to hold, and cleave unto Thyself.” I will pray, that your husband may return in peace. Your decreet comes from heaven; look up thither, for many (says Solomon) seek the face of the ruler, but every man’s judgment cometh from the Lord. And be glad that it is so, for Christ is the clerk of your process, and will see that all go right; and I persuade myself He is saying, “Yonder servants of mine are wronged; for My blood, Father, give them justice.” Think you not, dear sister, but our High Priest, our Jesus, the Master of requests, presents our bills of complaint to the great Lord Justice? Yea I believe it, since He is our Advocate, and Daniel calls Him the Spokesman, whose hand presents all to the Father.
For other business, I say nothing, till the Lord give me to see your face. I am credibly informed, that multitudes of England, and especially worthy preachers, and silenced preachers of London, are gone to New England; and I know one learned holy preacher, who hath written against the Arminians, who is gone thither. Our Blessed Lord Jesus, who cannot get leave to sleep with His spouse in this land, is going to seek an inn where He will be better entertained. And what marvel? Wearied Jesus, after He had travelled from Geneva, by the ministry of worthy Mr. Knox, and was laid in His bed, and reformation begun, and the curtains drawn, had not gotten His dear eyes well together, when irreverent bishops came in, and with the din and noise of ceremonies, holy days, and other Romish corruptions, they awake our Beloved. Others came to His bedside, and drew the curtains, and put hands on His servants, banished, deprived, and confined them; and for the pulpit they got a stool and a cold fire in the Blackness;2 and the nobility drew the covering off Him, and have made Him a poor naked Christ, spoiling His servants of the tithes and kirk rents. And now there is such a noise of crying sins in the land, as the want of the knowledge of God, of mercy, and truth; such swearing, whoring, lying, and blood touching blood; that Christ is putting on His clothes, and making Him, like an ill-handled stranger, to go to other lands. Pray Him, sister, to lie down again with His beloved.
Remember my dearest love to John Gordon, to whom I will write when I am strong, and to John Brown, Grissel, Samuel, and William; grace be upon them. As you love Christ, keep Christ’s favour, and put not upon Him when He sleeps, to awake Him before He please. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Your brother in Christ,
S. R.
ANWOTH, July 21, 1630.
XIII.—For MARION M’NAUGHT, when exposed to reproach for her principles
(JESUS A PATTERN OF PATIENCE UNDER SUFFERING.)
WELL-BELOVED SISTER,—I have been thinking, since my departure from you, of the pride and malice of your adversaries; and ye may not (since ye have had the Book of Psalms so often) take hardly with this; for David’s enemies snuffed at him, and through the pride of their heart said, “The Lord will not require it” (Ps. 10:13). I beseech you, therefore, in the bowels of Jesus, set before your eyes the patience of your forerunner Jesus, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously (1 Pet. 2:23). And since your Lord and Redeemer with patience received many a black stroke on His glorious back, and many a buffet of the unbelieving world, and says of Himself, “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting” (Isa. 4:6); follow Him, and think it not hard that you receive a blow with your Lord, Take part with Jesus of His sufferings, and glory in the marks of Christ. If this storm were over, you must prepare yourself for a new wound; for, five thousand years ago, our Lord proclaimed deadly war betwixt the Seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent. And marvel not that one town cannot keep the children of God and the children of the devil, for one belly could not keep Jacob and Esau (Gen. 25:22); one house could not keep peaceably together Isaac, the son of the promise, and Ishmael, the son of the handmaid (Gen. 21:10). Be you upon Christ’s side of it, and care not what flesh can do. Hold yourself fast by your Saviour, howbeit you be buffeted, and those that follow Him. Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8, 9). If you can possess your soul in patience, their day is coming. Worthy and dear sister, know to carry yourself in trouble; and when you are hated and reproached, the Lord shows it to you—”All this is come upon us, yet have we not forgotten Thee, neither have we dealt falsely in Thy covenant” (Ps. 44:17). “Unless Thy law had been my delight, I had perished in mine affliction” (Ps. 119:92). Keep God’s covenant in your trials. Hold you by His blessed word, and sin not. Flee anger, wrath, grudging, envying, fretting. Forgive an hundred pence to your fellow- servant, because your Lord hath forgiven you ten thousand talents. For I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin and offend your Lord in your sufferings. But the way to overcome is by patience, forgiving and praying for your enemies, in doing whereof you heap coals upon their heads, and your Lord shall open a door to you in your troubles. Wait upon Him, as the night watch waiteth for the morning. He will not tarry. Go up to your watch-tower, and come not down; but by prayer, and faith, and hope, wait on. When the sea is full, it will ebb again; and so soon as the wicked are come to the top of their pride, and are waxed high and mighty, then is their change approaching. They that believe make not haste.
Remember Zion, forget her not, for her enemies are many; for the nations are gathered together against her. “But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they His counsel: for He shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor. Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion” (Micah 4:12, 13). Behold, God hath gathered His enemies together, as sheaves to the threshing. Let us stay and rest upon these promises. Now again, I trust in our Lord you shall by faith sustain yourself, and comfort yourself in your Lord, and be strong in His power; for you are in the beaten and common way to heaven when you are under our Lord’s crosses. You have reason to rejoice in it, more than in a crown of gold; and rejoice, and be glad to bear the reproaches of Christ. I rest, recommending you and yours for ever to the grace and mercy of God.
Yours in Christ,
S. R.
ANWOTH, Feb. 11, 1631.
XIV.—For MARION M’NAUGHT, in the prospect of a Communion season
(ABUNDANCE IN JESUS—THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS— ENEMIES OF GOD.)
WELL-BELOVED IN THE LORD,—You are not unacquainted with the day of our Communion. I entreat, therefore, the aid of your prayers for that great work, which is one of our feast days, wherein our Well-beloved Jesus rejoiceth, and is merry with His friends.
Good cause have we to wonder at His love, since the day of His death was such a sorrowful day to Him, even the day when His mother, the kirk, crowned Him with thorns, and He had many against Him, and compeared His lone in the fields against them all; yet He delights with us to remember that day. Let us love Him, and be glad and rejoice in His salvation. I am confident that you shall see the Son of God that day, and I dare in His name invite you to His banquet. Many a time you have been well entertained in His house; and He changes not upon His friends, nor chides them for too great kindness. Yet I speak not this to make you leave off to pray for me, who have nothing of myself, but in so far as daily I receive from Him, who is made of His Father a running-over fountain, at which I and others may come with thirsty souls, and fill our vessels. Long hath this well been standing open to us. Lord Jesus, lock it not up again upon us. I am sorry for our desolate kirk; yet I dare not but trust, so long as there be any of God’s lost money here He shall not blow out the candle. The Lord make fair candlesticks in His house, and remove the blind lights.
I have been this time bypast thinking much of the incoming of the kirk of the Jews. Pray for them. When they were in their Lord’s house, at their Father’s elbow, they were longing for the incoming of their little sister, the kirk of the Gentiles. They said to their Lord, “We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?” (Cant. 8:8). Let us give them a meeting. What shall we do for our elder sister, the Jews? Lord Jesus, give them breasts. That were a glad day to see us and them both sit down to one table, and Christ at the head of the table. Then would our Lord come shortly with his fair guard to hold His great court.
Dear sister, be patient, for the Lord’s sake, under the wrongs that you suffer of the wicked. Your Lord shall make you see your desire on your enemies. Some of them shall be cut off; “they shall shake off their unripe grapes as the vine, and cast off their flower as the olive” (Job. 15:33): God shall make them like unripe sour grapes, shaken off the tree with the blast of God’s wrath; and therefore pity them, and pray for them. Others of them must remain to exercise you. God hath said of them, Let the tares grow up until harvest (Matt. 13:30). It proves you to be your Lord’s wheat. Be patient; Christ went to heaven with many a wrong. His visage and countenance was all marred more than the sons of men. You may not be above your Master; many a black stroke received innocent Jesus, and He received no mends, but referred them all to the great court-day, when all things shall be righted. I desire to hear from you within a day or two, if Mr. Robert remain in his purpose to come and help us. God shall give you
joy of your children. I pray for them by their names. I bless you from our Lord, your husband and children. Grace, grace, and mercy be multiplied upon you.
Yours in the Lord for ever, S. R.
ANWOTH, May 7, 1631.
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