Vol 16 - TO WILLIAM GORDON, AT KENMURE.

TO WILLIAM GORDON, AT KENMURE.
DEAR BROTHER,
GRACE, mercy, and peace, be to you! It is my hearty desire, that my furnace, which is of the LORD'S kindling, may sparkle fire upon standers by, to the warming of their hearts with GOD'S love. The very dust that falleth from CHRIST's feet, and black cross, is sweeter to me than Kings' crowns. I should be a false witness, if I should not give my LORD JESUS a fair testimonial with my whole soul. My word, I know, will not heighten him; he needeth not such props under his feet, to raise his glory high: but O that I could raise him to the height of heaven, and the breadth and length of ten heavens, in the estimation of all his younger lovers! For we have all shaper CHRIST as too narrow and too short; and formed conceptions of his love, very unworthy of it. O that men were taken with his beauty and fairness! They would then give over playing with idols, in which there is not halfroom for one soul to expatiate; and man's love is but made hungry in gnawing bare bones, and sucking at dry breasts. They will not come to him, who has a world of love and goodness and bounty for all. We seek to thaw our frozen hearts at the cold smoke of the shorttimed creature, and our souls gather neither heat, nor life, nor light; for these cannot give to us what they have not in themselves. O that we could burst through this throng of false lovers, and fix our love on CHRIST! We should find some footing, and sweet ease for our tottering souls, in our LORD. I wish it were in my power, to cry down all love but the love of CHRIST, all GODs but CHRIST, all saviors but CHRIST. As for your complaint of deadness and doubtings, CHRIST, I hope, will take your deadness and you together. They are bodies full of boils, and broken bones that need mending, which CHRIST the Physician taketh up: whole vessels are not for CHRIST'S art: publicans, sinners, harlots, are ready objects of CHRIST'S mercy. The only thing that will bring sinners within a cast of CHRIST'S drawing arm, is that which ye write of, some feeling of death and sin; the more pain, and the more nightwatching, and the more fever, the better; a soul bleeding to death, till CHRIST were cried for in all haste, to come to stem the blood, and close up the wound, with his own hand, were a very good disease, when many are dying of a whole heart. We have all too little of hellpain, and terrors in that way: nay, GOD send me such a hell, as CHRIST has promised to make a heaven ent of! The thing that we mistake is the want of victory; we hold that to be the mark of one that has no grace nay, I say, the want of fighting were a mark of no grace; but I shall not say, the want of [full and complete] victory is such a mark. If my fire and the Devil's water make crackling like thunder in the air, I am less afraid; for, where there is fire, it is CHRIST'S part to keep in the coal, and to pray the Father that my faith fail not, if I in the mean time be wrestling, and doing, and fighting, and mourning. And ye do well, not to doubt if the ground stone be sure, but try if it be so; for there is a great difference between doubting that we have grace, and trying if we have grace: the former may be sin, but the latter is good. Holy fear is a searching in the camp, that there be no enemy within our bosom to betray us, and a seeing that all be fast and sure: for I see many leaking vessels fair before the wind, and professors who take their conversion upoxi trust, and they go on securely, and see not the underwater, till a storm sink them. Each man had need, twice a day, and oftener, to be searched with candles. Pray for me, that the LORD would give me houseroom again, to hold a candle to this dark world. Grace, grace be with you!
Yours in his Lord and Master,
S. R.