088. To Janet Kennedy.—Christ to be kept at every sacrifice—His incomparable Loveliness
88.—ToJanet Kennedy.
[This seems to be the wife of Mr. John Fergushill; see Letter 112.] (CHRIST TO BE KEPT AT EVERY SACRIFICE—HIS INCOMPARABLE LOVELINESS.)
MISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Ye are not a little obliged to His rich grace, who hath separated you for Himself, and for the promised inheritance with the saints in light, from this condemned and guilty world. Hold fast Christ, contend for Him; it is a lawful plea to go to holding and drawing for Christ; and it is not possible to keep Christ peaceably, having once gotten Him, except the devil were dead. It must be your resolution to set your face against Satan’s northern tempests and storms, for salvation. Nature would have heaven to come to us while sleeping in our beds. We would all buy Christ, so being we might make price ourselves. But Christ is worth more blood and lives than either ye or I have to give Him. When we shall come home, and enter to the possession of our Brother’s fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings, then shall we see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory; and that our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night’s welcome-home to heaven. Oh, what then shall be the weight of every one of Christ’s kisses! Oh, how weighty, and of what worth shall every one of Christ’s love-smiles be! Oh, when once He shall thrust a wearied traveller’s head betwixt His blessed breasts, the poor soul will think one kiss of Christ hath fully paid home forty or fifty years’ wet feet, and all its sore hearts, and light (2 Corinthians 4:17) sufferings it had in following after Christ! Oh, thrice-blinded souls, whose hearts are charmed and bewitched with dreams, shadows, feckless things, night-vanities, and night-fancies of a miserable life of sin! Shame on us who sit still, fettered with the love and liking of the loan of a piece of dead clay! Oh, poor fools, who are beguiled with painted things, and this world’s fair weather, and smooth promises, and rotten, worm-eaten hopes! May not the devil laugh to see us give out our souls, and get in but corrupt and counterfeit pleasures of sin? O for a sight of eternity’s glory, and a little tasting of the Lamb’s marriage-supper! Half a draught, or a drop of the wine of consolation, that is up at our banqueting-house, out of Christ’s own hand, would make our stomachs loathe the brown bread and the sour drink of a miserable life. Oh, how far are we bereaved of wit, to chafe, and hunt, and run, till our souls be out of breath, after a condemned happiness of our own making! And do we not sit far in our own light to make it a matter of bairn’s play, to skink and drink over[183] paradise, and the heaven that Christ did sweat for, even for a blast of smoke, and for Esau’s morning breakfast? O that we were out of ourselves, and dead to this world, and this world dead and crucified to us! And, when we should be close out of love and conceit of any masked and farded lover whatsoever, then Christ would win and conquer to Himself a lodging in the inmost yolk of our heart. Then Christ should be our night-song and morning-song; then the very noise and din of our Well-beloved’s feet, when He cometh, and His first knock or rap at the door, should be as news of two heavens to us. O that our eyes and our soul’s smelling should go after a blasted and sun-burnt flower, even this plastered, fair-outsided world: and then we have neither eye nor smell for the Flower of Jesse, for that Plant of renown, for Christ, the choicest, the fairest, the sweetest rose that ever God planted! Oh, let some of us die to smell the fragrance of Him; and let my part of this rotten world be forfeited and sold for evermore, providing I may anchor my tottering soul upon Christ! I know that it is sometimes at this, “Lord, what wilt Thou have for Christ?” But, O Lord, canst Thou be budded, and propined with any gift for Christ? O Lord, can Christ be sold? or rather, may not a poor needy sinner have Him for nothing? If I can get no more, oh, let me be pained to all eternity, with longing for Him! The joy of hungering for Christ should be my heaven for evermore. Alas, that I cannot draw souls and Christ together! But I desire the coming of His kingdom, and that Christ, as I assuredly hope He will, would come upon withered Scotland, as rain upon the new-mown grass. Oh, let the King come! Oh, let His kingdom come! Oh, let their eyes rot in their eyeholes (Zechariah 14:12), who will not receive Him home again to reign and rule in Scotland. Grace, grace be with you.
[183] Drink the health of the buyer over the concluded bargain.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.