TO ELIZABETH KENNEDY: Christ infinitely worthy of being loved — Lamentations that so few love him.
ALAS, that there is such scarcity of love and lovers of Christ amongst us all! Fy, fy upon us, who love fair things, as fair gold, fair houses, fair lands, fair pleasures, fair honours and fair persons: and do not pine and melt away with love to Christ! O would to God I had more love for his sake! O for as much love as would lie betwixt me and heaven for his sake! O for as much love as would go round about the earth, and over the heaven, yea, the heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds, that I might let all out upon fair, fair only fair Christ! But alas, I have nothing for him; yet He hath much for me: it is no gain to Christ that he getteth my little feckless span-length and hand-breadth of love.
If men would have something to do with their hearts and their thoughts, that are always rolling up and down, like men with oars in a boat, after sinful vanities, they may find great and sweet employment to their thoughts upon Christ: if those frothy, fluctuating and restless hearts of ours would come all about Christ, and look into his love, to bottomless love, to the depth of mercy, to the unsearchable riches of his grace, to inquire after and search into the beauty of God in Christ, they would be swallowed up in the depth and height, length and breadth of his goodness. O that men would draw the curtains, and look into the inner side of the ark, and behold how the “fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily!” O, who would not say, Let me die, let me die ten times, to see a sight of Him! Ten thousand deaths were no great price to give for him.
Aberdeen, 1637
TO JANET KENNEDY: Christ to be preferred before all things else.
O HOW far are we bereft of wit, to chase 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 bairns’-play to skink and drink over paradise, and the heaven that Christ did toil 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 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 our morning-song; then the very noise of our Well-beloved’s feet, when he cometh, and his first knock at the door, should be as the 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 fair plaistered out-sided 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 ever God planted. O let some of us die to enjoy 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 it is sometimes at this; Lord, what wilt thou have for Christ? But, O Lord, canst thou be bribed with any gift for Christ? O Lord, can Christ be sold? Or rather, may not a poor sinner have him for nothing? If I can get no more, O let me be pained to all eternity with longing for him. The joy of hungering for Christ should be my heaven for evermore.
Aberdeen, 1637
TO JOHN GORDON, AT RISCO IN GALLOWAY: The difficulty and importance of being a real christian.
HEAVEN is not at the next door: I find it hard to be a christian; there is no little thrusting and thronging, to thrust in at heaven’s gates; it is a castle taken by force; “many shall strive to enter in, and shall not be able.” I beseech you in the Lord, make conscience of rash and passionate oaths, of raging and sudden revenging anger, of night drinking, of needless companiony, of sabbath-breaking, of hurting any under you, by word or deed, of hating your very enemies. “Except ye receive the kingdom of God as a little child,” and be as meek and sober-minded as a babe, “ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” That is a word which should touch you near, and make you stoop, and cast yourself down, and make your great spirit fall. I know this will not be easily done; but I recommend it to you, as you tender your part of the kingdom of heaven.
Brother, I may from new exerience speak of Christ to you. Oh if you saw in him what I see! A river of God’s unseen joys have flowed from bank to brae over my soul since I parted with you. I wish I wanted part, provided you might have; that your soul might be sick of love for Christ, or rather satiated with him. This clay-idol, the world, would seem to you then not worth a fig; time will eat you out of possession of it: then the eye-strings break, and the breath groweth cold, and the imprisoned soul looketh out at the windows of the clay-house, ready to leap out into eternity, what would you then give for a lamp full of oil? Oh seek it now.
Aberdeen, March 14, 1637