Rutherford revised (88)

88.To Janet Kennedy          From Aberdeen 1637

(Wife of John Fergushill)

Mistress, - Grace, mercy and peace be to you. You are greatly indebted to His rich grace, who has separated you for Himself from this condemned and guilty world, and for the promised inheritance with the saints in light. Hold on to Christ; fight for Him; it is right to go on holding and pulling for Christ; and it is not possible to keep Christ with peace having got him once unless the devil was dead. You must resolve to set your face for salvation against Satan's northern winds and storms. Nature would have heaven come to us while we are asleep in bed. We would all buy Christ at our own price. But Christ is worth more blood and lives that either you or I have to give Him. When we come home and enter the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and when our heads feel the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we look back to pains and sufferings; then we shall see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from 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 will then be the weight of every one of Christ's kisses! Oh how weighty and worthy shall every one of Christ's love-smiles be! Oh, when once He shall rest our weary traveller's head between his blessed breasts, the poor souls will think one kiss from Christ has fully paid forty or fifty years of wet feet and all it sore hearts and like sufferings(Cor 4:17) it had in following after Christ! Oh, three times blinded souls whose hearts are charmed and bewitched with dreams, shadows, trivial things, night-vanities and night-dreams of a miserable life of sin! Shame on as who still sit chained with the love and liking of the loan of a piece of dead clay! Oh, poor fools, deceived by painted things and this world's fair weather and smooth promises and rotten worm-eaten hopes! Will not the devil laugh to see us give ourselves and receive only corrupt and counterfeit pleasures of sin? O for a sight of eternity's glory and a little taste of the marriage supper of the Lamb.! Half a swallow or a drop of the wine of consolation up at our banqueting house, from Christ's own hand, would make our stomachs loathe the brown bread and and sour drink of a miserable life. Oh, how senseless we are to chafe and hunt and run until our souls be out of breath after a condemned happiness of our own making! And do you not sit in your own light and make it a matter of child's play to pour our drink and toast paradise and the heaven that Christ did sweat for, even for a puff of smoke 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 would be out of love with any painted, masked lover whatsoever, then Christ would win and conquer for Himself a home in the inner part of our hearts. Then Christ will be our song night and morning;  then the very noise and sound of our Well-beloved's feet when he comes with His first knock or rap at the door, will be as news of two heavens to us. O that our eyes and our souls smelling should pursue a blasted and sunburned flower even this plastered, fair on the outside 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 God ever planted! Oh, let some of us die to smell the fragrance of Him and let my part of this rotten world be lost and so for ever, providing I may anchor my tottering soul on Christ! I know sometimes I say, 'Lord, what will you have for Christ?' But Lord, can you be bribed or influenced with any gifts for Christ? O Lord can Christ be sold? Rather may not a poor needy sinner have him for nothing? If I can get no more, oh, let me have pain for all eternity longing for Him! The joy of hungering after Christ would you be my heaven for evermore. Alas, that I cannot bring souls and Christ together! But I desire the coming of his kingdom and that Christ, as I certainly hope He will, will come on withered Scotland, like rain upon the newly cut grass.  Oh, let the King come! Oh, let His kingdom come! Oh let their eyes rot in their sockets (Zec 14:12), who will not take Him home again to reign and rule in Scotland. Grace, grace be with you.
   Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,  S.R.