Rutherford revised (93)

93.To the Honourable and truly Noble Lady the Viscountess of Kenmure  From Aberdeen 13 Feb 1637

Madam, - Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship, - I long to hear from you.
   I'm here waiting to see if a long awaited good wind will at last blow into Christ's sails in this land. But I wonder if Jesus is content to suffer yet more in His members and cause and in the beauty of His house rather than to be avenged on this land. I hear that many worthy men who see more in the Lord's dealings that I can see with my sight, think differently and believe that the Lord is coming home again to his house in Scotland.
   I hope He is on His journey that way; yet I see He will feed this land with their own blood, before He establishes His throne among us.
   I know that you arenot looking to things here and now. You have no great reason to think that your investment and wealth is under the roof of these visible skies; I hope that you would think that you are tricked and deceived if it was so. I would be very sorry to advise your Ladyship to make an agreement with time and this life; and to keep your distance from this badly based heaven that is on this side of the water. It says something when our Lord blows the bloom off our foolish hopes in this life, and chops off, near the root, the branches of our worldly joys, so they should not thrive. Lord, remove my fool's heaven in this life, so I may be saved for ever. For a saint to lose part of the centre of this is brief laughing worldly happiness is not as much a real evil as our blinded eyes see.
   For a long time now I have being thinking of some better deliverance than before. But I know it is a mistake. It is possible that I have not yet come to the limit all the trial which the Lord looks for in His work. If my friends in Galloway would succeed in my deliverance, I would be very glad; but I only know that the Lord has a way by which he will be the only want to reap praises.
   Let me know via the carrier how the child is. The Lord be his father and teacher and your only comforter. Where I am there is nothing but obscenity tea and atheism. Grace, grace be with your Ladyship.
   Your Ladyship's, at all all obliged obedience, in Christ, S.R.