Rutherford Revised (238)

38.To the Lady Gaitgirth       From Aberdeen Sept 7 1637

(See letter 187)

Much honoured and Christian Lady,- Grace, mercy and peace be to you. I ling Grace, mercy and peace be to you hear how it goes with you and your children.
   I encourage you not to be out of breath of faint in your journey. The way is not so far to your home as it was; at length it will wear down to one step or an inch, and before long you will come to within an arm's length of the glorious crown. You Lord Jesus sweated and panted before He go up that mountain.; He was saying, 'Father, save Me!'It was He who said, 'I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint. It was as of they had broken Christ on the wheel: 'My heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast;my strength is dried up like a potsherd,  (Ps 22:14,15) I am sure you love the way the better because His holy feet trod it before you. Crosses have a smell of crossed and pained Christ. I believe your Lord will not leave you to die alone in the way. I know that you have sad hours, when the Comforter is hidden under a veil, and when you ask for Him, and find nothing except an empty nest. This I grant is only a cold, 'good day,' when the seeker misses Him whom the soul loves.; but even this unkindness is kind., His absence lovely, His mask a sweet sight, until God sends Christ Himself, in His own sweet presence. Make His sweet comforts your own, and do not be strange and shame faced with Christ. Plain dealing is best for Him, it is what He likes.When your winter storms are over, the summer of your Lord will come. Your sadness is pregnant wit joy; He will do you good in the end.
   Take no heavier lift of your children than the Lord allows. Give them room beside your heart but not in the centre of your heart, where Christ should be ; for then they are your idols not your  children. If your Lord takes any of them home to His house before the storm comes on, take it well. The owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees before midsummer, and before they get the harvest sun: and it would not be fitting for his servant, the gardener, to rebuke him for it. Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at any season He pleases. They are not lost to you; but are laid up so well that they are stored in heaven, where our Lords best jewels are. They are all free goods that are there; death can have no law to arrest anything that is within the walls of the New Jerusalem.
   Because of sin, all the saints are like old, dusty clocks that must be taken down and the wheels scrubbed and mended, and put up again better suited than before. Sin has rusted both our soul and body: our dear Lord, by death, takes us down to scrub the wheels of both and to cleanse us perfectly from the root and remainder of sin; and we will be set up in a better way than before. Then pluck up your heart; heaven is yours, and that is a word which few can say!
   Now the great Shepherd of the sheep, and the very God of peace, confirm and establish you to the day of the appearance of Christ our Lord.
   Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,   S.R.