Rutherford Revised (250)

250. To To Lady Largirie    From Aberdeen

 (See letter 195)

Mistress, - grace, mercy and peace be to you. I hope you know what conditions passed between Christ and you. You remember he says your summer days would have clouds, and your rose a prickly thorn beside it. Christ is unmixed in heaven, all sweetness and honey. Here we have Him with His thorny and rough cross; yet I know no tree that bears sweeter fruit than Christ’s rough cross, unless I tell lies about it. It is your part to take Christ as He is in this life. Yet I know of no tree that bears sweeter fruit than Chris’s cross unless I lie about it. It is your part to take Christ as He is in this life. Sufferings are like a wood planted round His house, over door and window. If we could hold tight our grip on Him, the battle would be won. In yet a little while, Christ will triumph. Give Christ time to sort out these two long threads of heaven and hell to all mankind, for certainly the thread will not break; and when He has finished His work in Mount Zion, and has refined His silver, He will bring new containers out of the furnace, and furnish His house and take it up again. 

   I counsel you to free yourself from clogging temptations, by overcoming some, and condemning others and watching over all. Keep true and loyal to Christ for few stick to Him. They give Christ blank paper for a contract of service and attendance, now when Christ has mad most noise. To waste a little blood with Christ, and to put our part of this drossy world in pawn, over His hand, as if willing to quit it for Him, is the safest cabinet in which to keep the world. But those who would take the world and all their goods on their back, and run away from Christ, will fall be the way and leave their burden behind them, and be taken captive themselves. It is good for my soul to put all I have life and soul into Christ’s hands. Let Him take care of all.

   If any ask how I do, I answer, those who are in Christ can only be well: and if I were not so, my sufferings would have melted me away in ashes and smoke. I thank my Lord He has something in me that His fire cannot consume.

   Remember my love to your husband, and show him from me, I want him to set aside all things, and make sure work of salvation, that he not be seeking when the hourglass runs out and time and eternity meet together. There is no work as weighty as this. Oh that he would take it to heart! Grace be with you.

   Yours in Christ Jesus his Lord, S.R.