go to bed, and enjoy rest! Glad may their souls be that are safe over the water, Christ having paid their passage: happy are they that have passed their hard and wearisome time of apprenticeship, and are now freemen and citizens in that joyful high city, the new Jerusalem. Alas! that we should rejoice and be glad of our fetters, and our prison-house, and a life of sin, when we are absent from our Lord, and so far from our home! Could we turn our affections from these day-dreams, these shadows, and worldly vanities, we might oftener see what they are doing in heaven, and our hearts be more frequently upon our sweet treasure above. I know no obligation the saints have to this world, seeing we fare but upon the smoke of it: all our part of the table is scarce worth a drink of water; and, when we are stricken, we dare not weep, but steal our grief away betwixt our Lord and us, and content ourselves with stolen sorrow in secret. God be thanked, that so many things are against us, that we may pray to God to take us to our Father's house, which now is made, in Christ, our kindly heritage. O then, let us pull up the stakes of our tent, and be moving towards our true home; for here we have no continuing city. Pray for me, that our Lord would be pleased to give me house-room. Grace be with

you.

Yours in the Lord Jesus,

S. R.

Aberdeen, 1637.

To ROBERT STEWART.

My very dear Brother,

You are heartily welcome to my world of suffering, and heartily welcome to my Father's house; God give you much joy of your new Master. If I have been in the house before you, I were not faithful to give the house an ill name, or to speak evil of the Lord of the family: I rather wish, for God's Holy Spirit, (O Lord, breathe upon me with that Spirit!) to tell you the fashions of the house. One thing I can say, that, by patiently waiting, you will grow into favour with the Lord of the house: wait on, till you get some good from Christ; ease yourself, and let him bear all; lay all your weights and your burdens, by faith, on Christ; he can, he will bear you. I rejoice that he hath come, and hath chosen you in the furnace; it was even there that he appointed to meet you: he keepeth the good old way with you that was in Hosea's days (Hos. ii. 14.) Therefore, behold I will allure her, and bring her to the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her." There was no talking to her heart while she was in the fair flourishing city, and at ease; but out in the cold, hungry, waste wilderness, he allureth her; he whispered news into her ear there, and said-" Thou. art mine." You have gotten a great advantage in the way to heaven, that you have started to the gate in the morning like a fool as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before ever I took the right road. I pray you now,

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keep the advantage you have. Be not slothful, my heart: set quickly up the mount, on hands and feet, as if the last grain of sand were running out of your glass, and death were coming to turn the glass: and be very careful to take heed to your feet in that slippery and dangerous way of youth that you are walking in. Be covetous and greedy of the grace God; and beware that it be not holiness that cometh only from the cross: for too many are that way disposed: "When he slew them, then they sought him; and they returned and inquired early after God. Nevertheless they did but flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues." It is a part of our hypocrisy to promise fair for God while we are in a strait, and till we get to the open fields again. Try well your young godliness, and examine what it is you love in Christ. Make no trifling work of it; but labour for a sound and lively sight of sin, that you may judge yourself an undone man, one dying in his own blood, except Christ take compassion on you, and take you up; and, therefore, make sure and fast work of conversion. Cast the earth deep; and down, down with the old work, the building of confusion, that was there before; and let Christ lay new work, and make a new creature within you. Look if this rain goeth down to the root of your withered plants, and if his love wound your heart till it bleeds with sorrow for sin: I know Christ will not be hid where he is; grace will ever speak for itself, and be fruitful in well-doing the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree. If I should tell you, from some weak experience, what

I have found in Christ, you or others would hardly believe me. I thought not the hundredth part of Christ, long since, that I do now; though, alas, my thoughts are still infinitely below his worth. I have his faith, and truth, and promise, all engaged, that I shall obtain that for which I hunger, and I esteem that the choice of my happiness; and for Christ's cross, especially that best of crosses, to suffer for his name's sake, I esteem it more that I can speak or write unto you. The more heavily crossed the soul is, it is still the lighter for the journey. Now, would to God all cold-blooded, faint-hearted soldiers of Christ, would look again to Jesus, and to his love; and, when they look, I would have them to look again and again, and fill themselves with beholding Christ's beauty: and, I dare say, then he would be highly esteemed of many. It is my daily growing sorrow, that he doth so great things for my soul, and he never yet got any thing of me worth speaking of. Sir, I charge you, help me to praise If men could do no more, I would have them to wonder if we cannot be filled with Christ's love, we may be filled with wondering. To him and his rich grace I recommend you. I pray you, pray for me, and forget not to praise.

him.

Yours in the Lord Jesus,

Aberdeen, June 17, 1637.

S. R.

Mistress,

To LADY GAITGIRTH.

I LONG to know how matters stand betwixt Christ and your soul: I know time cannot change him in his love. You may yourself ebb and flow, rise and fall, wax and wane; but your Lord is this day as he was yesterday: and it is your comfort, that your salvation is not rolled upon wheels of your own making, neither have you to do with a Saviour of your own imagining. God hath singled out a Mediator, strong and mighty, able to bear you and your burdens, were they ten times as many, and to save you to the uttermost. Your often seeking to him, cannot make you a burden to him. Christ compassionates you in all your down-castings; but it is good for you that he hideth himself sometimes: it is not niceness, shyness, or coldness of love, that causeth Christ to withdraw under a curtain and a vail, so that you cannot see him; but he knows you could not bear a high spring-tide of his felt love, full sails, and a fair gale always. His visits to his dearest ones are thin sown; he could not let out his rivers of love upon his own, but these rivers would be in hazard to loosen a young plant at the root; and he knoweth this of you: you must therefore wait for the sensible and full manifestations of his kindness, till you are above the sun and moon: that is the country where you will be enlarged for that love which you are not now able to contain. Cast the burden of your sweet babes upon Christ, and lighten