DEAR BROTHER,--The constant and daily observing of God's going alongst with you, in His coming, going, ebbing, flowing, embracing and kissing, glooming and striking, giveth me (a witless and lazy observer of the Lord's way and working) a heavy stroke. Could I keep sight of Him, and know when I want, and carry as became me in that condition, I would bless my case.
But 1. For desertions. I think them like lying lea of lean and weak land for some years, whill it gather sap for a better crop. It is possible to gather gold, where it may be had, with moonlight. Oh, if I could but creep one foot, or half a foot, nearer in to Jesus, in such a dismal night as that when He is away, I should think it an happy absence!
2. If I knew that the Beloved were only gone away for trial, and further humiliation, and not smoked out of the house with new provocations, I would forgive desertions and hold my peace at His absence. But Christ's bought absence (that I bought with my sin), is two running boils at once, one upon each side; and what side then can I lie on?
3. I know that, as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.
4. It is mercy's wonder, and grace's wonder, that Christ will lend a piece of the lodging, and a back-chamber beside Himself, to our lusts; and that He and such swine should keep house together in our soul. For, suppose they couch and contract themselves into little room when Christ cometh in, and seem to lie as dead under His feet, yet they often break out again; and a foot of the Old Man, or a leg or arm nailed to Christ's cross, looseth the nail, or breaketh out again! And yet Christ, beside this unruly and misnurtured neighbour, can still be making heaven in the saints, one way or other. May I not say, "Lord Jesus, what doest Thou here?" Yet here He must be. But I will not lose my feet to go on into this depth and wonder; for free mercy and infinite merits took a lodging to Christ and us beside such a loathsome guest as sin.
5. Sanctification and mortification of our lusts are the hardest part of Christianity. It is in a manner, as natural to us to leap when we see the New Jerusalem, as to laugh when we are tickled: joy is not under command, or at our nod, when Christ kisseth. But oh, how many of us would have Christ divided into two halves, that we might take the half of Him only! We take His office, Jesus, and Salvation: but "Lord" is a cumbersome word, and to obey and work out our own salvation, and to perfect holiness, is the cumbersome and stormy north-side of Christ, and that which we eschew and shift.