Part 803

Ye have not, I conceive, seen such searching and trying times as now these are. And yet the question will be drawn to a more narrow state, and multitudes will yet leave the cause; for we took all into the covenant that offered to build with us. But Christ must have but a small remnant (few nobles, if any; few ministers; few professors), though our way standeth unchanged. "By honour and dishonour, by good report and evil report: as deceivers and yet true; as unknown, yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed" (2 Cor. vi. 8, 9). Neither is this your condition alone, but the experienced lot of all the saints that have gone before you. It is one and the same cross of Christ; but there be sundry faces and diverse circumstances in the same remnant (Col. i. 24), the sufferings of Christ and yours. Sir, to be delivered to soldiers, and in captivity, looketh like His suffering of whom Isaiah saith, "He was taken from prison, and from judgment" (Isa. liii. 8): yea, and taken bound (John xviii. 12). When the cause is the truth of God, the lustre and face of suffering is so much the more lovely that it hath the hue and colour of Christ's sufferings, who endured contradiction of sinners and despised the shame. Oh it is a great word, "Christ shamed, and Christ abased!" But thus was the Head, and so are the members, dealt with in the world; and truly anything of Christ, even the worst of Him (to speak so), His reproach and shame, are lovely. Though superstitious love to the material cross He suffered upon be foolery, and doting upon the holy grave[483] be cursed idolatry; yet is there a communion with Him in His sufferings most desirable. "But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings" (1 Pet. iv. 13): in which sense, the cup that His lip touched hath the sweeter taste, even though death were in it; the grave, because He did lie in it, is so much the softer and the more refreshful a bed of rest; and that part of the sky and clouds that the Beloved shall break through, and come to judgment, is as lovely a piece of the created heaven as any is, if we may love the ground He goeth on the better. But all this is to be understood in a spiritual manner. The Lord calleth you, Sir, upon whom the Spirit of God and His glory resteth, to put your soul's AMEN to this dispensation; and requireth of us, that our desires follow the now-declared decree of God concerning the desolation of our sinful land, so many ways guilty of a despised Gospel, and a broken Covenant; and that with all submission. Certainly, no man hath failed more in this thing, than he who writeth to you. For I have brought my health into great hazard, and tormented my spirit with excessive grief, for our present provocations, and the rendings of our kirk; and I see it is a challenging of, and a bold pleading against, Him upon whose shoulder the government is (Isa. xxii. 22). The Father hath put a glorious trust upon Christ: "And I will fasten Him as a nail in a sure place, and He shall be for a glorious throne to His Father's house; and they shall hang upon Him all the glory of His Father's house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of flagons" (Isa. xxii. 23, 24). Our unbelieving apprehensions do so quarrel at the prosperity of enemies in an evil cause, that we wrestle with defeats, spoiling, captivity of the godly, killing of His people, the wasting of our land, starving and famishing of the kingdom, which is worse than the sword. But this is a sinful contradicting of the Lord's revealed decree. His wisdom saith, "Spoiling and desolation is best for Scotland;" and we say, "Not," and so accuse Christ of misgovernment, and of not being true to the trust put upon Him. But since He doth not drag the government at His heels, but hath it upon His shoulder, and since the Nail fastened in a sure place cannot be broken,[484] nor can the smallest vessel fail to find sweet security in dependence upon Him, since all the weight of heaven and earth, of redeemed saints and confirmed angels, is upon His shoulder, I am a fool, and brutish to imagine that I can add anything to Christ's special care of and tenderness to His people. He who keepeth the basins and knives of His house, and bringeth the vessels again to the second temple (Ezra i. 8-10), must have a more tender care of His redeemed ones than of a spoon, or of Peter's old shoes (Acts xii. 8), which yet must not be lost in His captivity. Oh for grace to suffer Christ to tutor His own minors and young heirs! But we cannot endure to be under the actings of His government; we love too much to be our own. Oh, how sweet to be wholly Christ's, and wholly in Christ! to be out of the creature's owning, and made complete in Christ! to live by faith in Christ, and to be, once for all, clothed with the uncreated majesty and glory of the Son of God, wherein He maketh all His friends and followers sharers! to dwell in Immanuel's high and blessed land, and live in that sweetest air where no wind bloweth but the breathings of the Holy Ghost, no seas nor floods flow but the pure water of life, that proceedeth from under the throne and from the Lamb! no planting but the Tree of Life that yieldeth twelve manner of fruits every month! What do we here but sin and suffer? Oh, when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of that long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn? The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." Oh, when shall the Lamb's wife be ready, and the Bridegroom say, "Come!"