Hungry
Hungry
Hungry
Hungry
Hungry
Hungry
Hungry
One of Rutherford's Letters
The following sweet, terse epistle is from that sainted divine of the seventeenth century, Samuel Rutherford. Of his volume of "Familiar Letters," Cecil makes the following strong remark: "Rutherford's Letters is one of my classics. Were truth the beam, I have no doubt that if Homer, and all Virgil, and Horace, and all that the world has agreed to idolize, were weighed against that book, they would be lighter than vanity." Rutherford was an Adventist of the ardent kind, one who "waited in an agony" for the Lord's return. Said he, "O heavens cleave in two, that the bright face and head may set itself through the cloud." Here is a letter to a friend on patience in suffering, which doubtless will be acceptable to the reader.
".... and Dear Brother: Grace, mercy and peace to you. I find that my extremity hath sharpened the edge of his love and kindness, so that He seemeth to devise new ways of expressing the sweetness of his love to my soul. Suffering for Christ is the very element wherein Christ's love liveth, and exerciseth itself, in casting out flames of fire and sparks of heat, to warm such a frozen heart as I have; and if Christ weeping in sackcloth be so sweet, I cannot find any imaginable thoughts to think what he will be when we clay bodies have put off mortality and come up to the marriage hall and great palace, and behold the King clothed in robes royal, sitting on his throne. I would desire no more for my Heaven, while I am sighing in this house of clay, than daily renewed feasts of love with Christ, and liberty now and then to feed my hunger with a kiss of that fairest face, that is like the sun in his strength at noonday. I would willingly subscribe to Christ all the most delightful pleasures on earth, and forfeit my part of this clay-god--this earth, which Adam's foolish children worship, and be with Christ, and fill this hungered and famished soul with kissing, embracing, and real enjoyment of the Son of God. And I think that then I might write to my friends that I had found the Golden World, and look out and laugh at the poor bodies, who are slaying one another for feathers. For verily brother, since I came to this prison, I have conceived a new and extraordinary opinion of Christ which I had not before; for I perceive we postpone all our joys to Christ, till he and we be in our own house above, thinking there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises; and that Christ will give us here nothing but tears, sadness, and crosses; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find that it is possible to find young glory and young green paradise of joy, even here.
I know that Christ's kisses will cast a more strong and refreshing smell of incomparable glory and joy in Heaven than they do here, because a drink of the well of life up at the well's head is more sweet and fresh by far, than that which we get in our borrowed, old, running out vessels, and our wooden dishes here. Yet I am now persuaded it is our folly to postpone all till the term day, seeing that abundance of earnest will not diminish anything of your principal sum. We dream of hunger in Christ's house, while we are here, although he alloweth feasts to all the children within God's household. It were good then to store ourselves with more borrowed kisses of Christ and with more borrowed visits, till we enter heirs to our new inheritance, and our Tutor put us in possession of our own.
Oh that all the young heirs would seek more, and a greater, and a nearer communion with their Lord Tutor, the prime heir of all, Christ! I wish that for my part, I could send you into the King's innermost cellar and house of wine, to be filled with love;--a drink of this love is worth the having indeed. We carry ourselves but too nicely win Christ our Lord; and our Lord loveth not niceness, and dryness, and reserve in friends. Since need force that we must be under obligation to Christ, then let us be under obligation to Christ, for it will be no otherwise.
Now for my present case in my imprisonment, deliverance for anything that I can see looketh cold like. My hope, if it looked to, or leaned upon men, would wither soon at the root, yet I resolve to solace myself with waiting on my Lord, and to let my faith swim where it loseth ground. I am under the necessity of fainting (which my Master of whom I boast all the day will avert), or then to lay my faith upon Omnipotency, and to wink and stick by my grip. And I hope that my ship shall ride it out, seeing Christ is willing to blow his sweet wind into my sails, and mendeth and closeth the leaks in my ship, and ruleth all. It will be strange if a believing passenger be cast overboard."--Samuel Rutherford, Aberdeen, June 15, 1637.
November 28, 1865 UrSe, ARSH 202-203