...O what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely One is Jesus...

A Letter by Samuel Rutherford...It's Absolutely AMAZING! (That is, if you actually DO love Christ)

This is quite lengthy, but if you love Christ and long to love Him more, you will be grateful that you took the time to carefully read over this and pause often to worship Christ in the midst of your reading.

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Aberdeen, 8 August 1637

To Lady Kilconquhar

Mistress:

Grace, mercy and peace be to you. I am glad to hear that you have your face homeward towards your Father’s house, now when so many are for a home nearer hand. But your Lord calleth you to another life and glory than is to be found here-away: and therefore I would counsel you to make sure the charters and rights which you have to salvation.

You came to this life about a necessary and weighty business to tryst with Christ concerning your precious soul, the eternal salvation of it. This is the most necessary business you have in this life; and your other concerns beside this are but toys and feathers, and dreams and fancies. This is in the greatest haste, and should be done first. Means are used in the Gospel to draw on a meeting betwixt Christ and you. If you neglect your part of it, it is as if you would tear the contract before Christ’s eyes, and give up the match, that there may be no more communing about that business. I know that other loves beside Christ are in suit of you, and your soul hath many wooers. But I pray you make a chaste virgin of your soul, and let it love but One. Most worthy is Christ alone of all your soul’s love, even if your love were higher than the heaven, and deeper than the lowest of this earth, and broader than this world. Many, alas, many, estrange their souls from Christ. Marriage with Christ would put your love and your heart out of the way, and out of the eye of all other unlawful suitors: and then you have a ready answer for all others, ‘I am already promised away to Christ, the match is concluded, my soul hath a Husband already, and it cannot have two husbands.’

O that the world did but know what a smell the ointments of Christ cast, and how great His beauty, even the beauty of the fairest of the sons of men, is, and how sweet and powerful His voice is, the voice of that one Well-beloved! Certainly where Christ cometh, He runneth away with the soul’s love, so that it cannot be commanded. I would far rather look through the hole of Christ’s door, to see but the one half of His fairest and most comely face (for He looketh like heaven), suppose I should never get in to see His excellency and glory to the full, than to enjoy the flower, the bloom and chief excellency of the glory and riches of ten worlds. Lord send me, for my part, but the meanest share of Christ that can be given to any of the indwellers of the New Jerusalem. But I know my Lord is no niggard [stingy]: He can, and it becometh Him well to give more than my narrow soul can receive. If there were ten thousand thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all. Christ is a well of life, but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom?

This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one; and O what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely One is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand worlds of paradises like the garden of Eden in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness in one. O what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less, to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers lakes and fountains of ten thousand earths. O, but Christ is heaven’s wonder, and earth’s wonder! What marvel that his bride saith, ‘He is altogether lovely!’ [Cant 5:16] Alas that black souls will not come, and fetch all their love to this fair One!

O if I could invite and persuade thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousands of Adam’s sons, to flock about my Lord Jesus, and to come and take their fill of (His) love! O pity for evermore that there should be such an one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency and sweetness, and so few take Him! Oh! Oh! You poor, dry and dead souls, why will you not come hither with your empty souls to this huge, and fair, and deep and sweet well of life, and fill your empty vessels? O that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, so pinched, so ebb, and so void of all happiness! And yet men will not take Him! They lose their love miserably who will not bestow it upon this lovely One.

Alas! These five thousand years Adam’s fools have been wasting and lavishing their love and affections upon other lovers, upon bits of dead creatures, and broken idols, upon this and that worthless creatures, and have not brought their love and their heart to Jesus. O pity, that Fairness hath so few lovers! O, woe, woe to the fools of this world, who run by Christ to other lovers! O misery, misery, misery, that Comeliness can scarce get three or four hearts in a town or country! O, that there is so much spoken, and so much written, and so much thought of creature-vanity, and so little spoken, so little written, and so little thought of my great and incomprehensible, and never-enough wondered at Lord Jesus! Why should I not curse this forlorn and wretched world, that suffereth my Lord Jesus to lie alone? O damned souls! O mistaken world! O blind, O beggarly and poor souls! O bewitched fools! What aileth you that you run so from Christ? I dare not challenge Providence, that there are so few buyers and so little sale for such an excellent one as Christ. O the depth, and O the height of my Lord’s ways, that pass finding out! But O that men would once be wise, and not fall so in love with their own hell as to pass by Christ, and overlook Him!

But let us come near and fill ourselves with Christ, and let his friends drink and satisfy our hollow and deep desires with Jesus. O come and drink at this living well; come, drink and live forevermore, come, drink and welcome. ‘Welcome,’ saith our fairest Bridegroom. No man getteth Christ with ill-will; no man cometh and is not welcome; no man cometh and rueth his voyage; all men speak well of Christ who have been with him. Men and angels who know him will say more than I can do, and think more of him than they can say. O that I were misted and bewildered in my Lord’s love! [lost in his love] O that I were fettered and chained to it! O sweet pain, to be pained for a sight of him! O living death! O good death! O lovely death, to die for love of Jesus! O that I should have a sore heart and a pained soul for the want of this and that idol! Woe, woe to the mistaking of my miscarrying heart, that gapeth and crieth for creatures, and is not pained, and tortured, and in sorrow for want of a soul’s-fill of the love of Christ!

O that thou wouldst come near, my Beloved! O my fairest One, why standest thou afar? Come hither, that I may be satiated with thy excellent love. O for a union! O for a fellowship with Jesus! O that I could buy with a price that lovely One, even suppose that hell’s torments for a while were the price! I cannot believe but that Christ will take pity upon His pained lovers, and come and ease sick hearts, who sigh and swoon for want of Christ.

What heaven can there be liker to hell than to desire and dwine [pine away for], and fall a-swoon for Christ’s love, and to want it? Is not this hell and heaven woven through each other? Is not this pain and joy, sweetness and sadness in one web, the one the weft, the other the warp! Therefore I would that Christ would let us meet, and join together, the soul and Christ in other’s arms. O what a meeting is like this, to see blackness and beauty, contemptibleness and glory, highness, and baseness, even a soul and Christ, kiss each other! Nay, but when all is done, I may be wearied in speaking and writing; but O how far am I from the right expression of Christ or His love! I can neither speak, nor write feeling, nor tasting, nor smelling; come feel, and taste Christ and his love, and you shall call it more than can be spoken; to write how sweet the honey-comb is, is not so lovely as to eat and suck the honey-comb. Rest, with Christ, will say more than heart can think or tongue can utter.

Neither need we fear crosses, or sigh or be sad for anything that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ. Our crosses will never draw blood of the joy of the Holy Ghost and peace of conscience. Our joy is laid up in such a high place that temptations cannot climb up to take it down. This world may boast against Christ, but they dare not strike; or if they strike, they break their arm in fetching a stroke upon a Rock.

O that we would put our treasure in Christ’s hand, and give Him our gold to keep, and our crown. Strive, mistress, to thring [push in by force] through the thorns of this life to be with Christ; tine [lose] not sight of him in this cloudy and dark day; sleep with him in your heart in the night. Learn not from the world to serve Christ, but speer at [ask of] himself the way; the world is a false copy, and a lying guide to follow.

-Samuel Rutherford

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