you wait for "For if we

other witnesses, the hope of the resurrection of the dead. As sown corn is not lost, so also is it in the resurrection of the dead; the body is "sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory." I hope the crop and harvest, 1 Thess. iv. 14. believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so also them which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him." Then they are not lost, who are gathered into that congregation of the first-born, and the general assembly of the saints. Though we cannot outrun nor overtake them that are gone before, yet we shall quickly follow them; and the difference is, that she hath the advantage of some months or years of the crown, before and her mother. And we do not you take it ill, if our children outrun us in the life of grace; why then are we sad, if they outstrip us in the attainment of the life of glory? It would seem, that there is more reason to grieve that children live behind us, than that they are glorified and die before: all the difference is in some poor hungry accidents of time, less or more, sooner or later. godly child, though young, died a hundred years old; and you could not now have bestowed her better, though the choice was Christ's, not yours. The King and Prince of ages can keep them better than you can do. While she was alive, you could intrust her to Christ, and recommend her to his keeping: now, by an after-faith, you have resigned her unto him, in whose bosom do sleep all that are dead in the Lord: you would have lent her to glorify the Lord upon earth, and he hath borrowed her, with

So the

promise to restore her again, to be an organ of the immediate glorifying of himself in heaven. Sinless

glorifying of God is better than sinful glorifying of him. And sure your prayers concerning her are fulfilled. I shall desire, if the Lord shall be pleased the same way to dispose of her mother, that you have the same mind. Christ cannot multiply injuries upon

if the fountain be the love of God, as I hope

it is, you are enriched with losses.

You know all I can say better, before I was in Christ, than I can Grace be with you.

express it.

Yours in Christ Jesus,

If death,

GRACE, mercy and peace be to you, which is before you and us all, were any other thing but a friendly dissolution, and a change, not a destruction of life, it would seem a hard voyage, to go through such a sad and dark trance, so thorny a valley, as is the wages of sin. But I am confident, the way you know, though your foot never trode in that black shadow: the loss of life is gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end of your journey, there is no fear, you go to a friend; and since you have had a communion with him in this life, and he hath the largest share of your love and heart, you may look death in the face with joy. If the heart be

in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the prisoner of the second death: but though he be the same Christ in the other life you found him to be here, yet he is far in his excellency, beauty, sweetness, irradiations and beams of Majesty, above what he appeared here, when he is seen as he is. But the change will be in you, when you shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a more deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of Christ; and when means, the chariot of the gospel that he is now carried in, and ordinances that convey him, shall be removed. Sure you cannot now be said to see him face to face, or to drink of the wine of the highest Fountain, as you shall do a few days hence, when shall be so near as to be with Christ. You shall then think, that preachers, and sinful ambassadors on earth, did but mar his praises, when they spoke of him, and preached his beauty. Alas! we but make Christ less lovely, in making such insignificant, and dry, and cold, and low expressions of his highest and transcendent super-excellency, to the daughters of Jerusalem. Sure, I have often, for my own part, sinned in this thing: no doubt, angels do not fulfil their task according to their obligation, in that Christ kept their feet from falling with the lost devils: though I know, they are not behind in going to the utmost of created power; but there is sin in our praising, and sin in the quantity, besides other sins. But I must leave this, it is too deep for me.

you

Go and see, and we desire to go with you; but we are not masters of our own diet. If in that last journey you tread on a serpent in the way, and thereby wound your heel,

as Jesus Christ did before you, the print of the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of the just. Death is but a step over time and sin to Jesus Christ, who knew and felt the worst of death. Praise and glory be to the First-begotten of the dead. The worst possibly that may be, is, that you leave behind you children, husband, and the church of God in miseries; but you cannot get them to heaven with you for the present: you shall not miss them, and Christ cannot miscount one of the poorest of his lambs: no poor one shall be amissing, ere you see them again in the day that the Son shall render up the kingdom to his Father. Not a soul of the militant company will be here within few generations. Ye may rejoice, that you got not to heaven till you knew that Jesus is there before you.

And his first salutation will make you find it is no uncomfortable thing to die. Go and enjoy your gain; live on Christ's love while you are here, and all the way: "Yet a little while, and the vision shall not tarry; it shall speak and not lie." I am more afraid of my duty, than of the Head, Christ's government: he cannot fail to bring judgment to victory. O that we could wait for our hidden life! O that Christ would remove the covering, draw aside the curtain of time, and rend the heavens and come down! That shadows and night were gone, that the day would break, and he that feedeth among the lilies would cry to his heavenly trumpeters, Make ready! His grace be with you.-Now, if I have found favour with you, and if you judge me faithful, my last suit to you is, that you would leave me a

legacy, and that is, that my name may be at the very last in your prayers; as I desire also, it may be in the prayers of those of your Christian acquaintance with whom you have been intimate.

Your Brother in his own Lord Jesus,

London, Jan. 9, 1646.

S. R.

To LADY ARDROSS.

Madam,

GRACE, mercy and peace be to you. It hath seemed good (as I hear) to him, who hath appointed bounds for the number of our months, to gather in a sheaf of ripe corn (in the death of your Christian mother) into his garner: it is the more evident, that winter is near, when apples, without violence of wind, do of their own accord fall off the tree. She is now above the winter, with a little change of place, not of a Saviour; only she enjoyeth him now without messages, and in his own immediate presence, from whom she heard by letters and messengers before. I grant, death is to her a very new thing, but heaven was prepared of old; and Christ enjoyed in his highest throne, and as loaded with glory, and incomparably exalted above men and angels, having such a heavenly circle of glorified spirits above, compassing the throne with a song, is to her a new thing; but so new, as the first summer rose, or the first-fruits of that heavenly field, or as a new paradise to a traveller, broken and worn out