XIV. To LADY KENMURE

MADAM, — Grace, mercy and peace be to you. I received your Ladyship’s letter. It refreshed me in my heaviness. The blessing and prayer of a prisoner of Christ come upon you. Nothing grieveth me but that I eat my feasts my lone, and that I cannot edify His saints. My silence eats me up, but He has told me He thanketh me no less than if I were preaching daily.

Your Ladyship wrote to me that ye are yet an ill scholar. Madam, ye must go in at heaven’s gates, and your book in your hand, still learning. You have had your own large share of troubles, and a double portion; but it saith your Father counteth you not a bastard; full-begotten bairns are nurtured (Heb. 12.8). I long to hear of the child. I write the blessings of Christ’s prisoner and the mercies of God to him.

Madam, it is not long since I did write to your Ladyship that Christ is keeping mercy for you; and I bide by it still, and now I write it under my hand. Love Him dearly. Win in to see Him; there is in Him that which you never saw. He is aye nigh; He is a tree of life, green and blossoming, both summer and winter. There is a nick in Christianity, to the which whosoever cometh, they see and feel more than others can do. Now the blessing of our dearest Lord Jesus, and the blessing of him that is ’separate from his brethren’, come upon you. Yours, at Aberdeen, the prisoner of Christ.

ABERDEEN