MY VERY DEAR AND LOVING SISTER,--Grace mercy, and peace be to you.--I long to hear from you. I exhort you to set up the brae to the King's city, that must be taken by violence. Your afternoon's sun is wearing low. Time will eat up your frail life, like a worm gnawing at the root of a May-flower. Lend Christ your heart. Set Him as a seal there. Take Him in within, and let the world and children stand at the door. They are not yours; make you and them[234] for your proper owner, Christ. It is good that He is your Husband and their Father. What missing can there be of a dying man, when God filleth His chair? Give hours of the day to prayer. Fash Christ (if I may speak so), and importune Him; be often at His gate; give His door no rest. I can tell you that He will be found. Oh, what sweet fellowship is betwixt Him and me! I am imprisoned, but He is not imprisoned. He hath shamed me with His kindness. He hath come to my prison, and run away with my heart and all my love. Well may He brook it! I wish that my love get never an owner but Christ. Fy, fy upon old lovers, that held us so long asunder! We shall not part now. He and I shall be heard, before He win out of my grips. I resolve to wrestle with Christ, ere I quit Him. But my love to Him hath casten my soul into a fever, and there is no cooling of my fever, till I get real possession of Christ. O strong, strong love of Jesus, thou hast wounded my heart with thine arrows! Oh pain! Oh pain of love for Christ! Who will help me to praise? Let me have your prayers. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R. ABERDEEN, _March 13, 1637_. [234] This seems to mean mould, or fashion, yourself and them. CXLVI.--_To MR. JAMES BRUCE, Minister of the Gospel_. [MR. JAMES BRUCE was minister of Kingsbarns, in the Presbytery of St Andrews; admitted in 1630. Prelacy and the English ceremonies had then, for a considerable time, been imposed upon the Church of Scotland. But Bruce, like many other of her ministers, being in principle decidedly favourable to Presbytery, refused to conform. He was, however, permitted to continue in his charge, the Bishops at that time removing very few, because the introduced ceremonies were so unpopular, that it was judged dangerous and impolitic to enforce a rigid and universal compliance with them. Bruce made an early public appearance against the attempts of the Court to impose the Anglo-Popish liturgy, or Service Book, in 1637. He was a member of the Glasgow Assembly, 1638. He died at Kingsbarns, May 26, 1662, when the storm of persecution was about to break upon the Church of Scotland, being thus taken away from the evil to come.] (_MISJUDGING OF CHRIST'S WAYS._)