Dear Brother, I hear that it hath pleased God to remove from you the desire of your eyes, and my dear friend. I am heartily sorry for that sore breach in your family, and desire to suffer with you in the loss of your loving and good wife, now gone before (according to the method and order he hath appointed, whose understanding is infinite) whither you are shortly to follow. He that made yesterday to go before this day, and the former generation in birth and life to have been before this generation, and hath made some flowers to grow, and to wither, and to die in May, and others in Junecannot be challenged in the order he observes with us, that one bury another. You know who said, "I was dumb and opened not my mouth, because thou, Lord, didst it." All things are ordered in wisdom and judgment by your Father; at whose feet your own soul and your heaven lieth, and so the days of your wife. You had her as long as your lease lasted, and seeing her term was come, and your lease run out, you can no more justly quarrel with the great Sovereign for taking his own at his just term-day, than a poor farmer can complain that his master takes a portion of his own land to himself when the lease is expired. And is not he an ill debtor who payeth that which he hath borrowed, with a grudge? Certainly the long loan of such a good wife, an heir of grace, and member of Christ, (as verily I believe) deserveth thanks rather than grief and murmuring, when he calleth back his own. I believe you would judge them to be but unthankful neighbours, who would pay you back a sum of money after this manner. I know you would be sorry either to be or to be esteemed any thing like an atheist; and yet not I, but the apostle (1 Thess. iv. 13.) thinks those to be hopeless atheists, who mourn exces sively for the dead. But this is not a charge on my part; some jealousy I have, lest you be overmuch grieved for the loss of such a help-meet; but you have reason to rejoice, that when a part of you is on earth, another part of you is glorified in heaven, sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty: follow her, but envy her not. For indeed it is self-love in us that maketh us mourn for them that die in the Lord; because for them we cannot mourn, since they are never happy till they be dead, therefore we mourn for our own private loss. Take heed then, that in pretending your affection in mourning for your wife, you act out of selfaffection; consider what the Lord is doing in it; she is plucked out of the fire, and resteth from her labours; and the Lord in that is trying you, and casting you into the fire, beholding your faith and patience, and delighting to see you in the burning bush and not consumed; but sending Satan away frustrate of his design. The Lord is laying in one scale of the balance, your making conscience of submission to his gracious will; and in the other, your affection for your wife: which of the two will you then make to preponderate? I wish you may come out of the Lord's school wiser and more experienced in the ways of God. It is our happiness that when Christ openeth a vein, he taketh nothing but ill blood from his sick patients; and when he puts them into the furnace of affliction (and stands by the melting of the metal) he takes away the dross and scum that remained in nature. But it is a sad thing when the rod is cursed, that never fruit shall grow on it; and except Christ's dew fall down with his summer sunshine, and his grace follow afflictions, to make them to bring forth fruit unto God, they are so bewithered to us, that our bad ground (rank and fertile enough for briars) produceth a crop of noisome weeds. I am persuaded your losses, cares, sicknesses, &c. are but summer showers that will wet your garments for an hour or two, and the sun of the new Jerusalem shall quickly dry your wet clothes, especially since the rain of affliction cannot stain the image of God, nor cause grace to cast its colour. Oh! learn heavenly wisdom, self-denial, and mortification by this sad loss. I know it is not for nothing, (except you deny God to be wise in all that he doth) that you have lost your partner on the earth. It may be, there hath been too little of your heart and love in heaven; and therefore the jealousy of Christ hath done this; it is a mercy that he contendeth with you; it may be, he hath either been out of his place, or in a place inferior to his worth. O let Christ have the room of you wife; she hath now no need of you, or your love; she enjoyeth as much of the love of Christ as her heart can be capable of. I know it is a dear bought experience to teach you to undervalue the creature; yet it is not too dear if Christ think so. Let me entreat you to consider one thing more (which hath helped me in such like cases more than once,) and I have done: you are hasting after your wife, and shall shortly be with her; it is but a little while, a few days longer, and you must follow her into eternity. By her death take occasion to love the world less, out of which she was taken, and heaven more, whither she is gone before you, and where you shall for ever enjoy her society, and be with Christ, which is best of all. If the place she hath left were any other than a prison of sin, and the home she is gone to were any other than a palace of glory, your grief would be the more rational. But, I hope, your faith in the resurrection of the dead in Christ to glory and immortality, will lead you to dry up your tears, and suspend your longing for her, till |