From Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) Letters
God’s inexplicable dealings with His people well-ordered
I perceive your case in this world savoureth of worship and communion with the Son of God in His sufferings. You cannot, you
must not have a more pleasant or more easy condition here than He had, who ‘through afflictions was made perfect’ (Heb 2:10).
We may indeed think: cannot God bring us to heaven with ease and prosperity? Who doubteth but He can? But His infinite wisdom
thinketh and decreeth the contrary; and though we cannot see a reason for it, yet He hath a most just reason. We never with our
eyes saw our own soul, yet we have a soul; we see many rivers, but we know not their first spring and original fountain, yet they
have a beginning. Madam, when you are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore of glorious
eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory nearer
to the bottom of God’s wisdom, you shall then be forced to say, ‘If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never
come to the enjoying of this crown of glory.’ It is your part now to believe, and suffer, and hope, and wait on: for I protest in the
2
presence of that all-discerning eye who knoweth what I write and what I think that I would not want the sweet experience of the
consolations of God for all the bitterness of affliction; nay, whether God come to His children with a rod or a crown, if He come
Himself with it, it is well. Welcome, welcome Jesus, what way so ever thou come, if we can get a sight of thee. And sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bed-side, and draw aside the curtains, and say ‘Courage, I am thy salvation,’ than to enjoy health, being lusty and strong, and never to be visited of God.