Epilogue: To the Reader, Once More
Why did I put this book together? For three reasons.
First, I wanted you to meet Richard Baxter. Through his writings he has been a close personal friend of mine for over half a century, and I wanted to share him. An outstanding pastoral evangelist, a gifted and prolific devotional writer, and a major prophet (unheeded, unfortunately) to the Anglican church in the second half of the seventeenth century, he is endlessly interesting; for beyond his public roles he was a great and communicative human being who lets you hear his heartbeat as he writes. Other authors have felt his fascination and presented him in print from various standpoints; I wanted to introduce him to you as a husband working at his Puritan marriage and as a widower grieving for the lively lady who had been his life partner for almost twenty years. I also wanted you to meet her in the extraordinarily vivid and perceptive account of her that Richard gives. They were two memorable Christian people with whom I would have loved to spend time (maybe in heaven that will be possible; I hope so), and I thought that when you had met them through Richard’s memoir, you would feel about them as I do. They enrich my life; I should like them to enrich yours, too.
Second, I wanted you to know about the Puritan ideal for marriage and to see how it differs from what is usual in the West today. For Richard and Margaret, as for the whole Bible-based Puritan movement, marriage was a covenant partnership meant to be God-centered and lifelong, a privilege, a calling, and a task. One married “for better for worse, for richer for poorer,” as the sixteenth-century Book of Common Prayer classically put it: Circumstantial problems and pressures were certain, so one must choose one’s partner carefully, in the knowledge that supporting each other through troubles would be a major part of the matrimonial task, and one needed a partner with resources for doing that, just as one must expect and prepare to be regularly doing it oneself. Very different is the secular modern attitude: “The purpose of my marriage is to meet my needs, and the basis for it is the prospect of a satisfying sex life, and should the purpose or basis fail, I will end my marriage by divorce, so that I can try again with someone else.” I wanted you to be able to compare and contrast the two ideals and to ask yourself not only which is the more biblical and Christian (not a hard question to answer, I think) but which in practice is more truly human and more truly humane.
Third, I wanted you to see something of the Christian way of handling the grief that bereavement brings. The secular grief counseling of today is of little help here. Secular theory commonly expects the bereaved to feel rage at their loss and to be angry with God, if they believe in God, for letting it happen. Secular theory seems to suppose that Christians expect their faith to shield them from suffering, pain, all forms of loss, and in particular the death of anyone they care for, so that they will feel bereavement as a threat to their belief and an occasion for panic anger, in which the question “why?” will become a stone thrown at God repeatedly. No doubt some self-styled Christians feel and act like this, but such reactions are not biblical or Christian any more than is the idea that the life of faith will be trouble-free. Richard models the Christian path through grief when he reaffirms, to himself as well as to his readers, the good, wise, and just sovereignty of God. This is the meaning of his echo of Job 1:21: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; and he hath taken away but that upon my desert, which he had given me undeservedly near nineteen years. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
As the first half of Richard’s tribute to Margaret is a beacon for all who would find God, and the second half is an inspiration for all who are married, so Richard’s own attitude permeating the whole book, and made explicit by such passages as that just quoted, is a lifeline for all bereaved grievers. I wanted to put his lifeline in your hands, for the day will come when you, as well as I, will need it.
Richard buried Margaret in her mother’s tomb. Ever the evangelist, he had written the following verse to be inscribed on it:
Thus must thy flesh to silent dust descend,
Thy mirth and worldly pleasure thus will end:
Then happy, holy souls, but woe to those
Who heaven forgot, and earthly pleasures chose:
Hear now this preaching grave without delay,
Believe, repent, and work while it is day.
I want to leave you with this. Doggerel? Yes, certainly. Gospel? Yes, just as certainly. A word in season? A message, whether well expressed or not, for our time? Think about it, and give your own answer to my question.