Christ is a well of life; but who knows how deep it is to the bottom? This soul of ours has love and cannot but love some fair one. And oh, what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely, ravishing One is Jesus! put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the gar­den of Eden, in one. Put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness, in one. Oh, what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths.

Oh, but Christ is heaven’s and earth’s wonder! What marvel that His bride says, “He is altogether lovely!” (Song 5:16). Oh that black souls will not come and fetch all their love to this fair One! Oh, if I could invite and persuade thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand of Adam’s sons to flock about my Lord Jesus and to come and take their fill of love! Oh, pity for evermore, that there should be such a one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency and sweetness, and so few to take Him! Oh, oh, you poor, dry, and dead souls, why will you not come hither with your toom¹ vessels and your empty souls to this huge and fair and deep and sweet well of life, and fill all your toom vessels? Oh that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth and we so narrow, so pinched, so ebb, and so void of all happiness.

And yet men will not take Him! They lose their love miserably, those who will not bestow it upon this lovely One. Alas! These five thousand years, Adam’s fools, his waster heirs (Prov. 18:9), have been wasting and lavishing out their love and their affections upon black lovers and black harlots, upon bits of dead creatures and broken idols, upon this and that feckless² creature, and have not brought their love and their heart to Jesus. Oh, pity, that Fairness has so few lovers! Oh, woe, woe to the fools of this world who run by Christ to other lovers! Oh, misery, misery, misery, that comeliness can scarce get three or four hearts in a town or country! Oh that there is so much spoken and so much written and so much thought of creature vanity and so little spoken, so little written, and so little thought of my great and incompre­hensible and never-enough-wondered-at Lord Jesus! Why should I not curse this forlorn³ and wretched world that suffers my Lord Jesus to lie by Himself? O damned souls!

O miskenning⁴ world! O blind, O beggarly and poor souls! O bewitched fools! What ails you at Christ that you run so from Him? I dare not challenge providence, that there are so few buyers and so little sale for such an excellent one as Christ. (O the depth and O the height of my Lord’s ways, that pass finding out!)

But oh, if men would once be wise and not fall so in love with their own hell as to pass by Christ and masked Him! But let us come near and fill ourselves with Christ, and let His friends drink and be drunk and satisfy our hollow and deep desires with Jesus. Oh, come all and drink at this living well; come, drink and live forevermore; come, drink, and welcome! “Welcome,” says our fairest Bridegroom. No man gets Christ with ill will; no man comes and is not welcome. No man comes and is sorry for his voyage; all men speak well of Christ who have been at Him. Men and angels who know Him will say more than I can do and think more of Him than they can say. Oh, if I were misted⁵ and bewildered in my Lord’s love! Oh, if I were fettered and chained to it! Oh, sweet pain, to be pained for a sight of Him! Oh, liv­ing death; oh, good death; oh, lovely death, to die for love of Jesus! Oh that I should have a sore heart and a pained soul for the want of this and that idol! Woe, woe to the mistaking of my miscarrying heart, that gapes and cries for creatures and is not pained and cut and tortured and in sorrow for the want of a soul’s-fill of the love of Christ! Oh that Thou wouldst come near, my Beloved! O my fairest One, why dost Thou stand afar! Come hither, that I may be satiated with Thy excellent love. Oh, for a union! Oh for a fellowship with Jesus! Oh that I could buy with a price that lovely One, even suppose that hell’s torments for a while were the price! I cannot believe but Christ will be sorry for His pained lovers and come and ease sick hearts who sigh and swoon for want of Christ.