Samuel RuFherforc 
 
 and some oF his (Lorrespondenl's 
 
 Mm. 
 
I 
 
 BX 9225 .R87 W4 1894 
 Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 
 Samuel Rutherford and some 
 of his correspondents 
 
 division 
 
 Sectioa 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 AND SOME OF 
 HIS CORRESPONDENTS 
 
■:S^^ 
 
 SAMUEL RUTHERF( 
 
 AND SOME OF 
 HIS CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED IN 
 ST GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH 
 
 EDINBURGH: BY 
 ALEXANDER VhYTE, D.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 "^BUNYAN characters' 
 
 ETC. 
 
 7^, 
 
 1 
 
 PUBLISHED BV 
 
 OLIPHANT ANDERSON AND FERRIER 
 
 30 ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH, AND 
 
 24 OLD BAILEY, LONDON 
 
 1 894 
 
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 f. JOSHUA REDIVIVUS ..... 
 
 II. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD AND SOME OK HIS 
 EXTREMES. ..... 
 
 PACE 
 
 I 
 
 lO 
 
 ni. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 i.\. 
 
 X. 
 XI. 
 
 \ii. 
 xni. 
 
 XIV, 
 XV, 
 
 MARION M'NAUGIIT . . . . • "9 
 
 LADY KENMURE ..... 29 
 
 LADY CARDONESS .... 35 
 
 LADY CULROSS . . • • • 43 
 
 LADY BOYD ...... 5° 
 
 LADY ROBERTLAND . . . . .59 
 
 JEAN BROWN ...... 69 
 
 JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS, THE YOUNGER 79 
 
 ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON . . 86 
 
 WILLIAM GORDON, YOUNGER OF EARLSTON 95 
 
 ROBERT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX . . IO4 
 
 JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO . . . • I^S 
 
 BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY . I23 
 
iv CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 XVI. JAMES GUTHRIE 131 
 
 XVII. WILLIAM GUTHRIE ..... 141 
 
 XVIII. GEORGE GILLESPIE . . • ^SI 
 
 XIX. JOHN FERGUSHILL . . 161 
 
 XX. JAMES BAUTIE, STUDENT OF DIVINITY . 171 
 
 XXI. JOHN MEINE, JUNIOR, STUDENT OF DIVINITY 181 
 
 XXII. ALEXANDER BRODIE OF I5RODIE . I91 
 
 XXIII. JOHN FLEMING, RAILIE OF LEITH .201 
 
 XXIV. THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM .211 
 
SAMUEL UUTHERFORD 
 
 JOSHUA REDIVIVUS 
 
 ' He sent me as a spy to see the land and to try the ford.' 
 
 Rutherford, 
 
 AMUEL RUTHERFORD, the author 
 of the seraphic Letters, was born in 
 the south of Scotland in the year of 
 our Lord IfiOO. Thomas Goodwin 
 was born in England in the same year, 
 Robert Leighton in I6II, Richard Baxter in iGlo, 
 John Owen in I616, John Bunyan in l628, and John 
 Howe in l630. A little vellum-covered volume now 
 lies open before me, the title-page of which runs 
 thus: — 'Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's 
 Letters, now published for the use of the people of 
 God : but more particularly for those who now are, 
 or may afterwards be, put to suifering for Christ and 
 His cause. By a well-wisher to the work and to 
 the people of God. Printed in the year 1()G4.' 
 That is all. It would not have been safe in l6()4 
 to say more. There is no editor's name on the title- 
 page, no publisher's name, and no place of printing 
 or of publication. Only two texts of forewarning 
 and reassuring Scripture, and then the year of grace 
 l(iG4. 
 
2 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Joshua Redivivus : That is to say, Moses' spy 
 and pioneer, Moses' successor and the captain of 
 the Lord's covenanted host come back again. A 
 second Joshua sent to Scotland to go before God's 
 people in that land and in that day ; a spy who 
 would both by his experience and by his testimony 
 cheer and encourage the suffering people of God. 
 For all this Samuel Rutherford truly was. As 
 he said of himself in one of his letters to Hugh 
 Mackail, he was indeed a spy sent out to make 
 experiment upon the life of silence and separation, 
 banishment and martyrdom, and to bring back a 
 report of that life for the vindication of Christ and 
 for the support and encouragement of His people. 
 It was a happy thought of Rutherford's first editor, 
 Robert M'Ward, his old Westminster Assembly 
 secretary, to put at the top of his title-page, Joshua 
 risen again from the dead, or, Mr. Rutherford's 
 Letters written from his place of banishment in 
 Aberdeen, 
 
 In selecting his twelve spies, Moses went on the 
 principle of choosing the best and the ablest men he 
 could lay hold of in all Israel. And in selecting 
 Samuel Rutherford to be the first sufferer for His 
 covenanted people in Scotland, our Lord took a man 
 who was already famous for his character and his 
 services. For no man of his age in broad Scotland 
 stood higher as a scholar, a theologian, a controver- 
 sialist, a preacher and a very saint than Samuel 
 Rutherford. He had been settled at Anwoth on the 
 Solway in 1()27, and for the next nine years he had 
 lived such a noble life among his people as to make 
 Anwoth famous as loiij; as Jesus Christ has a Church 
 
I 
 
 JOSHUA REDIVIVUS 3 
 
 in Scotland. As we say Bunyan and Bedford, Baxter 
 and Kidderminster, Newton and Olney, Edwards 
 and Northampton, Boston and Ettrick, jVPCheyne 
 and St. Peter's, so we say Rutherfoi-d and Anwoth. 
 His talents, his industiy, his scholarship, his 
 preaching power, his pastoral solicitude and his 
 saintly character all combined to make Rutherford 
 a marked man both to the friends and to the enemies 
 of the truth. His talents and his industry while he 
 was yet a student in Edinburgh had carried him to 
 the top of his classes, and all his days he could write 
 in Latin better than either in Scotch or English. 
 His habits of work at Anwoth soon became a very 
 proverb. His people boasted that their minister was 
 always at his books, always among his parishioners, 
 always at their sick-beds and their death-beds, 
 always catechising their children and always 
 alone with his God. And then the matchless 
 preaching of the parish church of Anwoth. We 
 can gather what made the Sabbaths of Anwoth so 
 memorable both to Rutherford and to his people 
 from the books we still have from those great 
 Sabbaths : The Trial and the Triumph of Faith ; 
 Christ Dying and Draiving Sinners to Himself; and 
 such like. Rutherford was the ' most moving and the 
 most affectionate of preachers,' a preacher detei- 
 mined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him 
 crucified, but not so much crucified, as crucified and 
 risen again — crucified indeed, but now glorified. 
 Rutherford's life for his people at Anwoth has 
 something altogether superhuman and unearthly 
 about it. His correspondents in his own day and 
 his critics in our day stumble at his too intense 
 
4 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 devotion to his charge ; lie lived for his congi egation, 
 they tell us, almost to the neglect of his wife and 
 children. But by the time of his banishment his 
 home was desolate, his wife and children were in 
 the grave. And all the time and thought and love 
 they had got from him while they Avere alive had, 
 now that they Avere dead, returned with new and 
 intensified devotion to his people and his parish. 
 
 Fair Anwoth by the Solway, 
 
 To me thou still art dear, 
 E'en from the verge of heaven 
 
 I drop for thee a tear. 
 
 Oh ! if one soul from Anwoth 
 
 Meet me at God's right hand, 
 My heaven will be two heavens 
 
 In Immanuel's Land. 
 
 This then was the spy chosen by Jesus Christ to 
 go out first of all the ministers of Scotland into the 
 life of banishment in that day, so as to try its fords 
 and taste its vineyards, and to report to God's strait- 
 ened and persecuted people at home. 
 
 To begin with, it must always be remembered that 
 Rutherford was not laid in irons in Aberdeen, or cast 
 into a dungeon. He was simply deprived of his 
 pulpit and of his liberty to preach, and Avas sentenced 
 to live in silence in the toAvn of Aberdeen. Like 
 Dante, another great spy of God's providence and 
 grace, Rutherford was less a prisoner than an exile. 
 But if any man thinks that simply to be an exile is 
 a small punishment, or a light cross, let him read 
 the psalms and prophecies of Babylon, the Divine 
 Comedij, and Rutherford's Lellcrs. Yes, banish- 
 ment was banishment ; exile was exile ; silent 
 
JOSHUA REDIVIVUS 5 
 
 Sabbaths were silent Sabbaths ; and a borrowed fire- 
 side with all its willing heat was still a borrowed 
 fireside ; and, spite of all that the best people of 
 Aberdeen could do for Samuel Rutherford, he felt 
 the friendliest stairs of that city to be very steep to 
 his feet, and its best bread to be very salt in his 
 mouth. 
 
 But, with all that, Samuel Rutherford would have 
 been but a blind and unprofitable spy for the best 
 people of God in Scotland, for Marion M 'Naught, 
 and Lady Kenmure, and Lady Culross, for the 
 Cardonesses, father, and mother, and son, and for 
 Hugh Mackail, and such like, if he had tasted no- 
 thing more bitter than borrowed bread in Aberdeen, 
 and climbed nothing steeper than a granite stair. 
 ' Paul had need,' Rutherford writes to Lady Ken- 
 mure, * of the devil's service to buffet him, and far 
 more, you and me.' I am downright afraid to go 
 on to tell you how Satan was sent to buffet Samuel 
 Rutherford in his banishment, and how he was sifted 
 as wheat is sifted in his exile. I would not expose 
 such a saint of God to eveiy eye, but I look for 
 fellow-worshippers here on these Rutherford Sabbath 
 evenings, who know something of the plague of 
 their own hearts, and who are comforted in their 
 banishment and battle by nothing more than when 
 they are assured that they are not alone in the deep 
 darkness. ' When Christian had travelled in this 
 disconsolate condition for some time he thought he 
 heard the voice of a man as going before him and 
 saying, " Though I milk through the J^allcij of the 
 Shadow of Death I will fear no ill, fur Thou art with 
 me." Then he was glad, and that for these reasons : — 
 
6 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Firstly, because he gathered from thence that some 
 one who feared God was in this valley as well as 
 himself. Secondly, for that he perceived that God 
 was with them though in that dark and dismal 
 state ; and why not, thought he, with me ? Thirdly, 
 for that he hoped, could he overtake them, to have 
 company by and by.' And, in like manner, I am 
 certain that it will encourage and save from despair 
 some who now hear me if I just report to them 
 some of the discoveries and experiences of himself 
 that Samuel Rutherford made among the siftings 
 and buffetings of his Aberdeen exile. Writing to 
 Lady Culross, he says : — ' O my guiltiness, the follies 
 of my youth and the neglects of my calling, they all 
 do stare me in the face here ; . . , the world hath 
 sadly mistaken me : no man knoweth what guilti- 
 ness is in me.' And to Lady Boyd, speaking of some 
 great lessons he had learnt in the school of adversity, 
 he says, ' In the third place, I have seen here my 
 abominable vileness, and it is such that if I were 
 well known no one in all the kingdom would ask 
 me how I do. ... I am a deeper hypocrite and a 
 shallower professor than any one could believe. 
 Madam, pity me, the chief of sinners.' And, again, 
 to the Laird of Carlton : ' Woe, Avoe is me, that men 
 should think there is anything in me. The house- 
 devils that keej) me company and this sink of cor- 
 ruption make me to carry low sails. . . But, howbeit 
 I am a wretched captive of sin, yet my Lord can 
 hew heaven out of worse timber than I am, if worse 
 there be.' And to Lady Kenmure : ' I am some- 
 body in the books of my friends, . . . but there 
 are armies of thoughts within me, saying the 
 
JOSHUA REDIVIVUS 7 
 
 contrary, and laughing at the mistakes of my many 
 friends. Oh ! if my inner side were only seen ! ' 
 Ah no, my brethren, no land is so fearful to them 
 that are sent to search it out as their own heart. 
 ' The land,' said the ten spies, ' is a land that eateth 
 up the inhabitants thereof; the cities are walled up 
 to heaven, and very great, and the children of 
 Anak dwell in them. We were in their sight as 
 grasshoppers, and so we were in our own sight.' 
 Ah, no ! no stair is so steep as the stair of sancti- 
 fication, no bread is so salt as that which is baked 
 for a man of God out of the wild oats of his past 
 sin and his present sinfulness. Even Joshua and 
 Caleb, who brought back a good report of the land, 
 did not deny that the children of Anak were there, 
 or that their walls went up to heaven, or that they, 
 the spies, were as gi'asshoppers before their foes : 
 Caleb and Joshua only said that, in spite of all that, 
 if the Lord delighted in His people, He both could 
 and would give them a land flowing with milk 
 and honey. And be it recorded and remembered 
 to his credit and his praise that, with all his self- 
 discoveries and self-accusings, Rutherford did not 
 utter one single word of doubt or despair ; so far 
 from that was he, that in one of his letters to 
 Hugh M'Kail he tells us that some of his corre- 
 spondents have written to him that he is possibly too 
 joyful under the cross. Blunt old Knockbrex, for 
 one, wrote to his old minister to restrain somewhat 
 his ecstasy. So true was it, what Rutherford said 
 of himself to David Dickson, that he was ' made up 
 of extremes.' So he was, for I know no man among 
 all my masters in personal religion who unites greater 
 
8 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 extremes in himself than Samuel Rutherford. Who 
 weeps like Rutherford over his banishment from An- 
 woth, while all the time who is so feasted in Christ's 
 palace in Aberdeen? Who loathes himself like 
 Rutherford ? Not Bunyan, not Brea, not Boston j 
 and, at the same time, who is so transported and lost 
 to himself in the beauty and sweetness of Christ ? 
 As we read his raptures we almost say with cautious 
 old Knockbrex, that possibly Rutherford is some- 
 what too full of ecstasy for this fallen, still unsancti- 
 fied, and still so slippeiy world. 
 
 It took two men to cany back the cluster of 
 grapes the spies cut down atEshcol,and there is sweet- 
 ness and strength and ecstasy enough for ten men 
 in any one of Rutherford's inebriated Letters. ' See 
 what the land is, and whether it be fat or lean, and 
 bring back of the fruits of the land.' This was the 
 order given by Moses to the twelve spies. And, 
 whether the land was fat or lean, Moses and all 
 Israel could judge for themselves when the spies 
 laid down their load of grapes at Moses' feet. ' I 
 can report nothing but good of the land,' said Joshua 
 Redivivus, as he sent back such clusters of its vine- 
 yards and such pots of its honey to Hugh Mackail, 
 to Marion M'Naught, and to Lady Kenmure. And 
 then, when all his letters were collected and pub- 
 lished, never surely, since the Epistles of Paul and 
 the Gospel of John, had such clusters of encourage- 
 ment and such intoxicating cordials been laid to the 
 lips of the Church of Christ. 
 
 Our old authors tell us that after the northern 
 tribes had tasted the warmth and the sweetness of 
 the wines of Italy they could take no rest till they 
 
JOSHUA REDIVIVUS 9 
 
 had conquered and taken possession of that huid of 
 sunshine where such grapes so plentifully grew. 
 And how many hearts have been carried ca2)tive 
 with the beauty and the grace of Christ, and with 
 the land of Immanuel, where He drinks wine with 
 the saints in His Father's house, by the reading of 
 Sanuiel Rutherford's Letters, the day of the Lord 
 will alone declare. 
 
 Oh ! Christ He is the Fountain, 
 
 The deep sweet Well of love ! 
 The streams on earth I 've tasted, 
 
 More deep I '11 drink above. 
 There to an ocean fulness 
 
 His mercy doth expand, 
 And glory, glory dwelleth 
 
 In Immanuel's Land. 
 
10 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 II 
 
 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD AND SOME 
 OF HIS EXTREMES 
 
 ' I am made of extremes.' — Rutherford. 
 
 STORY is told in Wodrow of an 
 English merchant who had occasion 
 to visit Scotland on business about 
 the year 1650. On his return home 
 his friends asked him what news he 
 had brought with him from the north. 'Good 
 news/ he said ; ' for when I went to St. Andrews I 
 heard a sweet, majestic-looking man, and he showed 
 me the majesty of God. After him I heard a little 
 fair man, and he showed me the loveliness of Christ. 
 I then went to Irvine, where I heard a well-favoured, 
 proper old man with a long beard, and that man 
 showed me all my own heart.' The little fair man 
 who showed this English merchant the loveliness 
 of Christ was Samuel Rutherford, and the proper 
 old man who showed him all his own heart was 
 David Dickson. Dr. M'Crie says of David Dickson 
 that he was singularly successful in dissecting the 
 human heart and in winning souls to the Redeemer, 
 and all that we know of Dickson bears out that 
 high estimate. When he was presiding on one 
 occasion at the ordination of a young minister, 
 whom he had had some hand in bringing up, among 
 
SOME OF HIS EXTREMES 11 
 
 the advices the old minister gave the new beginner 
 were these : — That he should remain unmarried for 
 four years, in order to give himself up wholly to his 
 great work ; and that both in preaching and in 
 prayer he should be as succinct as possible so as not 
 to weary his hearers; and, lastly, 'Oh, study God 
 well and your own heart.' We have five letters of 
 Rutherfoi-d's to this master of the human heart, and 
 it is in the third of these that Rutherford opens his 
 heart to his father in the Gospel, and tells him that 
 he is made up of extremes. 
 
 In every way that was so. It is a common 
 remark with all Rutherford's biographers and editors 
 and commentators what extremes met in that little 
 fair man. The finest thing that has ever been 
 Avritten on Rutherford is Mr. Taylor Innes's lecture 
 in the Evangelical Succession series. And the in- 
 tellectual extremes that met in Rutherford are there 
 set forth by Rutherford's acute and sympathetic 
 critic at some length. For one thing, the greatest 
 speculative freedom and theological breadth met in 
 Rutherford with the greatest ecclesiastical hardness 
 and narrowness. I do not know any author of that 
 day, either in England or in Scotland, either Prelatist 
 or Puritan, who shows more imaginative freedom 
 and speculative power than Rutherford does in his 
 Christ Dijbig, unless it is his still greater contem- 
 porary, Thomas Goodwin. And it is with corre- 
 sponding distress that we read some of Rutherford's 
 polemical works, and even the polemical parts of 
 his heavenly Letters. There is a remarkable 
 passage in one of his controversial books that 
 reminds us of some of Shakespeare's own tributes 
 
12 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 to England: 'I judge that in England the Lord 
 hath many names and a fair company that shall 
 stand at the side of Christ when He shall render up 
 the kingdom to the Father ; and that in that re- 
 nowned land there be men of all ranks, wise, valorous, 
 generous, noble, heroic, faithful, religious, gracious, 
 learned.' Rutherford's whole passage is worthy 
 to stand beside Shakespeare's great passage on 
 'this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this 
 England.' But persecution from England and con- 
 troversy at home so embittered Rutherford's sweet 
 and gracious spirit that passages like that are but 
 few and far between. But let him away out into 
 pure theology, and, especially, let him get his 
 wings on the person, and the work, and the glory 
 of Christ, and few theologians of any age or any 
 school rise to a larger air, or command a wider 
 scope, or discover a clearer eye of speculation than 
 Rutherford, till we feel exactly like the laird of 
 Glanderston, who^ when Rutherford left a con- 
 troversial passage in a sermon and went on to speak 
 of Christ, cried out in the church — 'Ay, hold you 
 there, minister ; you are all right there ! ' A 
 domestic controversy that arose in the Church of 
 Scotland towards the end of Rutherford's life so 
 separated Rutherford from Dickson and Blair that 
 Rutherford would not take part with Blair, the 
 'sweet, majestic-looking man,' in the Lord's Supper. 
 'Oh, to be above,' Blair exclaimed, 'where there 
 are no misunderstandings ! ' It was this same 
 controversy that made John Livingstone say in a 
 letter to Blair that his wife and he had had more 
 bitterness over that dispute than ever they had 
 
SOME OF HIS EXTREMES 13 
 
 tasted since they knew what bitterness meant. Well 
 mi<Tht Rutherford say, on aiiother such occasion, ' It 
 is hard when saints rejoice in the sufferinpfs of saints, 
 and when the redeemed hui't, and go nigh to hate 
 the redeemed.' Watch and pray, my brethren, 
 lest in controversy — ephemeral and immaterial 
 conti-oversy — you also go near to hate and hurt one 
 another, as Rutherford did. 
 
 And then, what strength, combined with what 
 tenderness, there is in Rutherford ! In all my 
 acquaintance with literature I do not know any 
 author Avho has two books under his name so unlike 
 one another, two books that are such a contrast to 
 one another, as Lex Rex and the Letters. A more 
 firmly built argument than Lex Rex, an argument 
 so clamped together with the iron bands of scholastic 
 and legal lore, is not to be met with in any English 
 book ; a more lawyer-looking production is not in 
 all the Advocates' Library than just Lex Rex. 
 There is as much emotion in the multiplication table 
 as there is in Lex Rex; and then, on the other 
 hand, the Letters have no other fault but this, that 
 they are overcharged with emotion. The Letters 
 would be absolutely perfect if they were only a 
 little more restrained and chastened in this one 
 respect. The pundit and the poet are the opposites 
 and the extremes of one another ; and the pundit and 
 the jioet meet, as nowhere else that I know of, in 
 the author of Lex Rex and the Letters. 
 
 Then, again, what extremes of beauty and sweet- 
 ness there are in Rutherford's style, too often inter- 
 mingled with what carelessness and disorder. What 
 flashes of noblest thought, clothed in the most apt 
 
14 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 and well-fitting words, on the same page with the 
 most slatternly and down-at-the-heel English. Both 
 Dr. Andrew Bonar and Dr. Andrew Thomson have 
 given us selections from Rutherford's Letters that 
 would quite justify us in claiming Rutherford as one 
 of the best writers of English in his day ; but then 
 we know out of what thickets of careless composition 
 these flowers have been collected. Both Gillespie 
 and Rutherford ran a tilt at Hooker ; but alas for the 
 equipment and the manners of our champions when 
 compared with the shining panoply and the knightly 
 grace of the author of the incomparable Polity. 
 
 And theUj morally, as great extremes met in 
 Rutherford as intellectually. Newman has a fine 
 sermon under a fine title, ' Saintliness not forfeited 
 by the Penitent.' 'No degree of sin,' he says, 
 ' precludes the acquisition of any degree of holiness, 
 however high. No sinner so great, but he may, 
 through God's grace, become a saint ever so great.' 
 And then he goes on to illustrate that, and balance 
 that, and almost to retract and deny all that, in a 
 way that all his admirei'S only too well know. But 
 still it stands true. A friend of mine once told me 
 that it was to him often the most delightful and 
 profitable of Sabbath evening exercises just to take 
 down Newman's sermons and read their titles over 
 again. And this mere title, I feel sure, has encouraged 
 and comforted many : ' Saintliness not forfeited by 
 the Penitent.' And Samuel Rutherford's is just 
 another great name to be added to the noble roll 
 of saintly penitents we all have in our minds taken 
 out of Scripture and Church History. Neither 
 great saintliness nor great service was forfeited by 
 
SOME OF HIS EXTREMES 15 
 
 this penitent ; and he is constantly telling us how 
 the extreme of demerit and the extreme of gracious 
 treatment met in him; how he had at one time 
 destroyed himself, and how God had helped him ; 
 how, where sin had abounded, grace had abounded 
 much more. In one of the very last letters he ever 
 wrote — his letter to James Guthrie in I66I — he is 
 still amazed that God has not brought his sin to the 
 Market Ci'oss, to use his own word. But all through 
 his letters this same note of admiration and wonder 
 runs — that he has been taken from among the pots 
 and his wings covered with silver and gold. Truly, 
 in his case the most seraphic saintliness was not 
 forfeited, and we who read his books may well bless 
 God it was so. 
 
 And then, experimentally also, what extremes 
 met in our author ! Pascal in Paris and Rutherford 
 in Anwoth and St. Andrews wei'e at the very 
 opposite poles ecclesiastically from one another. 
 I do not like to think what Rutherford would 
 have said of Pascal, but I cannot embody what 
 I have to say of Rutherford's experimental extremes 
 better than just by this passage taken from the 
 Thoughts : ' The Christian religion teaches the 
 righteous man that it lifts him even to a participa- 
 tion in the divine nature ; but that, in this exalted 
 state, he still bears within him the fountain of all 
 corruption, which renders him during his whole life 
 subject to error and misery, to sin and death, while at 
 the same time it proclaims to the most wicked that 
 they can still receive the gi'ace of their Redeemer.' 
 And again, ' Did we not know ourselves full of pride, 
 ambition, lust, weakness, miseiy and injustice, we 
 
16 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 were indeed blind. . . . What then can we feel but 
 a great esteem for a religion that is so well acquainted 
 with the defects of man, and a great desire for the 
 truth of a religion that promises remedies so precious.' 
 And yet again, what others thought of him, and 
 how they treated him, compared with what he 
 knew himself to be, caused Rutherford many a 
 bitter reflection. Every letter he got consulting 
 him and appealing to him as if he had been God's 
 living oracle made him lie down in the very dust 
 with shame and self-abhorrence. Writing on one 
 occasion to Robert Blair he told him that his letter 
 consulting him about some matter of Christian ex- 
 perience had been like a blow in the face to him ; 
 it affects me much, said Rutherford, that a man 
 like you should have any such opinion of me. And, 
 apologising for his delay in replying to a letter 
 of Lady Boyd's, he says that he is put out of all 
 love of writing letters because his correspondents 
 think things about him that he himself knows are 
 not true. * My white side comes out on paper — 
 but at home there is much black work. All the 
 challenges that come to me are true.' There was 
 no man then alive on the earth so much looked up 
 to and consulted in the deepest matters of the soul, in 
 the secrets of the Lord Avith the soul, as Rutherford 
 was, and his letters bear evidence on every page that 
 there was no man who had a more loathsome and a 
 more hateful experience of his own heart, not even 
 Taylor, not even Owen, not even Bunyan, not even 
 Baxter. What a day of extremest men that was, 
 and what an inheritance we extreme men have had 
 left us, in their inward, extreme, and heavenly books! 
 
SOME OF HIS EXTREMES 17 
 
 Once more, hear liim on the tides of feeling 
 that continually rose and fell within his heart. 
 Writing from vVberdeen to Lady Boyd, he says : 
 ' I have not now, of a long time, found such high 
 springtides as formerly. The sea is out, and I can- 
 not buy a wind and cause it to flow again ; only I 
 wait on the shore till the Lord sends a full sea, . . . 
 But even to dream of Him is sweet,' And then, just 
 over the leaf, to Marion M'Naught : ' I am well : 
 honour to God, , . , He hath bi'oken in upon a 
 poor prisonei-'s soul like the swelling of Jordan. I 
 am bank and brim full : a great high springtide 
 of the consolations of Christ hath overwhelmed 
 me.' . . . But sweet as it is to read his rapturous 
 expressions when the tide is full, I feel it far more 
 helpful to hear how he still looks and waits for the 
 return of the tide when the tide is low, and Avhen 
 the shore is full, as all left shores are apt to be, of 
 weeds and mire, and all corrupt and unclean things. 
 Rutherford is never more helpful to his corre- 
 spondents than when they consult him about their 
 ebb tides, and find that he himself either has been, 
 or still is, in the same experience. 
 
 But why do we disinter such texts as this out of 
 such an author as Samuel Rutherford .'' Why do we 
 tell to all the world that such an eminent saint was 
 full of such sad extremes ? Well, we surely do so 
 out of obedience to the divine command to comfort 
 God's people ; for, next to their having no such 
 extremes in themselves, their next best comfort is 
 to be told that great and eminent saints of God 
 have had the very same besetting sins and staggering 
 extremes as they still have. If the like of Samuel 
 
 B 
 
18 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Rutherford was vexed and weakened with such 
 intellectual contradictions and spiritual extremes in 
 his mind, in his heart and in his histoiy, then may 
 we not hope that some such saintliness, if not some 
 such service as his, may be permitted to us also ? 
 
MARION M'NAUGHT 19 
 
 III 
 MARION M'NAUGHT 
 
 ' O woman beloved of God. ' — Rutherford. 
 
 I HE world knows nothing of its greatest 
 men/ says Sir Henry Taylor in his 
 Philip Fa7i Arlevelde ; and it knows 
 much less of its greatest women. I 
 have not found Marion M 'Naught's 
 name once mentioned outside of Samuel Rutherford's 
 Letters. But she holds a great place — indeed, 
 the foremost place — in that noble book, to be 
 written in which is almost as good as to be written 
 in heaven. 
 
 Rutherford's first letter to Marion M'Naught was 
 written from the manse of Anwoth on the 6th of 
 June 1627, and out of a close and life-long corre- 
 spondence we are happy in having had preserved 
 to us some forty-five of Rutherford's letters to his 
 first correspondent. But, most unfortunately, we 
 have none of her letters back again to Anwoth or 
 Aberdeen or London or St. Andrews. It is much 
 to be wished we had, for Marion M'Naught was a 
 woman greatly gifted in mind, as well as of quite 
 exceptional experience even for that day of excep- 
 tional experiences in the divine life. But we can 
 almost construct her letters to Rutherford for 
 
20 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ourselves, so pointedly and so elaborately and so 
 affectionately does Rutherford reply to them. 
 
 Marion M'Naught is already a married woman, 
 and the mother of three well-grown children, when 
 we make her acquaintance in Rutherford's Letters. 
 She had sprung of an ancient and honourable house 
 in the south of Scotland, and she was now the wife 
 of a well-known man in that day, William Fullarton, 
 the Provost of Kirkcudbright. It is interesting to 
 know that Marion M'^Naught was closely connected 
 with Lady Kenmvu'e, another of Rutherford's chief 
 correspondents. Lord Kenmiire was her mother's 
 brother. Kenmure had lived a profligate and 
 popularity-hunting life till he was laid down on his 
 death-bed, when he underwent one of the most 
 remarkable conversions anywhere to be read of- — a 
 conversion that, as it would appear, his niece Marion 
 M'Naught had no little to do with. As long as Ken- 
 mure was young and well, as long as he was haunting 
 the purlieus of the Court, and selling his church 
 and his soul for a smile from the King, the Provost 
 of Kirkcudbright and his saintly wife were despised 
 and forgotten ; but when he was suddenly brought 
 face to face with death and judgment, when his 
 ribbons and his titles were now like the coals of hell 
 in his conscience, nothing would satisfy him but that 
 his niece must leave her husband and her children 
 and take up her abode in Kenmure Castle. The Last 
 and Heavenli/ Speeches of' Lord Kenmure was a classic 
 memoir of those days, and in that little book Ave 
 read of his niece's constant attendance at his bedside, 
 as good a nurse for his soul as she was for his body. 
 
 Samuel Rutherford's favourite correspondent was, 
 
MARION M'NAUGHT 21 
 
 to begin with, a woman of quite remarkable powers 
 of mind. We gather that impression powerfully as 
 we read deeper and deeper into the remarkable 
 series of letters that Rutherford addressed to her. 
 To no one does he go into deeper matters both of 
 Church and State, both of doctrinal and personal 
 religion than to her, and the impression of mental 
 power as well as of personal worth she made on 
 Rutherford, she must have made on many of the 
 ablest and best men of that da}'. Robert Blair, for 
 instance, tells us that when he was on his way home 
 from London to Ireland he visited Scotland chiefly 
 that he might see Rutherford at Anwoth and Marion 
 M'Naught at Kirkcudbright, and when lie came to 
 Kirkcudbright he found Rutherford also there. And 
 when Rutherford was in exile in Aberdeen, and in 
 deep anxiety about his people at Anwoth, he wrote 
 beseeching Marion M'Naught to go to Anwoth and 
 give his people her counsel about their congregational 
 and personal afffiirs. But, above all, it is from the 
 depth and the power of Rutherford's letters to her- 
 self on the inward life that we best gather the depth 
 and the power of this remarkable woman's mind. 
 
 There is no other subject of thought that gives 
 such scope for the greatest gifts of the human mind 
 as does the life of God in the soul. There is no 
 book in all the world that demands such a com- 
 bination of mental gifts and spiritual graces to 
 understand it aright as the Bible. The history and 
 the biography of the Bible, the experimental parts 
 of the Bible, the doctrines of grace deduced by the 
 apostles out of the history and the experience 
 recorded in the Bible, and then the pei'soual, the 
 
22 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 most inward and most spiritual bearing of all that, — 
 what occupation can be presented to the mind of 
 man or woman to compare with that? True religion, 
 really true religion, gives unequalled and ever- 
 increasing scope for the best gifts of mind and for 
 the best graces of heart and character. ' In truth, 
 religious obedience is a very intricate problem, and 
 the more so the farther we proceed in it.' And he 
 has poor eyes and a poor heai-t for true religion, and 
 for its best fruits both in the mind and the heart 
 and the character, who does not see those fruits 
 increasing letter by letter as Rutherford writes to 
 Marion M'Naught. 
 
 Her public spirit also made Marion M'Naught to 
 be held in high honour. Her husband was a public 
 man, and his intelligent fidelity to truth and justice 
 in that day made his name far more public than ever 
 he wished it to be. And in all his services and 
 sufferings for the truth he had a splendid wife in 
 Marion M 'Naught. ' Remember me to your husband,' 
 Ruthei'ford writes; 'tell him that Christ is worthy 
 to be suffered for not only to blows but to blood. 
 He will find that innocence and uprightness will 
 hold his feet firm and make him happy when jouking 
 will not do it.' And again, ' Encourage your husband 
 and tell him that truth will yet keep the crown of 
 the causey in Scotland.' And when the petition is 
 being got up for his being permitted to return to 
 Anwoth, Ruthei-ford asks his correspondent to pro- 
 cure that three or four hundred noblemen, gentle- 
 men, countrymen and citizens shall be got to 
 subscribe it — a tolling tribute, surely, to her public 
 spirit and her great influence. 
 
MARION M'NAUGHT 23 
 
 But an independent mind and a public spirit like 
 hers could not exist in those days, or in any day this 
 world has yet seen, without raising up many and 
 bitter enemies. And both she and her husband 
 suffered heavily, both in name and in estate, from the 
 malice and the hatred that their fearless devotion to 
 truth and justice stirred up. So much so, that some 
 of the finest passages in Rutherford's early letters to 
 her are those in which he counsels her and her 
 husband to patience, and meekness, and forgiveness 
 of injuries. ' Keep God's covenant in all your trials. 
 Hold you by His blessed word, and sin not; flee 
 anger, wrath, gi-udging, en\ying, fretting. Forgive 
 an hundred pence to your fellow-servant, for your 
 Lord has forgiven you ten thousand talents.' And 
 again : ' Be patient ; Christ went to heaven with 
 many a wrong. His visage was more marred than 
 that of any of the sons of men. He Avas wronged 
 and received no reparation, but referred all to that 
 day when all wrongs shall be righted.' And again : 
 'You live not upon men's opinion. Happy are you 
 if, when the world trampleth upon you in your 
 credit and good name, you are yet the King's gold 
 and stamped with His image. Pi-ay for the spirit 
 of love, for love beareth all things, believeth all 
 things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 
 Forgive, therefore, your fellow-servant his one 
 talent. Always remember what has been forgiven 
 you.' And on every page of the Kirkcudbright 
 correspondence Ave see that, amid all these tempta- 
 tions and trials, no man had a better wife than the 
 provost, and no children a better mother than 
 Grizel and her two brothers. Her talents sought 
 
24 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 no nobler sphere for tlieir exercise and increase 
 than her own fireside ; and her pubhc spirit was 
 better seen in her life at home than anywhere out 
 of doors. Hers was truly a public spirit, and like 
 a spirit it inspired and animated both her own and 
 her husband's life with interest in and with care 
 for the best good, both of the Church and the 
 State. Her public spirit Avas not incompatible 
 with great personal modesty and humility, and great 
 attention to her domestic duties, all rooted in a 
 life hid with Christ in God. 
 
 And then, all this — her birth, her station, her 
 talents, and her public spirit — could not fail to give 
 her a great influence for good. In a single line of 
 Rutherford's on this subject, we see her whole life- 
 time : ' You are engaged so in God's w^ork in Kirk- 
 cudbright that if you remove out of that town all 
 will be midone.' What a tribute is that to the 
 provost's wife ! And again, far on in the Letters 
 he writes to Grizel Fullarton : ' Your dear mother, 
 now blessed and perfected with glory, kept life in 
 that place, and my desire is that you succeed her in 
 that way.' What a pride to have such a mother; 
 and what a tradition for a daughter to take up ! 
 So have we all known in country towns and villages 
 one man or one woman who kept life in the place. 
 Out of the memories of my own boyhood there rises 
 up, here a minister and there a farmer, here a cloth- 
 merchant and there a handloom weaver, here a 
 blacksmith's wife and there a working housekeeper, 
 who kept life in the whole place. It is not station 
 that does it, nor talent, though both station and talent 
 greatly help ; it is character, it is true and genuine 
 
MARION M'NAUGHT 25 
 
 godliness. True and genuine godliness — especially 
 when it is purged of pride, and harsh judgment, 
 and too much talk, and is adorned with humility 
 and meekness, and all the other fruits of holy 
 love — true and pure godliness in a most obscm*e 
 man or woman will find its way to a thousand con- 
 sciences, and will impress and overawe a Avhole 
 town, as Marion M 'Naught's rare godliness impressed 
 and overawed all Kirkcudbi*ight. Just as, on the 
 other hand, the ignorance, the censoriousness, the 
 bitterness, the intolerance, that too often accom- 
 pany what would otherwise be true godliness, work 
 as wide-spread mischief as true godliness works 
 good. ' One little deed done for God's sake, and 
 against our natural inclination, though in itself only 
 of a conceding or passive character, to brook an 
 insult, to face a danger, or to resign an advantage, 
 has in it a poAver outbalancing all the dust and chaff 
 of mere profession — the profession whether of en- 
 lightened benevolence or candour, or, on the other 
 hand, of high religious faith and fervent zeal ; ' or, 
 as Rutherford could write to Marion M'Naught's 
 daughter : ' There is a wide and deep difference 
 between a name of godliness and the power of godli- 
 ness.' Even the schoolboys of Kirkcudbright could 
 quite well distinguish the name from the reality ; 
 and long after they were Christian men they would 
 tell with reverence and with love when, and from 
 whom, they took their first and never-to-be-forgotten 
 impressions. It was, they would say to their 
 children, from that woman of such rare godliness as 
 well as public spirit, Marion M'Naught. 
 
 It was all this, and nothing other and nothing 
 
26 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 less than all this, that made Marion M'Naught 
 Rutherfoi'd's favourite correspondent. Her mind 
 and her heart together early and often drew her 
 across the country to Rutherford's preaching. 
 Marion M'Naught had a good minister of her own 
 at home ; but Rutherford was Rutherford, and he 
 made Anwoth Anwoth. I think I can understand 
 something of her delight on Communion fore- 
 noons, when his text was Christ Dying, in John 
 xii. 32, or the Syro-Phcenician woman, in Matt. 
 XV. 28. And then the feasts on the fast-days at Kirk- 
 cudbright, over the cloud of witnesses, in Heb. xii. 1, 
 and all tears wiped away, in Rev. xxi. 4, and the 
 marriage of the Lamb, in xix. 7. And then, on the 
 other hand, Rutherford is not surely to be blamed 
 for loving such a hearer. His Master loved a Mary 
 also of His day, for that also among other good 
 reasons. If a good hearer likes a good preacher, 
 why should a good preacher not like a good hearer ? 
 Take a holiday, and give us another day soon of 
 such and such a preacher, our people sometimes 
 say to us. And why should that preacher not also 
 say to us. Give me a day soon again of your good 
 hearers ? As a matter of ftict, our good preaching 
 friends do say that to us. And why not .'' Fine 
 hearers, deep hearers, thoroughly well-prepared 
 hearers, hearers of genius are almost as scarce as 
 fine, deep, thoroughly well-prepared preachers and 
 preachers of genius. And who shall blame Ruther- 
 ford for liking to see Marion M'Naught coming into 
 the cliurcli on a Sabbath morning as well as she 
 liked to see him coming into the pulpit ? ' I go to 
 Anwoth so often,' she said, ' because, though other 
 
MARION M'NAUGHT 27 
 
 ministers show me the majesty of God and the 
 plague of my own heart, Mr. Samuel does both 
 these things, but he also shows me, as no other 
 minister ever does, the loveliness of Christ.' It is as 
 great a mistake to think that all our Christian people 
 are able to take in a sermon on the loveliness of 
 Christ as it is that all ordained men can preach such 
 a sermon. There are diversities of gifts among 
 hearers as well as among preachers ; and when the 
 gifts of the pulpit meet the corresponding graces in 
 the pew, you need not wonder that they recognise 
 and delight in one another. Jesus Christ was 
 Rutherford's favourite subject in the pulpit, and 
 thus it was that he was Marion M'^Naught's favourite 
 preacher, as she, again, was his favourite hearer in 
 the chui'ch and his favourite correspondent in 
 the Letters. To how many in this house to-night 
 could a preacher say that he wished them all to be 
 ' over head and ears in love to Christ ' .^ What 
 preacher could say a thing like that in truth and 
 soberness.'' And how many could hear it.'' Only a 
 preacher of the holy passion of Rutherford, and only 
 a hearer of the intellect and heart and rare experi- 
 ence of Marion M 'Naught. ' O the fair face of the 
 man Jesus Christ ! ' he cries out. And again : ' O 
 time, time, why dost thou move so slowly ! Come 
 hither, O love of Christ ! What astonishment will 
 be mine when I first see that fairest and most lovely 
 face ! It would be heaven to me just to look through 
 a hole of heaven's door to see Christ's countenance ! ' 
 No Avondcr that the congregations were few, and 
 the correspondents who could make anything of a 
 man of such a ' fanatic humour ' as that 1 But, then, 
 
28 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 no wonder, on the other hand, that, when two 
 fanatics so full of that humour as Samuel Ruther- 
 ford and Marion M'Naught met, they corresponded 
 ever after with one another in their own enrap- 
 tured language night and day. 
 
LADY KENMUUE 
 
 29 
 
 IV 
 
 LADY KENMURE 
 
 ' Build your nest, Madam, upon no tree here, for God hath sold 
 this whole forest to death." — Rutherford. 
 
 ADY KENMURE was one of the 
 Campbells of Argyll^ a family dis- 
 tinguished for the depth of their 
 piety, their public spirit, and their 
 love for the Presbyterian polity ; and 
 Lady Jane was one of the most richly-gifted mem- 
 bers of that richly-gifted house. But, with all that. 
 Lady Jane Campbell had her own crosses to carry. 
 She had the sore cross of bad health to carry all her 
 days. Then she had the sad misfortune to make a 
 very bad maiTiage in the morning of her days ; and, 
 partly as the result of all that, and partly because of 
 her peculiar mental constitution, her whole life was 
 drenched with a deep melancholy. But, as we are 
 told in John Howie and elsewhere, all these evils 
 and misfortunes were made to work together for 
 good to her through the special grace of God, and 
 through the wise and wistful cave of her life-long 
 friend and minister and correspondent, Samuel 
 Rutherford. Lady Jane Campbell had very re- 
 markable gifts of mind. We would have expected 
 that from her distinguished pedigree ; and we have 
 abundant proof of that in Rutherford's sheaf of 
 
30 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 letters to her. His dedication of that most re- 
 markable piece, The Trial and Trimnph of Faith, is 
 sufficient of itself to show how highly Rutherford 
 esteemed Lady Kenmure, both as to her head and 
 her heart. Till our theological students have been 
 led to study The Trial and Triumph of Faith : Christ 
 F)ying and Drawing Sinners to Himself — which, to my 
 mind, is by far the best of Rutherford's works — The 
 Covenant of Grace and The Influences of Grace, they 
 will have no conception of the intellectual rank of 
 Samuel Rutherford himself, or of the intelligence 
 and the attainments of his hearers and readers and 
 correspondents. Thomas Goodwin was always telling 
 the theological students of Oxford in those days to 
 thicken their too thin homilies with more doctrine : 
 Rutherford's vei*y thimaest books are almost too 
 thick, both with theology and with thought. 
 
 How ever a woman like Jane Campbell came to 
 marry a man like John Gordon will remain a 
 mystery. It was not that he was a man of no mind ; 
 he was a man of no worth or interest of any kind. 
 He was a rake and a lick-spittle, the very last man 
 in Scotland for Jane Campbell to throw herself away 
 upon. And she was too clever and too good a 
 woman not to make a speedy and a heart-breaking 
 discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. 
 Poor Jane Campbell soon wakened up to the dis- 
 covery that she had exchanged the name and the 
 family of a brave and noble house for the name and 
 the house of a poltroon. No wonder that Rutherford's 
 letters to her are so often headed : 'To Lady Kenmure, 
 under illness and depression of mind.' Could you 
 have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with 
 
LADY KENMURE 31 
 
 John Gordon for a husband ? Think of having to 
 nurse your humbug of a husband through a shammed 
 ilkiess. Think of having to take a hand in sending 
 in a sham doctor's certificate because your husband 
 was too much of a time-server to go to Edinburgh to 
 give his vote for a persecuted church. Think of 
 having to wear the title and decoration your husband 
 had purchased for you at the cost of his truth and 
 honour and manhood. Lady Kenmure needed 
 Samuel Rutherford's veiy best letters to help to 
 keep her in bare life all the time the county dames 
 were green with envy at the dear-bought honours. 
 And Kenmure himself had to be brought to his 
 death-bed before he became a husband worthy of 
 his wife. We still read in his Last Speeches how God 
 made Lord Gordon's sins to find him out, and with 
 what firainess and with what tenderness Rutherford 
 handled the soul of the dying man till all his 
 cowardice, title-hunting, and truth-betraying life 
 came back to his death-bed with a sharper sting in 
 them than even his grossest sins. Whoredom and 
 wine after all are but the lusts of a man, whereas 
 time-serving and truth-selling are the lusts of a 
 devil. ' Dig deeper,' said Rutherford to the dying 
 courtier, and Kenmure did dig deeper, till he came 
 down to the seals and the titles and the ribbons for 
 which he had sold his soul. But he that confesses 
 and forsakes his sins even at the eleventh hour shall 
 always find mercy, and so it was with Lord Kenmure. 
 
 ' Between the stirrup and the ground 
 Mercy I sought and mercy found.' 
 
 We do not grudge Viscount Kenmure all the grace 
 
32 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 he got from God ; we shall need as much grace and 
 more ourselves ; but we do somewhat grudge such a 
 man a place of honour among the Scots worthies. 
 We are tempted to throw down the book and to 
 demand what right John Gordon has to stand beside 
 such men as Patrick Hamilton, and John Knox, and 
 John Wishart, and Archibald Campbell, and Hugh 
 M'^Kail, and Richard Cameron, and Alexander 
 Shields ? But Lochgoin answers us that God some- 
 times accepts the late will for the whole timeous 
 deed, and the bravery and loyalty of the wife for the 
 meanness and poltroonery of the husband. ' Have 
 you a present sense of God's love .'' ' I have, I have,' 
 said the dying Viscount. As Rutherford continued 
 in prayer, Kenmure was observed to smile and look 
 upwards. About sunset Lord Kenmure died, at the 
 same instant that Rutherford said Amen to his 
 prayer. The Last and Heavenly Speeches is a rare 
 pamphlet that will Avell repay its price to him who 
 will seek it out and read it. 
 
 This was the correspondent, then, to whom Samuel 
 Rutherford wrote such counsels and encouragements 
 as these : ' Therefore, madam, herein have com- 
 fort, that He who seeth perfectly through all your 
 evils, and who knoweth the frame and constitution 
 of your nature, and what is most healthful for your 
 soul, holdeth every cup of affliction to your head 
 with his own gracious hand. Never believe that 
 your tender-hearted Saviour will mix your cup with 
 one drachm-weight of poison. Drink, then, with the 
 patience of the saints : wrestle, fight, go forward, 
 watch, fear, believe, pray, and then you have all the 
 infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ 
 
LADY KENMURE S3 
 
 within you ' {Lcilcr iii.). On the death of her infant 
 daughter^ Rutherford writes to the elect lady : ' She 
 is only sent on before, like unto a star, which, going 
 out of our siglit, doth not die and vanish, but still 
 shineth in another hemisphere. What she wanted 
 of time she hath gotten of eternity, and you have 
 now some plenishing up in heaven. Build your nest 
 upon no tree here, for God hath sold the whole forest 
 to death ' {Letter iv.). ' 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 
 to the water 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 " ' {Letter xi.). 'Madam, tire not, Aveaiy 
 not ; for I dare find you the Son of God caution that 
 when you are got up thither and have cast your eyes 
 to view the golden city and the fair and never- 
 withering Tree of Life that beareth tAvelve mamier of 
 fruits every month, you shall then say, " Four-and- 
 twenty hours' abode in this place is worth threescore 
 and ten years' sorrowupon earth "'(Lc/Zcrxix.). 'Your 
 ladyship goeth on laughing and putting on a good 
 countenance before the world, and yet you carry 
 heaviness about with you. You do well, madam, 
 not to make them Avitnesses of your grief who cannot 
 be curers of it ' {Letter xx.). ' Those who can take the 
 crabbed tree of the cross handsomely upon their 
 backs and fasten it on cannily shall find it such a 
 burden as its wings are to a bird or its sails to a ship ' 
 {Letter lxix.). ' I thought it had been an easy thing 
 c 
 
34 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 to be a Christian^ and that to seek God had been at 
 the next door ; but, oh, the windings, the turnings, 
 tlie ups and downs He hath led me through ! ' (Letter 
 CIV.) ' I may be a book-man and yet be an idiot and 
 a stark fool in Christ's way ! The Bible beguiled the 
 Pharisees, and so may I be misled' (Letter c\i.). '\ 
 find you complaining of yourself, and it becometh a 
 sinner so to do. I am not against you in that. The 
 more sense the more life. The more sense of sin the 
 less sin ' (Letter cvi.). ' Seeing my sins and the sins of 
 my youth deserved strokes, how am I obliged to my 
 Lord who hath given me a waled and chosen cross ! 
 Since I must have chains, He would put golden 
 chains on me, watered over with many consolations. 
 Seeing I must have sorrow (for I have sinned, O 
 Preserver of men !), He hath waled out for me joyful 
 sorrow — honest, spiritual, glorious sorrow' (Letter 
 ccvi.). There are hundreds of passages as good as 
 these scattered up and down the forty-seven letters 
 we have had presei'ved to us out of the large and in- 
 timate correspondence that j)assed between Samuel 
 Rutherford and Lady Kenmiu-e. 
 
LADY CARDONESS 35 
 
 V 
 LADY CARDONESS 
 
 ' Think it not easy.' — Rutherford. 
 
 HAT a lasting interest Samuel Ruther- 
 ford's pastoral pen has given to the 
 hoary old castle of Cardoness ! Those 
 nine so heart-winning letters that 
 Rutherford wrote from Aberdeen to 
 Cardoness Castle will still keep the memory of that 
 old tower green long after its last stone has crumbled 
 into dust. Readers of Rutherford's letters will 
 long visit Cardoness Castle, and will musingly recall 
 old John Gordon and Lady Cardoness, his wife, who 
 both worked out each their own salvation in that 
 old fortress, and found it a task far from easy. For 
 nine faithful years Rutherford had been the anxious 
 pastor of Cardoness Castle, and then, after he was 
 banished from his pulpit and his parish, he only 
 ministered to the Castle the more powerfully and 
 prevailingly with his pen. After reading the 
 Cardoness coiTespondence, we do not wonder to 
 find the stout old chieftain heading the hard-fought 
 battles which the people of Anwoth made both 
 against Edinburgh and St. Andrews, when those 
 cities and colleges attempted to take away their 
 minister. 
 
36 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Rough old Cardouess had a warm place in his 
 heart for Samuel Rutherford. The tough old pagan 
 did not know how much he loved the little fair man 
 with the high-set voice and the unearthly smile till 
 he had lost him ; and if force of arms could have 
 kept Rutherford in Anwoth, Cardoness would soon 
 have buckled on his sword. He was ashamed to 
 be seen reading the letters that came to the Castle 
 from Aberdeen ; he denied having read them even 
 after he had them all by heart. The wild old laird 
 was nearer the Kingdom of Heaven than any one 
 knew ; even his Christian lady did not know all 
 that Rutherford knew, and it was a frank sentence 
 of Rutherford's in an Aberdeen letter that took 
 life-long hold of the old laird, and did more for 
 his conversion and all that followed it than all 
 Rutherford's sermons and all his other letters. ' I 
 find true religion to be a hard task ; I find heaven 
 hard to be won/ wrote Rutherford to the old man ; 
 and that did more for his hard and late salvation 
 than all the sermons he had ever heard. ' A hard 
 task, a hard task ! ' the serving-men and the serving- 
 women often overheard their old master muttering, 
 as he alighted from the hunt and as he came home 
 from his monthly visit to Edinburgh. ' A hard 
 task ! ' he was often heard muttering, but no one to 
 the day of his death ever knew all that his muttering 
 meant. 
 
 'Read over your past life often,' Rutherford 
 wrote to the old man. And Cardoness found that 
 to be one of the hardest tasks he had ever tried. 
 He had not forgotten his past life ; there were 
 things that came tip out of his past continually 
 
LADY CARDONESS 37 
 
 that compelled him to remember it. But what 
 Rutherford meant was that his old parishioner 
 should wilUngly, deliberately and repeatedly open 
 the stained and torn leaves of his past life and read 
 it all over in tlie light of his old age, approaching 
 death, and late-awakened conscience. Rutherford 
 wished Cardoness to sit down as Matthew Henry 
 says the captives sat down by the rivers of Babylon, 
 and weep ' deliberate tears.' There were pages in 
 his past life that it was the veiy pains of hell to old 
 Cardoness to read; but he performed the hard 
 task, and thus was brought much nearer salvation 
 than even his old pastor knew. ' It will take a long 
 lance to go to the bottom of your heart, my friend,' 
 wrote Rutherford, faithfully, and, at the same time, 
 most respectfully, to the old man. ' Human nature 
 is lofty and head-strong in you, and it will cost you 
 far more suffering to be mortified and sanctified 
 than it costs the ordinaiy run of men.' And, 
 instead of that plain speech offending or angering 
 the old laird, it had the very opposite effect; it 
 softened him, and humbled him, and encouraged 
 him, and gave him new strength for the hard task 
 on which he was day and night employed. 
 
 Cardoness was a small property, heavily bonded, 
 and some of the leaves that were hardest to read 
 in the diary of Gordon's early manhood told the 
 bitter history of some added bonds. Sin would 
 need to be sweet, for it is very dear. And then 
 had come years of rack-renting of his tenants ; the 
 virtuous tenantry had to pay dearly for the vices of 
 their lord. Rutherford had not been silent to old 
 Cardoness about this matter in conversation, and he 
 
38 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 was not silent in his letters. 'You are now upon 
 the very borders of the other life. I told you, 
 when I Avas with j-ou, the whole counsel of God in 
 this matter, and I tell it you again. Awake to 
 righteousness. Do not lay the burden of your 
 house on other people ; do not compel honest 
 people to pay your old debts. Commit to memory 
 I Sam. xii. 3, and ride out among your tenantry, my 
 dear people, repeating, as you pass their stables and 
 their cattle-stalls, " Behold, I am old and grey- 
 headed ; behold, here I am : whose ox have I 
 taken ? Whose ass have I taken .'' Whom have I 
 defrauded ? Whom have I oppressed .'' " I charge 
 you to write to me here at once, and be plain with 
 me, and tell me whether your salvation is sure. I 
 hope for the best ; but I know that your reckonings 
 with the righteous Judge are both many and deep.' 
 That was a hard task to set to a t3'rannical old land- 
 lord who had been used to call no man master, or God 
 either, to take such commands from a poor banished 
 minister ! But Cardoness did it. He mastered his 
 rising pride and resentment and did it ; and though 
 he found it a hard task to go through with his 
 reductions at next rent-day, yet he did it. Such 
 boldness in the Day of Judgment will a good con- 
 science give a man, as when old Cardoness actually 
 stood up before the parishioners in the kirk of 
 Anwoth and read to them, after the elders had 
 conducted the exercises, a letter he had received 
 last week from their silenced minister. It is one 
 of Rutherford's longest and most passionate lettei's. 
 Take a sentence or two out of it : ' My soul longeth 
 exceedingly to hear whether there be any work of 
 
LADY CARDONESS 39 
 
 Christ in the parish that will bide the trial of fire 
 and water. I think of my people in my sleep. 
 You know how that, out of love to your souls, and 
 out of the desire I had to make an honest account 
 of you, I often testified my dislike of your ways, 
 both in private and in public. Examine yourselves. 
 I never knew so well what sin is as since I came to 
 Aberdeen, though I was preaching about it every 
 day to you. It would be life to me if you would 
 read this letter to my people, and if they would 
 profit by it. And now I write to thee, whoever 
 thou art, O poor broken-hearted believer of the 
 free salvation. Let Christ's atoning blood be on 
 thy guilty soul. Christ has His heaven ready for 
 thee, and He will make good His word before long. 
 The blessing of a poor prisoner be upon you.' 
 
 Salvation was all this time proving itself to be a hard 
 and ever harder task to John Gordon, with his proud 
 neck, with his past life to read, with his debts and 
 bonds and increasing expenditure, and with old age 
 heavy upon him and death at his door. And Lady 
 Cardoness was not finding her salvation to be easy 
 either in all these untoward circumstances. ' Think 
 it not easy,' wrote Rutherford to her. And to make 
 her salvation sure, and to lead her to help her 
 burdened husband with his hard task, Rutherford 
 made bold to touch, though always tenderly and 
 scripturally, upon the family cross. Their burdened 
 and crowded estate lay between the whole Cardoness 
 family and their salvation. Rutherford had seen 
 that from the first day he arrived in Anwoth, and 
 Cardoness and its difficulties lay heavy upon his 
 heart in his prison in Aberdeen. And he could not 
 
40 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 write consolations and comforts and promises to 
 Lady Cardoncss till he had told her the truth again 
 as he had told her husband. ' The kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness is the one thing needful for 
 you and for Cardoness and for your children/ wrote 
 Rutherford. ' Houses, lands, credit, honour may 
 all be lost if heaven is won. See that Cardoness 
 and you buy the field where the pearl is. Sell all 
 and buy that field. I beseech you to make con- 
 science of yoiu* ways. Deal kindly with your 
 tenants. I have ■written my mind at length to your 
 husband, and my counsel to you is that, when his 
 passion overcometh him, a soft answer will turn 
 away wrath. God casteth your husband often in 
 my mind ; I cannot forget him.' 
 
 Wliat a power for good is in Samuel Rutherford's 
 pen ! At a few touches it carries us across Scotland 
 to the mouth of the Fleet, and back two hundred 
 and fifty years, and smnmons up Cardoness Castle, 
 and peoples the hoary old keep again with John 
 Gordon and his wife and chikh*en. We see the 
 castle ; we see the rack-rented farms lying around 
 the rock on which the castle stands; we see 
 Anwoth manse and pulpit empty and silenced ; and 
 then we see Rutherford dreaming about Cardoness 
 as he sleeps in his far-off prison. The stout old 
 laird rises before our eyes with more than his proper 
 share of human nature — a mass of sinful manhood, 
 strong in will, hot in temper, burdened with debt — 
 debt in Edinburgh, and a deeper and darker debt 
 elsewhere. The old lion lay, taken in a net of 
 trouble, and the more he struggled the more en- 
 tangled he became. And then her ladyship, a 
 
LADY CARDOXESS 11 
 
 religious woman ; yes, really a religious woman, 
 only, like so many religious women, more religious 
 than moral ; more emotional than practically help- 
 ful in everj'-day life. All who have only heard of 
 Samuel Rutherford and his letters will feel sure that 
 he was just the effusive minister, and that his letters 
 were just the soft stuff, to foster a piety that came 
 out in feminine moods and emotions rather than in 
 well-kept accounts and a well-managed kitchen and 
 nursery. But we who have read Rutherford know 
 better than that. Lady Cardoness is told, in kindest 
 and sweetest but most unmistakable language, that 
 she has to work out a not easy salvation in Cardoness 
 Castle, and that, if her husband fails in his hard 
 task, no small part of his blood will lie at her 
 door. 
 
 But as we stand and look at Cardoness Castle, 
 with its hard tasks for eternal life, a divine voice 
 says to ourselves. Work out your own salvation with 
 fear and trembling ; and at that voice the old keep 
 fades from our eyes, and our own house in modern 
 Edinburgh rises up before us. Here, too, are old 
 men with hard tasks between them and their salva- 
 tion — a past life to read, to repent of, to redress, to 
 reform, to weep deliberate and bitter tears over. 
 There are debts and many other disorders that 
 have to be put right ; there are those under us — 
 tenants and servants and poor relations — whose 
 cases have to be dealt with considerately, justly, 
 kindly, affectionately. There are things in those wc 
 love best — in a father, in a mother, in a husband, in 
 a wife — that we have to be patient and forbearing 
 with, and to command ourselves in the presence of 
 
42 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Sah'.ation was not easy in Cardoness Castle, with 
 such a master, and such a mistress, and such children, 
 and such tenants, and with such debts and straits of 
 all kinds ; and Cardoness Castle is repeated over 
 and over again in hundreds of Edinburgh houses 
 to-night. 
 
LADY CULKOSS 43 
 
 VI 
 LADY CULROSS 
 
 ' Grace groweth best in wintf r.' — Rutherford. 
 
 ELIZABETH MELVILLE was one of 
 
 the ladies of the Covenant. It was a 
 remarkable feature of a remarkable 
 ^^ time in Scotland that so many ladies 
 of birth, intellect and influence were 
 found on the side of the persecuted Covenanters. I 
 do not remember any other period in the history of 
 the Church of Christ, since the day when the women 
 of Galilee ministered of their substance to our Lord 
 Himself, in which noble women took such a noble 
 part as did Lady Culross, Lady Jane Campbell, the 
 Duchess of Hamilton, the Duchess of Athol, and other 
 such ladies in that eventful time. We had some- 
 thing not unlike it again in the ten years' conflict 
 that culminated in the Disruption ; and in the 
 social and religious movements of our own day, 
 women of rank and talent are not found wanting. 
 At the same time, I do not know where to find 
 such a cloud of witnesses for the faith of Christ from 
 among the eminent women of any one generation 
 as Scotland can show in her ladies of the Covenant. 
 Lady Culross's name will always be held in tender 
 honour in the innermost circles of our best Scottish 
 
44 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Christians, for the hand she had in that wonderful 
 outpouring of God's grace at the kirk of Shotts on 
 that Thanksgiving Monday in 1636. Under God, 
 that Covenanters' Pentecost was more due to Lady 
 Culross tlian to any other human being. True, John 
 Livingstone preached the Thanksgiving Sennon, 
 but it was through Lady Culross's influence that 
 he was got to preach it; and he preaclied it 
 after a night of prayer spent by Lady Culross 
 and her companions, such that we read of next 
 day's sermon and its success as a matter of 
 course. I cannot venture to tell a heterogeneous 
 audience the history of that night they spent at 
 Shotts with God. It is so unlike what Ave have ever 
 seen or heard of. There may be one or two of us 
 here who have spent whole nights in prayer at some 
 crisis in our life, going from one promise to another, 
 when, in the Psalmist's words, the sorrows of death 
 compassed us, and the pains of hell gat hold upon 
 us. And we, one or two of us, may have had 
 miracles from heaven forthwith performed upon us, 
 fit to match in a private way with the hand of God 
 on the kirk of Shotts. But even those of us who 
 have such secrets between us and God, we, I fear, 
 never spent a whole Communion night, never shut- 
 ting our eyes but to pray for a baptism of spiritual 
 blessing upon to-morrow's congregation. What 
 a mother in Israel was Lady Culross, with five 
 hundred children born of her travail in one day ! 
 
 I have not found any of Lady Culross's letters to 
 Samuel Rutherford, but John Livingstone's literary 
 executors have published some eight letters she 
 wrote to Livingstone, her close and lifelong friend. 
 
LADY CULROSS 45 
 
 And Lady Culross's first letter to John Livingstone 
 is, in every j)oint of view, a remarkable piece. It 
 has a strength, an irony, and a tenderness in it that 
 at once tell the reader that he is in the hands of 
 a very remarkable writer. But it is not Lady 
 Culross's literature that so much interests us and 
 holds us, it is her religion ; cUid it is its depth, its 
 intensity, and the way it grows in winter. After a 
 long and racy introduction, sometimes difficult to 
 decipher, from its Fife idioms and obsolete spelling, 
 she goes on thus : ' Did you get any heart to re- 
 member me and my bonds ? As for me, I never 
 found so great impediment Avithin. Still, it is the 
 Lord with whom we have to do, and He gives and 
 takes, casts down and raises up, kills and makes 
 alive as pleases His Majesty. . . . My task at home 
 is augmented and tripled, and yet I fear worse. Sin 
 in me and in mine is my greatest cross. I would, if 
 it were the Lord's will, choose affliction rather than 
 iniquity. — Yours in C, E. Melvil.' 
 
 It was now winter with John Livingstone. The 
 persecution had overtaken him, and this is how her 
 ladyship writes to him : — 
 
 ' My very worthy and dear brother : Courage, 
 dear brother : it is all in love, all works together for 
 the best. You must be hewn and hammered and 
 drest and prepared before you can be a Lemng-ston fit 
 for His building. And if He is minded to make you 
 meet to help others, you must look for another manner 
 of strokes than you have yet felt, . . . but when you 
 are laid low, and are vile in your own eyes, then He 
 will raise you up and refresh you with some blinks 
 of His favourable countenance, that you may be able 
 
46 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 to comfort others with those consolations where- 
 with you have been comforted of Him. . . . Since 
 God has put His work in your weak hands, look not 
 for long ease here : you must feel the full weight of 
 your calling : a weak man with a strong God. The 
 pain is but a moment, the pleasure is everlasting, . . . 
 cross upon cross : the end of one with me is but the 
 beginning of another : but guiltiness in me and in 
 mine is my greatest cross.' And after midnight 
 one Sabbath she writes again to Livingstone : ' You 
 cannot but say that the Lord was with you to-day ; 
 therefore, not only be content, but bless His name 
 who put His word in your heart and in your mouth, 
 and has overcome you with mercy when you 
 deserved nothing but wrath, and has not only 
 forgiven your many sins, but has saved you from 
 breaking out, as it may be better men have done ; 
 but He has covered you and restrained you ; has 
 loved you freely and has made His saints to love 
 you; who will guide you also with His counsel, and 
 afterwards receive you to His glory.' 
 
 It was from his silent prison in Aberdeen that 
 Samuel Ruthei-ford wrote to Lady Culross the letter 
 in which this sentence stands : ' I see that grace 
 groweth best in winter.' Rutherford had had but a 
 short and unsettled summer among the birds at 
 Anwoth. His wife and his two children had been 
 taken from him there, and now that which he loved 
 more than wife or child had been taken from him too 
 — his pulpit and pastoral Avork for Jesus Christ. He 
 felt his banishment all the more keenly that he was 
 the first of the evangelical ministers of Scotland to 
 be so silenced. He will have plenty of companions 
 in tribulation soon, if that will be any comfort to 
 
LADY CULROSS 47 
 
 him ; but, as it is, he confesses to Lady] Culross that 
 it was a peculiar pang to him to be ' the first in the 
 kingdom put to utter silence.' The bitterness of 
 banishment has been sung in immortal strains by 
 Dante, whose grace under banishment also grew to 
 a fruitfulness we still partake of to this day : — 
 
 ' Thou shall leave each thing 
 Beloved most dearly : this is the first shaft 
 Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove 
 How salt the savour is of other's bread, 
 How hard the passage to descend and climb 
 By other's stairs. But that shall gall thee most 
 Will be the worthless and vile company 
 With whom thou must be thrown into these straits.' 
 
 But all this, to use a figure familiar among the 
 Puritans of that day, only made Rutherford's true 
 life return, like sap in winter, into its proper root, 
 till we read in his later Aberdeen letters a rapture 
 and a richness that liis remain-at-home correspon- 
 dents are fain to tone down. 
 
 Not only does true grace grow best in winter, 
 but winter is the best season for planting grace. 
 ' I was to be married, and she died,' was a young 
 man's explanation to me the other day for projiosing 
 to sit down at the Lord's Table. The winter cold 
 that carried off his future wife saw planted in his 
 ploughed-up heart the seeds of divine grace ; and, 
 no doubt, all down the coming winters, with such 
 short interludes of summers as may be before him 
 in this cold climate, the grace that was planted in 
 winter will grow. It is not a speculation, it is a 
 personal experience that hundreds here can testify 
 to, that the Bible, the Sabbath, the Supper, all 
 became so many means of grace to them after some 
 great affliction greatly sanctified. The death of a 
 
48 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 bride, the death of a wife, the death of a child ; some 
 blow from bride or wife or child worse than death ; a 
 lost hope quenched for ever — these, and things like 
 these, are needful, as it would seem, to be suffered 
 by most men before they will wholly open their 
 hearts to the grace of God. 'Before I was afflicted 
 I went astray : but now have I kept Thy word.' 
 
 At the same time, good and necessary as all such 
 wintry experiences are, their good results on us do 
 not last for ever. In too many cases they do not 
 last long. It is rather a start in grace we take 
 at such seasons than a steady and deep growth in 
 it. The groAvth in grace that comes to us in 
 connection with some sore affliction is apt to be 
 violent and spasmodic ; it comes and it goes with 
 the affliction ; it is not slow, constant, steady, sure, 
 as all true and natural growth is. If one might 
 say so, an unbroken winter in the soul, a continual 
 inward winter, is needed to keep up a steady, deep 
 and fruitful growth in grace. Now, is there any- 
 thing in the spiritual husbandry of God that can 
 be called such a winter of the soul ? I think there 
 is. The winter of our outward life — trials, crosses, 
 sickness and death are all the wages of sin; and 
 it is among these things that grace first strikes 
 its roots. And what is the continual ])resence 
 of sin in the soul but the true winter of the soul, 
 amid which the grace that is planted in an out- 
 break of winter ever after strikes deeper root and 
 grows ? Once let a man be awakened of God to 
 his own great sinfulness ; and that not to its fruits 
 in outward sorroAV, but to its malignant roots that 
 are twisted round and round and through and 
 
LADY CULROSS 49 
 
 through his Iicart, and that man has thenceforth 
 siK'h a winter within liim as shall secure to him a 
 Hfelong growth in the most inward grace. Once 
 let a poor wretch awake to the unbroken winter 
 of his own sinfuhiess, a sinfulness that is with him 
 when he lies down and when he rises up, when he 
 is abroad among men and when he is at home with 
 himself alone : an incessant, increasing, agonising, 
 overwhelming sense of sin, — and how that most 
 miserable of men will grow in grace, and how he 
 will drink m all the means of grace ! How he will 
 hear the word of grace preached, mixing it no 
 longer with fault-finding, as he used to do, but 
 with repentance and faith under any and every 
 ministry. How he will examine himself every day ; 
 or, rather, how every day will examine, accuse, 
 expose and condemn him ; and how meekly he 
 will accept the exposures and the condemnations ! 
 That man will not need you to preach to him 
 about the sanctifying of the Sabbath, or about 
 Avaiting on this and that means of grace. He will 
 grow with or without the means of grace, but he 
 will be of all men the most diligent in his devotion 
 to them. He will almost get beyond the Word 
 and within the Sacrament, so close up Avill his 
 coiTuptions drive him to Christ and to God. Till, 
 having provided for that man so much grace and 
 so much growth in grace, God will soon have to 
 give him glory, if only to satisfy him and pacify 
 him and lift him out of the winter of his discon- 
 tent. And then, ' Thy sun shall no more go down ; 
 neither shall thy moon withdraw herself; for the 
 Lord shall be thhie everlasting light, and the days 
 of thy mourning shall be ended.' 
 
 D 
 
50 SAMUEL RUTHERFOKD 
 
 VII 
 LADY BOYD 
 
 ' Be sorry at corruption.' — Rutherford. 
 
 UT of various published and unpub- 
 lished writings of her day M'e are 
 able to gather an interesting and 
 impressive picture of Lady Boyd's 
 life and character. But there was 
 a carefully written volume of manuscript, that I 
 much fear she must have burned when on her 
 death-bed, that would have been invaluable to us 
 to-night. Lady Boyd kept a careful diary for 
 many years of her later life, and it was not a diary 
 of court scandal or of social gossip or even of family 
 affairs, it was a memoir of herself that would have 
 satisfied even John Foster, for in it she tried "vvith 
 all fidelity to ' discriminate the successive states 
 of her mind, and so to trace the progress of her 
 character, a progress that gives its chief importance 
 to human life.' Lady Boyd's diary would, to a 
 certainty, have pleased the austere Essayist, for she 
 was a woman after his own heart, 'grave, diligent, 
 prudent, a rare pattern of Christianity.' 
 
 Thomas Hamilton, Lady Boyd's father, was an 
 excellent scholar and a very able man. He rose 
 from being a simple advocate at the Scottish Bar 
 
LADY BOYD 51 
 
 to be Lord President of the Court of Session, 
 after which, for his great services, he was created 
 Earl of Haddington, Christina, his eldest daughter, 
 inherited no small part of her father's talents and 
 strength of character. By the time we know her 
 she has been some ten years a widow, and all her 
 children are promising to turn out an honour to 
 her name and a blessing to her old age. And, 
 under the Divine promise, we do not wonder at 
 that, when we see what sort of mother they had. 
 For with all sovereign and inscrutable exceptions 
 the rule surely still holds, 'Train up a child in 
 the way he should go, and when he is old he will 
 not depart from it.' All her days Lady Boyd was 
 on the most intimate terms with the most eininent 
 ministers of the Church of Scotland. We find 
 such men as Robert Bruce, Robert Blair, John 
 Livingstone, and Samuel Rutherford continually 
 referring to her in the loftiest terms. But it was 
 not so much her high rank, or her great ability, 
 or her fearless devotion to the Presbyterian and 
 Evangelical cause that so drew those men around 
 her; it was rather the inwardness and the intensity 
 of her personal religion. You may be a determined 
 upholder of a Church, of Presbytery against Prelacy, 
 of Protestantism against Popery, or even of Evan- 
 gelical religion against Erastianism and Moderatism, 
 and yet know nothing of true religion in your own 
 heart. But men like Livingstone and Rutherford 
 would never have written of Lady Boyd as they 
 did had she not been a rare pattern of mward 
 and spiritual Christianity. 
 
 I have spoken of Lady Boyd's diary. 'She used 
 
52 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 every night/ says Livingstone, ' to write what had 
 been the state of her soul all clay, and what she had 
 observed of the Lord's doing.' When all her 
 neighbours were lying down without fear, her 
 candle went not out till she had taken pen and ink 
 and had called herself to a strict account for the 
 past day. Her duties and her behaviour to her 
 husband, to her children, to her servants, and to 
 her many dependants ; the things that had tried 
 her temper, her humility, her patience, her jjower 
 of self-denial ; any strength and wisdom she had 
 attained to in the government of her tongue and in 
 shutting her ears from the hearing of evil ; as, also, 
 eveiy ordinary as well as extraordinary providence 
 that had visited her that day, and how she had 
 been able to recognise it and accept it and take 
 good out of it. Thus the Lady Boyd prevented the 
 night-watches. When the women of her own rank 
 sat down to write their promised letters of gossip 
 and scandal and amusement she sat down to write 
 her diary. ' We see many things, but we observe 
 nothing,' said Rutherford in a letter to Lady 
 Kenmure. All around her God had been dealing 
 all that day with Lady Boyd's neighbours as well as 
 with her, only they had not observed it. But she 
 had not only an eye to see but a mind and a heart 
 to observe also. She had a heart that, like the 
 fabled Philosopher's Stone, turned all it touched and 
 all that touched it immediately to fine gold. Riding- 
 home late one night from a hunting supper-party, 
 young Lord Boyd saw his mother's candle still 
 burning, and he made bold to knock at her door to 
 ask why she was not asleep. Without saying a 
 
LADY BOYD 53 
 
 word, she took her son by the hand and set him 
 down at her table and pointed him to the wet 
 sheet she had just written. When he had read 
 it he rose, without speaking a word, and went to 
 his own room, and though that night was never 
 all their days spoken of to one another, yet all his 
 days Lord Boyd looked back on that night of the 
 hmit as being the night when his soul escaped from 
 the snare of the fowler. I much fear the diary is lost, 
 but it would be well worth the trouble of the owner 
 of Ardross Castle to cause a careful search to be 
 made for it in the old charter chests of the family. 
 
 Till Lady Boyd's lost diaiy is recovered to us let 
 us gather a few things about this remarkable woman 
 out of the letters and reminiscences of such men as 
 Livingstone and Rutherford and her namesake, 
 Principal Boyd of Trochrig. Rutherford, especially, 
 was, next to her midnight page, her ladyship's 
 confidential and bosom friend. * Now Madam,' he 
 writes in a letter from Aberdeen, ' for your lady- 
 ship's own case.' And then he addresses himself 
 in his finest style to console his correspondent, 
 regarding some of the deepest and most pain- 
 ful incidents of her rare and genuine Christian 
 experience. ' Yes,' he says, ' be sorry at corruption, 
 and be not secure about yourself as long as any of 
 it is there.' Corruption, in this connection, is a 
 figure of speech. It is a kind of technical term 
 much in vogue with spiritual writers of the profounder 
 kind. It expresses to those vuihappy persons who 
 have the thing in themselves, and who are also 
 familiar with the Scriptural and experimental use 
 of the word — to them it expresses with fearful truth 
 
54 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 and power the sinfulness of their own heai'ts^ as that 
 sinfuhiess abides and breaks out continually. Now, 
 how could Lady Boyd, being the woman she was, 
 but be sorry and inconsolably sorry to find all that 
 in her own heart every day ? No Avonder that she 
 and her son never referred to Avhat she had written 
 and he had read in his mother's lockfost book that 
 never-to-be-forgotten night. 
 
 ' Be sorry at corruption, and be not secure.' How 
 could she be secure when she saw and felt eveiy day 
 that deadly disease eating at her own heart .'' She 
 could not be secure for an hour; she would have 
 been anything but the grave and prudent woman 
 she was — she would have been mad — had she for a 
 single moment felt secure with such a corrupt heart. 
 You must all have read a dreadful story that went 
 the round of the newspapers the other day. A prairie 
 hunter came upon a shanty near Winnipeg, and 
 found — of all things in the world ! — a human foot 
 lying on the ground outside the door. Inside was 
 a young English settler bleeding to death, and 
 almost insane. He had lost himself in the prairie- 
 blizzard till his feet were frozen to mortification, 
 and in his desperation he had taken a carving-knife 
 and had hacked off his most corrupt foot and had 
 thrown it out of doors. And then, while the terrified 
 hunter was getting help, the despairing man cut off 
 the other corrupt foot also. I hope that brave 
 young Englishman will live till some Winnipeg 
 minister tells him of a yet more terrible corruption 
 than ever took hold of a frozen foot, and of a knife 
 that cuts far deeper than the shanty carver, and con- 
 soles him in death with the assurance that it was of 
 
LADY BOYD 55 
 
 him that Jesus Christ spoke in the Gospel long ago, 
 when He said that it is better to enter into life halt 
 and maimed, rather than having two feet to be cast 
 into everlasting fire. There was no knife in Ardross 
 Castle that would reach down to Lady Boyd's 
 corrupt heart ; had there been, she would have first 
 cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have 
 shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford 
 says, she also had come now to that ' nick ' in 
 religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so 
 as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so 
 had her eldest son. Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen 
 also says, ' Many a time we cannot avoid feeling a 
 deep soiTow for ourselves because of the bottom- 
 less depth of corruption which lies hidden in our 
 heart — which sorrow, rightly felt and rightly exer- 
 cised, is a weighty basis of sanctification.' 
 
 To an able woman building on such a weighty 
 basis as that on which Lady Boyd had for long been 
 building, Rutherford was quite safe to lay weighty 
 and unusual comforts on her mind and on her heart. 
 'Christ has a use for all your corruptions,' he says 
 to her, to her surprise and to her comfort. 'Beata 
 culpa,' cried Augustine ; and ' Felix culpa,' cried 
 Gregory. ' My sins have in a manner done me more 
 good than my graces,' said holy Mr. Fox. ' I find 
 advantages of my sins,' said that most spiritually- 
 minded of men, James Fraser of Brea. Those who 
 are willing and able to read a splendid passage for 
 themselves on this paradoxical-sounding subject will 
 find it on page xii. of the Address to the Godly and 
 Judicious Reader in Samuel Rutherford's Christ 
 Dijing (1)1(1 Drawing Sinners to Iliniself. 
 
56 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 What Rutherford was hold to say to Lady Boyd 
 about her corruptions she was able herself to say to 
 Trochrig about her crosses. ' Right Honourable Sir, 
 — It is common to God's children and to the wicked 
 to be inider crosses, but their crosses chase God's 
 children to God. O that anything would chase me 
 to my God ! ' There speaks a woman of mind and 
 of heart who knows what she is speaking about. And, 
 like her and her correspondents, when all our other 
 crosses have chased us to God, then our master 
 cross, the corruption of our heart, will chase us closer 
 vip to God than all our other crosses taken together. 
 We have no cross to be compared with our corrup- 
 tions, and when they have chased us close enough 
 and deep enough into the secret place of God, then 
 we will begin to understand and adorn the dangerous 
 doxologies of Augustine and Gregoiy, Eraser and Fox. 
 Yes ; anything and everything is good that chases 
 us up to God : crosses and corruptions, sin and death 
 and hell. ' O that anything would chase me to my 
 God ! ' cried saintly Lady Boyd. And that leads 
 her ladyship in another letter to Trochrig to tell 
 him the kind of preaching she needs and that she 
 must have at any cost. ' It will not neither be 
 philosophy nor eloquence that will draw me from 
 the broad road of perdition : I must have a trumpet 
 to tell me of my sins.' That was a well-said word 
 to the then Principal of Glasgow University who 
 had so many of the future ministers of Scotland 
 under his hands, all vying with one another as to 
 who should be the best philosopher and the most 
 eloquent preacher. Trochrig was both an eloquent 
 preacher and a philosophic principal and a spiritu- 
 
LADY BOYD 57 
 
 ally-minded man, but lie was no worse to read 
 Lady Boyd's demand for a true minister, and I hope 
 he read her letter and gave his students her name 
 in his jiastoral theology class. ' Lady Boyd on the 
 broad road of perdition ! ' some of his students would 
 exclaim. ' Why, Lady Boyd is the most saintly 
 woman in all the country.' And that would only 
 give the learned Principal an opportunity to open 
 up to his class, as he was so well fitted to do, that 
 saying of Rutherford to Lady Kenmure : that ' sense 
 of sin is a sib friend to a spiritual man,' till some, 
 no doubt, went out of that class and preached, as 
 Thomas Boston did, to 'terrify the godly.' Such 
 results, no doubt, came to many from Lady Boyd's 
 letter to the Principal as to the preaching she 
 needed and must at any cost have : not philosophy, 
 nor eloquence, but a voice like a trumpet to tell her 
 of her sin. 
 
 Rutherford was in London attending the sittings 
 of the Westminster Assembly when his dear friend 
 Lady Boyd died in her daughter's house at Ardross. 
 The whole Scottish Parliament, then sitting at St. 
 Andrews, rose out of respect and attended her 
 funeral. Rutherford could not be present, but he 
 wrote a characteristically comforting letter to Lady 
 Ardross, which has been preserved to us. He 
 reminded her that all her mother's sorrows were 
 comforted now, and all her corruptions healed, and 
 all her much service of Christ and His Church in 
 Scotland far more than recompensed. 
 
 Children of God, take comfort, for so it will soon 
 be with you also. Your salvation, far off as it looks 
 to you, is far nearer than when you believed. You 
 
58 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 will cany your corruptions with you to your grave ; 
 'they lay with you/ as Rutherford said to Lady 
 Boyd, ' in your mother's womb/ and the nearer you 
 come to your grave the stronger and the more loath- 
 some will you feel your corruptions to be ; but what 
 about that, if only they chase you the closer up to 
 God, and make what is beyond the grave the more 
 sure and the more sweet to your heart. Lady Boyd 
 is not sorry for her corruptions now. She is now in 
 that blessed land where the inhabitant shall not say, 
 I am sick. Take comfort, O sure child of God, with 
 the most corrupt heart in all the world ; for it is 
 for you and for the like of you that that inheritance 
 is prepai'ed and kept, that inheritance incorruptible,- 
 and undefiled, and that f^ideth not away. Take com- 
 fort, for they that be whole need not a physician, 
 but they that are sick. 
 
LADY ROBERTLAND 
 
 59 
 
 VIII 
 
 LADY KOBERTLAND 
 
 'That famous saint, the Lady Robertland, and the rareoutgates 
 she so often got.' — Livingstone's Characteristics. 
 
 HE Lady Robertland ranks in the 
 Rutherford sisterhood with Lady Ken- 
 mure, Lady Cuh'oss, Lady Boyd, Lady 
 Cardoness, Lady Earlston, Marion 
 M'Naught and Grizel Fullarton. Lady 
 Robertland, like so many of the other ladies of the 
 Covenant, was not only a woman of deep per- 
 sonal piety and great patriotism, she was also, like 
 Lady Kenmure, Lady Boyd, and Marion M'Naught, 
 a woman of remarkable powers of mind. For one 
 thing, she had a fascinating gift of conversation, 
 and, like John Bunyan, it was her habit to speak of 
 spiritual things with wonderful power under the 
 similitude and parable of outward and worldly 
 things. At the time of the famous ' Stewarton 
 sickness ' Lady Robertland was of immense service, 
 both to the ministers and to tlie people. Robert 
 Fleming tells us that the profane rabble of that 
 tiiiie gave the nickname of the Stewarton sickness 
 to that ' extraordinary outletting of the Spirit ' that 
 was experienced in those days over the whole of the 
 west of Scotland, but which fell in perfect Pente- 
 costal power on both sides of tiie Stewarton Water. 
 
60 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ' I preached often to them in tlie time of tlie College 
 vacation/ says Robert Blair, ' residing at the house 
 of that ffimous saint, the Lady Robertland, and I 
 had much conference Avith the people, and profited 
 more by them than I think they did by me ; though 
 ignorant people and proud and secure livers called 
 them "the daft people of Stewarton." ' The 
 Stewarton sickness was as like as possible, both in 
 its manifestations and in its results, to the Irish 
 Revival of 1859, in which, when it came over and 
 awakened Scotland, the Duchess of Gordon, another 
 lady of the Covenant, acted much the same part in 
 the North that Lady Robertland acted in her day in 
 the West. Many of our ministers still living can 
 say of Huntly Lodge, 'I resided often there, and 
 preached to the people, profiting more by them than 
 they could have done by me.' 
 
 Oidgate is an old and an almost obsolete word, but 
 it is a word of great expressiveness and point. It 
 bears on the face of it what it means. An outgate is 
 just a gate out, a way of redemption, deliverance and 
 escape. And her rare outgates does not imply that 
 Lady Robertland's outgates were few, but that they 
 were extraordinary, seldom matched, and above all 
 expectation and praise. Lady Robertland's out- 
 gates were not rare in the sense of coming seldom 
 and being few ; for, the fact is, they filled her 
 remarkable life full; but they were rare in the 
 sense that she, like the Psalmist in Mr. James 
 Guthrie's psalm, was a wonder unto many, and most 
 of all unto herself. But a gate out, and especially 
 such a gate as the I^dy Robertlnnd so often came 
 out at, needs a key, needs many keys, and many 
 
LADY ROBEIiTLAND fil 
 
 keys of no common kind, and it needs a janitor also, 
 or rather a redeemer and a deliverer of a kind corre- 
 sponding to the kind of gate and the kind of con- 
 finement on which the gate shuts and opens. And 
 when Lady Robertland thought of her rare outgates — 
 and she thought more about them than about anything 
 else that ever happened to her — and as often as she 
 could get an ear and a heart hito which to tell them, 
 she always pictured to her audience and to her- 
 self the majestic Figure of the first chapter of the 
 Revelation. She often spoke of her rare outgates 
 to David Dickson, and Robert Blair, and John 
 Livingstone, and to her own Stewarton minister, 
 Mr. Castlelaw, whose name written in water on 
 earth is written in letters of gold in heaven. ' Not 
 much of a preacher himself, he encouraged his 
 people to attend Mr. Dickson's sennons, and he 
 often employed Mr. Blair to preach at Stewarton, 
 and accompanied him back and forward, singing 
 psalms all the way.' Her ladyship often told saintly 
 Mr. Castlelaw of her rare outgates, and always so 
 spoke to him of the Amen, who has the keys of hell 
 and of death, that he never could read that chapter 
 all his days without praising God that he had had 
 the Lady Robertland and her rare outgates in his 
 sin-sick parish. 
 
 But it is time to turn to some of those special and 
 rare outgates that the Amen with the keys gave to 
 His favoured handmaiden, the Lady Robertland ; and 
 the first kind of outgate, on account of which she 
 was always such an astonishment to herself, was 
 what she would call her outgate from providential 
 disabilities^ entanglements, and embarrassments. 
 
62 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 She was wont to say to William Guthrie, who best 
 understood her witty Avords and her wonderful 
 history, that the wicked fairies had handicapped her 
 infant feet in her very cradle. She could use a free- 
 dom of speech with Guthrie, and he with her, such as 
 neither of them could use with Livingstone or with 
 Rutherford. Rutherford could not laugh when his 
 heart was breaking, as Lady Robertland and the 
 witty minister of Fenwick were often overheard 
 laughing. 'Yes, but your Ladyship has won the 
 race with all your weights,' Guthrie would laugh 
 and say. ' One of my many races,' she would 
 answer, with half a smile and half a sigh ; ' but I 
 have a long race, many long races, still before me. 
 It seemed conclamatinn est with me,' she would then 
 say, quoting a well-known expression of Samuel 
 Rutherford's, which is, being interpreted. It 's all 
 over and gone with me, ' but Providence, since the 
 Amen took it in hand, has a thousand and more 
 keys wherewith to give poor creatures like me our 
 rare outgates.' There were few alive by that time 
 who had known Lady Robertland in her early days, 
 and she seldom spoke of those days ; only, on the 
 anniversary of her early marriage, she never forgot 
 her feelings when her life as a Fleming came to an 
 end and her new life as a Robertland began. There 
 was a famous preacher of her day who sometimes 
 spoke familiarly of the ' keys of the cupboard, that 
 the Master carried at His girdle,' and she used 
 sometimes to take up his homely words and say that 
 she had had all the sweetest morsels and most 
 delicate dainties of earth's cupboard taken out from 
 under lock and key and put into her mouth. ' He 
 
LADY ROBERTLAND 63 
 
 ties terrible knots/ she would say, 'just to have the 
 pleasure of loosing them off from those He loves. 
 He lays nets and sets traps only that He may get a 
 chance of healing broken bones and setting the 
 terrified free.' No wonder that Wodrow calls her 
 ' a much-exercised woman,' with such ingates and 
 outgates, and with such miracles of an interposing 
 Providence filling her childhood, her youth, her 
 married and her widowed life. The Analecta is full 
 of remarkable providences, but Lady Robertland's 
 exercises and outgates are too wonderful even for 
 the pages of that always wonderful and sometimes 
 too awful book. 
 
 ' My Master hath outgates of His own which are 
 beyond the wisdom of man,' writes Rutherford, in 
 her own language, to Lady Robertland from 'Christ's 
 prison in Aberdeen.' Rutherford's letters are full 
 of more or less mysterious allusions to the rare out- 
 gates that God in Christ had given him also from 
 the snares and traps into which he had fallen by the 
 sins and follies of his uni'egenerate youth. What- 
 ever trouble came on Rutherford all his days — the 
 persecution of the bishop, his banishment to Aber- 
 deen, the shutting of his mouth from preaching 
 Christ, the loss of wife and child, and the poignant 
 pains of sanctification — he gathered them all up 
 under the familiar figure of a waled and chosen 
 cross. ' Seeing that the sins of my youth deserved 
 sti'okes, hoAV am I obliged to my Lord^ who, out of 
 many possible crosses, hath given me this waled 
 and chosen cross to suffer for the name of Jesus 
 Christ. Since I must have chains. He has put golden 
 chains on me. Seeing I must have sorrow, for I 
 
64 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 have sinned, O Preserver of mankind, Thou hast 
 waled and selected out for me a joyful sorrow — an 
 honest, spiritual, glorious sorrow. Oh, what am I, 
 such a rotten mass of sin, to be counted worthy of 
 the most honourable rod in my Father's house, even 
 the golden rod wherewith the Lord the Heir was 
 Himself stricken. Thou wast a God that forgavest 
 them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their 
 inventions.' Rutherford also was forgiven, and the 
 only vengeance that God took of his inventions, the 
 irregularities of his youth, was taken in the form of 
 a ' waled cross.' ' I might have been proclaimed 
 on the crown of the causey,' says Rutherford, 'but 
 He has so Avaled my cross and His vengeance that 
 I am suffering not for my sin but for His name.' 
 What a life hid with Christ in God he must live, 
 who, like Rutherford, takes all his trials on earth as 
 a transmuted and substituted cross for his sins : and 
 who is able to take all his deserved and demanded 
 chastisements in the shape of inward and spiritual 
 and sanctifying pain. O sweet vengeance of grace 
 on our sinful inventions ! O most intimate and 
 most awful of all our secrets, the secrets of a love- 
 waled, love-substituted cross ! O rare outgate from 
 the scorn of the causeway to the smelting-house of 
 * Him Avho hath His fire in Zion ! ' 
 
 'The sorrows of death compassed me,' sings the 
 Psalmist, and ' the pains of hell gat hold upon me ; 
 I found trouble and sorrow.' What, you may well 
 ask, were those pains of hell that gat such hold of 
 David while yet he was a living and unreprobated 
 man ? Was it not too strong language to use about 
 any earthly experience, however terrible, to call it 
 
LADY ROBERTLAND 65 
 
 the pains of hell? Ask that man whose sin has 
 found him out what he thinks the pains of hell were 
 in David's case, and he Avill tell you that remorse — 
 unsoftened, unsweetened, unquenchable remorse — is 
 hell ; at any rate, it is hell upon earth ; and till he 
 confessed his sin it was David's hell. Sin taken up 
 and laid by God's hand on the sinner's conscience, 
 that makes that sinner's conscience hell. And, 
 then, do we not read that Jehovah laid on our 
 Surety the sin of us all till He was three hours in 
 hell for us, and came out of it, as Rutherford says, 
 Avith the keys of hell at His proud girdle ? And it 
 is with those captured keys that He now unlocks the 
 true hell-gate in every guilty sinner's conscience. 
 
 ' He comes the prisoners to relieve 
 
 In Satan's bondage held ; 
 The gates of brass before Him burst, 
 The iron fetters yield. 
 
 We may not know, we cannot tell 
 
 What pains He had to bear, 
 But we believe it was for us 
 
 He hung and suffered there. 
 
 There was no other good enough 
 
 To pay the price of sin ; 
 He only could unlock the gate 
 
 Of heaven, and let us in.' 
 
 ' Myself am hell,' cried out Satan, in his agony of 
 pride and rage and remorse. 
 
 ' Divines and dying men may talk of hell, 
 But in my heart her several torments dwell.' 
 
 So you say of yourself, as you well may, after such 
 a life as yours has been. The Judge of all the 
 earth would not be a just judge unless hell were 
 
 E 
 
66 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 already kindled in your heart. But He who is a 
 just God is also a Saviour, and He has with His 
 own hand hung the key of hell and of your self- 
 made bed in it at the grirdle of Jesus Christ. Go 
 to Him to-night, and tell Him that you are in hell. 
 Tell Him that, like Da^id, and very much, so far as 
 you can imderstand, for Da\'id's sins, you, too, are 
 in the pains of very hell. Cast yourself, like John 
 in the Revelation, at His feet, and see if He does 
 not say to you what He said through Nathan to 
 David, and what He said Himself to John, and 
 what He said to Lady Robertland, and what He said 
 to Samuel Rutherford. Cast yourself at His feet, 
 and see if you do not get at His hands as rare an 
 outgate and as wonderfully waled a cross as the 
 veni' best of them got. 
 
 Then all the rest of your life on this prison-house 
 of an earth will be a history' in you and to you 
 of all kinds of rare outgates. For. once He who 
 has the keys has taken your case in hand. He will 
 not let either rust or dust gather on His keys till 
 He has opened every door for you and set you free 
 from every snare. There are many evil affections, 
 evil habits, and evil practices that are still closely 
 padlocked both on your outward and your inward 
 life that you must be wholly dehvered from. And 
 He who has all the keys of your body and your 
 soul too at His girdle, will not consider that you 
 have got your fixll outgate, or that He has at aU 
 discharged His duty by you, till, as Rutherford says, 
 your sinful habits and practices are all loosened off 
 from your life and are driven back into the inner 
 world of your inclmations ; and then, after that. He 
 
LADY ROBERTLAND 67 
 
 will only take up still more skilful and still more 
 intricate keys where^vith to turn the locks of 
 delight, desire, and inclination. O blessed keys of 
 hell and of death, of habit and inclination and evil 
 affection ! O blessed people "who are under such 
 a Redeemer from sin and death and hell I O truly 
 famous saint, the Lady Robertland, who got so many 
 and so rare outgates from the Amen with the kevs ! 
 Who shall give me an outgate from this body ? 
 cries the great apostle, not chafing in his chains for 
 death, but for the true life that hes beyond death. 
 Paul, with all his intense love of life and service — 
 nay, because of that intense love — felt sometimes 
 that this present life at its very best was but a life 
 of relaxed imprisonment rather than of true liberty. 
 Paul was, as we say, a kind of first-class mis- 
 demeanant, as Samuel Rutherford also was in his 
 prison-palace in Aberdeen, and the Lady Robertland 
 in Stewarton House ; they had a Hberty that was 
 not to be despised ; the}- had light and air and 
 exercise ; they were not in chains in the dungeon ; 
 they had pen and ink ; they had books and papers, 
 and their friends might on occasion visit them. 
 Tliey might have better food also if they paid for 
 it ; and, best of all, they could, till their full release 
 came, beguile and occupy the time in work for 
 Christ and His Church. But still they were present 
 in this body of sin and death, and absent from the 
 Lord, and they pined, and, I fear, sinfully murmured 
 sometimes, for the last and the greatest and the 
 best outgate of all. ' As for myself,' writes Ruther- 
 ford, ' I think that if a poor, weak, dying sheep 
 seeks for an old dvke, and the lee-side of a hill in a 
 
68 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 storm, I surely may be allowed to long for heaven. 
 I see little in this life but sin, and the sour fi-uits of 
 sin ; and oh ! what a burden and what a bitterness 
 is sin ! What a miserable bondage it is to be at the 
 nod of such a master as Sin ! But He who hath 
 the keys hath sworn that our sin shall not loose the 
 covenant bond, and therefore I wait in hope and in 
 patience till His time shall come to take off all my 
 fetters and make a hole in this cage of death that 
 the imprisoned bird may find its long-promised 
 liberty.' 
 
 ' I would not live alway, thus fettered with sin, 
 Temptation without and corruption within ; 
 In a moment of strength, if I sever the chain, 
 Scarce the victory is mine ere I 'm captive again ; 
 E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears. 
 And the cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears ; 
 The festival trump calls for jubilant songs. 
 But my spirit her own miserere prolongs. 
 
 ' Who, who would live always away from his God ! 
 Away from yon heaven, that blissful abode 
 Where the rivers of pleasures flow o'er the bright plains, 
 And the noon-tide of glory eternally reigns ; 
 Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet, 
 Their Saviour and brethren transported to greet ; 
 While the songs of salvation exultingly roll. 
 And the love of the Lord is the bliss of the soul.' 
 
JEAN BROWN 69 
 
 IX 
 JEAN BROWN 
 
 ' Sin poisons all our enjoyments. ' — Rutherford. 
 
 EAN BROWN was one of the selectest 
 associates of the famous Rutherford 
 circle. We do not know so much of 
 Jean Bi-own outside of the Rutherford 
 Letters as Ave Avould like to know, but her son, 
 John Brown of Wamphray, is very Avell known 
 to every student of the theology and ecclesi- 
 astical history of Scotland in the second half of the 
 seventeenth century, ' I rejoice to hear about your 
 son John. I had always a great love to dear John 
 Brown. Remember my love to John Brown. I 
 never could get my love off that man.' And all 
 Rutherford's esteem and affection for Jean Bi'own's 
 gifted and amiable son was fully justified in the 
 subsequent history of the hard-working and well- 
 persecuted parish minister of Wamphray. Letter 
 84 is a very remarkable piece of writing even in 
 Rutherford, and the readers of this letter would 
 gladly learn more than even its eloquent pages 
 tell them about the woman who could draw such a 
 letter out of Samuel Rutherford's mind and heart, 
 the woman who was also the honoured mother of 
 such a student and such a minister as John Brown 
 
70 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 of Wamphray. This letter has a bite in it — to use 
 one of Rutherford's own words in the course of it — 
 all its own. And it is just that profound and pun- 
 gent element in this letter, that bite in it, that has 
 led me to take this remarkable letter for my topic 
 to-night. 
 
 There had been some sin in Samuel Rutherford's 
 student days, or some stumble sufficiently of the 
 nature of sin, to secretly poison the whole of his 
 subsequent life. Sin is such a poisonous thing that 
 even a mustard-seed of it planted in a man's youth 
 will sometimes spi'ing up into a thicket of terrible 
 trouble both to himself and to many other people 
 all his and all their days. An almost invisible drop 
 of sin let fall into the wellhead of life will some- 
 times poison the whole broad stream of life, as well 
 as all the houses and fields and gardens, with all 
 their flowers and fruits, that are watered out of it. 
 When any misfortune falls upon a Hebrew house- 
 hold, when any Jewish man or woman's sin finds them 
 out, they say that there is an ounce of the golden 
 calf on it. They open their Exodus and they read 
 there in their bitterness of how Moses in his hot 
 anger took the calf, which the children of Israel had 
 polluted themselves with, and burned it in the fire, 
 and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the 
 water, and made the children of Israel to drink of 
 it. -And, though God turned the poisoned, dust- 
 laden waters of Samuel Rutherford's life into very 
 milk and wine, yet to Rutherford's subtle and 
 detective taste there was always a certain tang of 
 the unclean and accursed thing in it. The best 
 waled and most tenderly substituted cross in Ruther- 
 
JEAN BROWN 71 
 
 ford's chastised life had always a certain galling 
 corner in it that recalled to him, as he bled inwardly 
 under it, the lack of complete purity and strict 
 regularity in his youth. And it is to be feared that 
 there are but too few men or women either who 
 have not some Rutherford-like memory behind them 
 that still clouds their now sheltered life and secretly 
 poisons their good conscience. Some disingenuity, 
 some simulation or dissimulation of affection, some 
 downright or constructive dishonesty, some lack 
 towards some one of open and entire integrity, some 
 breach of good faith in spirit if not in letter, some 
 still stinging tresspass of the golden rule, some horn 
 or hoof of the golden calf, the bitter dust of which 
 they taste to this day in their sweetest cup and at 
 their most grace-spread table. There are more men 
 and women in the Church of Christ than any one 
 would believe who sing with a broken heart at 
 every communion table : 'He hath not dealt with 
 us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to 
 our iniquities. As far as the east is from the Avest, 
 so far hath He removed our transgressions from 
 us.' 
 
 And even after such men and women might have 
 learned a lesson, how soon we see all that lesson 
 forgotten. Even after God's own hand has so con- 
 spicuously cut the bars of iron in sunder; after He 
 has made the solitary to dwell in families ; we still 
 see sin continuing in new shapes and in other foi*ms 
 to poison the sweetest things in human life. What 
 selfishness we see in family life, and that, too, after 
 the vow and the intention of what self-suppression 
 and self-denial. What impatience with one another. 
 
72 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 wnat bad temper, what cruel and cutting words, 
 what coldness and rudeness and neglect, in how 
 many ways our abiding sinfulness continues to poison 
 the sweetest springs of life ! And, then, how soon 
 such unhappy men begin to see themselves repro- 
 duced and multiplied in their children. How many 
 fathers see, with a secret bitterness of spirit that 
 never can be told, their oato worst vices of character 
 and conduct reproduced and perpetuated in their 
 children ! One father sees his constitutional and 
 unextirpated sensuality coming out in the gluttony, 
 the drunkenness, and the lust of his son ; while 
 another sees his pride, his moroseness, his kept-up 
 anger and his cruelty all coming out in one who is 
 his very image. While many a mother sees her own 
 youthful shallowness, frivolity, untruthfulness, deceit 
 and parsimony in her daughter, for whose morality 
 and religion she would willingly give up her owai 
 soul. And then our children, who were to be our 
 staff and our crown, so early take their ovni so 
 wilful and so unfilial way in life. They betake 
 themselves, for no reason so much as just for in- 
 tended disobedience and impudent independence, to 
 other pursuits and pleasures, to other political and 
 ecclesiastical parties than we have ever gone with. 
 And when it is too late we see how we have again 
 mishandled and mismanaged our families as we had 
 mishandled and mismanaged our own youth, till it 
 is only one grey head here and another there that 
 does not go down to the grave under a crushing 
 load of domestic sorrow. When tlie best things in 
 life are so poisoned by sin, how bitter is that poison ! 
 If an unpoisoned youth and an unembittered 
 
JEAN BROWN 73 
 
 family life are some of the sweetest tilings this 
 earth can taste, then a circle of close and true and 
 dear friendships does not come very far behind 
 them. Rutherford had plenty of trouble in his 
 family life that he used to set down to the sins of 
 his youth ; and then the way he poisoned so many 
 of his best friendships by his so poisonous party 
 spirit is a humbling history to read. He quarrelled 
 irreconcilably with his veiy best friends over matters 
 that were soon to be as dead as Aaron's golden calf, 
 and which never had much more life or decency in 
 them. The matters were so small and miserable 
 over which Rutherford quai*relled with such men 
 as David Dickson and Robert Blair that I could not 
 interest you in them at this time of day even if I 
 tried. They were as parochial, as unsubstantial, 
 and as much made up of prejudice and ill-will as 
 were some of those matters that have served under 
 Satan to poison so often our own private and public 
 and religious life. Rutherford actually refused to 
 assist Robert Blair at the Lord's Supper, so em- 
 bittered and so black was his mind against his 
 dearest friend. ' I would rather,' said sweet- 
 tempered Robert Blair, ' have had my right hand 
 hacked off at the cross of Edinburgh than have 
 A\Titten such things.' ' My wife and I,' wrote dear 
 John Livingstone, 'have had more bitterness to- 
 gether over these matters than we have ever had 
 since we knew what bitterness was.' And no one 
 in that day had a deeper hand in spreading that 
 bitterness than just the hand that wrote Rutherford's 
 letters. There is no fear of our calling any man 
 master if we once look facts fair in the face. 
 
74 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 The precariousness of our best friendships, the 
 brittle substance out of which they are all composed 
 and constructed, and the daily accidents and injuries 
 to which they are all exposed — all this is the daily 
 distress of all true and loving hearts. What a little 
 thing will sometimes embitter and poison what 
 promised to be a loyal and lifelong friendship ! A 
 passing misunderstanding about some matter that 
 will soon be as dead to us both as the Resolu- 
 tions and Protestations of Rutherford's day now are 
 to all men ; an accidental oversight ; our simple 
 indolence in letting an absent friendship go too 
 much out of repair for want of a call, or a written 
 message, or a timeous gift : a thing that only a too- 
 scrupulous mind would go the length of calling sin, 
 will yet poison an old friendship and embitter it 
 beyond all our power again to sweeten it. And, 
 then, how party spirit poisons our best enjoyments 
 as it did Rutherford's. How all our minds are 
 poisoned against all the writers and the speakers, 
 the statesmen and the journalists of the opposite 
 camp, and even against the theologians and preachers 
 of the opposite church. And, then, inside our own 
 camp and church how new and still more malignant 
 kinds of poison begin to distil out of our incurably 
 wicked hearts to eat out the heart of our own 
 nearest and dearest friendships. Envy, for one 
 thing, which no preacher, not even Pascal or New- 
 man, no moralist, no satirist, no cynic has yet dared 
 to tell the half of the horrible truth about : drip, 
 drip, drip, its hell-sprung venom soaks secretly into 
 the oldest, the deai*est and the truest friendship. 
 Yes, let it be for once said, the viper-like venom of 
 
JEAN BROWN 75 
 
 emy — the most loyal, the most honourable, the 
 most self-forgetting and self-obliterating friendship 
 is never in this life for one moment proof against it. 
 We live by admiration; yes, but even where we 
 admire our most and live our best this mildew still 
 falls with its deadly damp. What did you suppose 
 Rutherford meant when he wrote as he did write 
 about himself and about herself to that so capable 
 and so saintly woman, Jean Brown ? Do you accuse 
 Samuel Rutherford of unmeaning cant.^ Was he 
 mouthing big Bible words without any meaning.^ 
 Or, was he not drinking at that moment of the 
 poison-filled cup of his own youthful, family, and 
 friendship sins? Nobody will persuade me that 
 Rutherford was a canting hypocrite when he wrote 
 those terrible and still unparaphrased words: 'Sin, 
 sin, this body of sin and corruption embittereth and 
 poisoneth all our enjoyments. Oh that I were home 
 where I shall sin no more ! ' 
 
 Puritan was an English nickname rather than a 
 Scottish, but our Scots Presbyterians were Puritans 
 at bottom like their English brethren both in their 
 statesmanship and in their churchmanship, as well 
 as in their family and personal religion. And they 
 held the same protest as the English Puritans held 
 against the way in which the scandalous corruptions 
 of the secular court, and the equally scandalous cor- 
 ruptions of the sacred bench, were together fast 
 poisoning the public enjoyments of England and of 
 Scotland. You will hear cheap, shallow, vinous 
 speeches at public dinners and suchlike resorts 
 about the Puritans, and about how they denounced 
 so much of the literature and the art of that day. 
 
76 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 When, if those who so find fault had but the in- 
 telHgence and the honesty to look an inch beneath 
 the surface of things they would see that it was not 
 the Puritans but their persecutors who really took 
 away from the serious-minded people of Scotland 
 and England both the dance and the drama, as well 
 as so many far more important things in that day. 
 Had the Puritans and their fathers always had their 
 own way, especially in England, those sources of 
 public and private enjoyment would never have 
 been poisoned to the people as they were and are, 
 and that cleft would never have been cut between 
 the conscience and some kinds of culture and de- 
 light which still exists for so many of the best of our 
 people. Charles Kingsley was no ascetic, and his 
 famous North British article, ' Plays and Puritans,' 
 was but a popular admission of what a free and re- 
 ligious-minded England owes on one side of their 
 many-sided service to the Puritans of that impure 
 day. Christina Rossetti is no Calvinist, but she puts 
 the Calvinistic and Puritan position about the sin- 
 poisoned enjoyments of this life in her own beautiful 
 way : ' Yes, all our life long we shall be bound to 
 refrain our soul, and keep it low ; but what then ? 
 For the books we now forbear to read we shall one 
 day be endued with wisdom and knowledge. For 
 the music we will not now listen to we shall join in 
 the song of the redeemed. For the pictures from 
 which we turn we shall gaze unabashed on the 
 beatific vision. For the companionship we shun 
 we shall be welcomed into angelic society and the 
 companionship of triumphant saints. For the 
 amusements we avoid we shall keep the supreme 
 
JEAN BROWN 77 
 
 jubilee. For all the pleasure we miss we shall 
 abide, and for ever abide, in the rapture of heaven,' 
 
 All through Rutherford's lifetime preaching was 
 his chiefest enjoyment and his most exquisite delight. 
 He was a born preacher, and his enjoyment of 
 preaching was correspondingly great. Even when 
 he was removed from Anwoth to St. Andrews, 
 where, what with his professorship and principal- 
 ship together, one would have thought that he 
 had his hands full enough, he yet stipulated with 
 the Assembly that he should be allowed to preach 
 regularly every Sabbath-day. But sin, again, that 
 dreadful, and, to Rutherford, omnipresent evil, 
 poisoned all his preaching also and made it one of 
 the heaviest burdens of his conscience and his heart 
 and his life. There is a proverb to the effect that 
 when the best things become coi-rupt then that is 
 corruption indeed. And so Ruthei'ford discovered 
 it to be in the matter of his preaching. Do what 
 he would, Rutherford, like Shepard, could not keep 
 the thought of what men would think out of his weak 
 and evil mind, both before, and during, but more 
 especially after his preaching. And that poisoned 
 and corrupted and filled the pulpit with death to 
 Rutherford, in a way and to a degree that nobody 
 but a self-seeking preacher will believe or understand, 
 Rutherford often wondered that he had not been 
 eaten up of worms in his pulpit like King Herod on 
 his throne, and that for the very same atheistical 
 and blasphemous reason. 
 
 Those in this house who have followed all this 
 with that intense and intelligent sympathy that a 
 somewhat similar experience alone will give, will 
 
78 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 not be stumbled to read what Rutherford says in his 
 letter to his near neighbour, William Glendinning : 
 ' I see nothing in this life but sin, sin and the sour 
 fruits of sin. O what a miserable bondage it is to 
 be at the nod and beck of Sin ! ' Nor will they 
 wonder to read in his letter to Lady Boyd, that she 
 is to be sorry all her days on account of her inborn 
 and abiding corruptions. Nor, again, that he himself 
 was sick at his heart, and at the very yolk of his 
 heart, at sin, dead-sick with hatred and disgust at 
 sin, and correspondingly sick with love and longing 
 after Jesus Christ. Nor, again, that he awoke ill every 
 morning to discover that he had not yet awakened 
 in his Saviour's sinless likeness. Nor will you wonder, 
 again, at the seraphic flights of love and worship 
 that Samuel Rutherford, who was so poisoned with 
 sin, takes at the name and the thought of his divine 
 Physician. For to Rutherford that divine Physician 
 has promised to come 'the second time without sin 
 unto salvation.' The first time He came He sucked 
 the poison of sin out of the souls of sinners with 
 His own lips, and out of all the enjoyments that He 
 had sanctified and prepared for them in heaven. 
 And He is coming back — He has now for a long 
 time come back and taken Rutherford home to that 
 sanctification that seemed to go further and further 
 away from Rutherford the longer he lived in this 
 sin-poisoned world. And, amongst all those who 
 are now home in heaven, I cannot think there can be 
 many who are enjoying heaven with a deeper joy 
 than Samuel Rutherford's sheer, solid, uninterrupted, 
 unadulterated, and unmitigated joy. 
 
JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS 79 
 
 JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS, 
 THE YOUNGER 
 
 ' Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every day. ' — Rutherford. 
 
 iF that gaunt old tower of Cardoness 
 Castle could speak, and "would tell us 
 all that Avent on within its walls, what 
 a treasure to us that story would be ! 
 Even the sighs and the moanings that 
 visit us from among its mouldering stones tell us 
 things that we shall not soon forget. They tell us 
 how hard a task old John Gordon found salvation to 
 be in that old house ; and they tell us still, to deep 
 sobs, how hard it was to him to see the sins and 
 faults of his own youth back upon him again in the 
 sins and faults of his son and heir. Old John 
 Gordon's once so wild heart was now somewhat 
 tamed by the trials of life, by the Avisdom and 
 the goodness of his saintly wife, and not least by his 
 close acquaintance with Samuel Rutherford ; but the 
 comfort of all that was dashed from his lips by the 
 life his eldest son was now living. Cardoness had 
 always liked a good proverb, and there was a proverb 
 in the Bible he often repeated to himself in those 
 days as he went about his grounds : ' The fathers 
 have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are 
 set on edge.' The miserable old man was up to the 
 
80 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 neck in debt to the Edinburgh lawyers ; but he was 
 fast discovering that there are other and worse 
 things that a bad man entails on his eldest son than 
 a burdened estate. There was no American wheat 
 or Australian wool to reduce the rents of Cardoness 
 in that day ; but he had learnt, as he rode in to 
 Edinburgh again and again to raise yet another loan 
 for pocket-money to his eldest son, that there ai-e 
 far more fatal things to a small estate than the 
 fluctuations and depressions of the corn and cattle 
 markets. Gordon's oAvn so expensive youth was now 
 past, as he had hoped : but no, there it was, back 
 upon him again in a most unlooked-for and bitter 
 shape. ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes ' was 
 all he used to say as he rose to let in his drunken son 
 at midnight ; he scarcely blamed him ; he could 
 only blame himself, as his beloved boy reeled in and 
 cursed his fathei", not knowing what he did. 
 
 The shrinking income of the small estate could ill 
 afford to support two idle and expensive forailies, 
 but when young Cardoness broke it to his mother 
 that he wished to marry, she and her husband were 
 only too glad to hear it. To meet the outlay 
 connected with the marriage, and to provide an 
 income for the new family, there was nothing for it 
 but to raise the rents of the farms and cottages that 
 stood on the estate. Anxious as Rutherford was to 
 see young Cardoness settled in life, he could not 
 stand by in silence and see honest and hard-working 
 people saddled with the debts and expenses of the 
 Castle; and he took repeated opportunities of telling 
 the Castle people his mind ; till old Cardoness in a 
 passion chased him out of the house, and rode next 
 
JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS 81 
 
 Sabbath-day over to Kirkdale and worshipped hi the 
 parish church of William Dalgleish. The insolent 
 young laird continued, at least during the time of 
 his courtship, to go to church with his mother, but 
 Rutherford could not shut his eyes to the fact that he 
 studied all the time how he could best and most openly 
 insult his minister. He used to come to church late 
 on the Sabbath morning ; and he never remained till 
 the service was over, but would rise and stride out in 
 his spurs in the noisiest way and at the most unseemly 
 times. Rutherford's nest at Anwoth was not with- 
 out its thorns. And that such a crop of thorns 
 should spring up to him and to his people from 
 Lady Cardoness's house, was one of Rutherford's 
 sorest trials. The marriage-day, from which so 
 much was expected, came and passed away ; but 
 what it did for young Cardoness may be judged 
 from such expressions in Rutherford's Aberdeen 
 letters as these: 'Be not rough with your wife. 
 God hath given you a wife, love her ; di'ink out of 
 your own fountain, and sit at your own fireside. 
 Make conscience of cherishing your wife.' His 
 marriage did not sanctify young Cardoness ; it did 
 not even civilise him ; for, long years after, when he 
 was an officer in the Covenanters' army, he writes 
 from Newcastle, apologising to his ill-used wife for 
 the way he left her when he went to join his 
 regiment : ' We are still ruffians and churls at 
 home long after we are counted saints abroad.' 
 
 One day when Rutherford was in the Spirit in 
 his silent prison, whether in the body or out of the 
 body, he was caught up into Paradise to see the 
 beauty of his Lord, and to hear his little daughter 
 
 F 
 
82 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 singing Glory. And among the thousands of chil- 
 dren that sang around the throne he told young 
 Cardoness that he saw and heard little Barbara 
 Gordon, whose death had broken every heart in 
 Cardoness Castle. ' I give you my word for it,' 
 wrote Rutherford to her broken-hearted father, 
 ' I saw two Anwoth children there, and one of them 
 was your child and one of them Avas mine.' And 
 when another little voice was silenced in the Castle 
 to sing Glory in heaven, Rutherford could then 
 write to young Cardoness all that was in his heart ; 
 he could not write too plainly now or too often. 
 Not that you are to suppose that they were all saints 
 now at Cardoness Castle, or that all their old and 
 inherited vices of heart and character were rooted 
 out ; no number of deaths will do that to the best 
 of us till our own death comes ; but it was no little 
 gain towards godliness when Rutherford could write 
 to young Gordon, now old with sorrow, saying, 
 •■ Honoured and dear brother, I am refreshed with 
 your letter, and I exhort you by the love of Christ 
 to set to work upon your own soul. Read this to 
 your wife, and tell her that I am witness for 
 Barbara's glory in heaven.' 
 
 We would gladly shut the bot)k here, and bring 
 the Cardoness correspondence to a close, but that 
 would not be true to the whole Cardoness history, 
 nor profitable for ourselves. We have buried chil- 
 dren, like John Gordon; and, like him, we have 
 said that it was good for us to be sore afflicted; 
 but not even the assurance that we have children 
 in heaven has, all at once, set our affections there, 
 or made us meet for entrance there. We feel it 
 
JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS 83 
 
 like a heavy blow on the heart, it makes us reel as 
 if we had been struck in the face, to come upon 
 a passage like this in a not-long-after letter to little 
 Barbara Gordon's father : ' Ask yourself when next 
 setting out to a night's drinking : What if my doom 
 came to-night ? What if I were given over to God's 
 sergeants to-night, to the devil and to the second 
 death?' And with the same post Rutherford wrote 
 to William Dalgleish telling him that if young 
 Cardoness came to see him he was to do his very 
 best to direct and guide him in his new religious 
 life. But Rutherford could not roll the care of 
 young Cardoness over upon any other minister's 
 shoulders; and thus it is that we have the long 
 practical and powerful letter from which the text 
 is taken : ' Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every 
 day.' 
 
 Old Cardoness had been a passionate man all his 
 days ; he was an old man before he began to curb 
 his passionate heart ; and long after he was really a 
 man of God, the devil easily carried him captive 
 with his besetting sin. He bit his tongue till it 
 bled as often as he recollected the shameful day 
 when he swore at his minister in the rack-renting 
 dispute. And he never rode past Kirkdale Church 
 without sinning again as he plunged the rowels 
 into his mare's unoffending sides. Cardoness did not 
 read Dante, else he would have said to himself that 
 his anger often filled his heart with hell's dunnest 
 gloom. The old Castle was never well lighted ; 
 but, with a father and a son in it like Cardoness 
 and his heir, it was sometimes like the Stygian pool 
 itself. Rutherford had need to write to her ladyship 
 
84 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 to have a soft answer always ready between such a 
 father and such a son. If you have the Inferno 
 at hand, and will read what it says about the Fifth 
 Circle, you will see what went on sometimes in that 
 debt-drained and exasperated house. Rutherford 
 was far away fi-om Cardoness Castle, but he had 
 memory enough and imagination enough to see 
 what Avent on there as often as fresh provocation 
 arose ; and therefore he AVTites to young Gordon 
 to put off a piece of his fiery anger every day. ' Let 
 no complaining tenants, let no insulting letter, let 
 no stupid or disobedient servant, let no sudden 
 outburst of your father, let no peevish complaint 
 of your wife make you angry. Remember every 
 day that sudden and savage anger is one of your 
 besetting sins : and watch against it, and put a piece 
 of it off every day. Determine not to speak back 
 to your father even if he is wrong and is doing a 
 wrong to you and to your mother ; your anger will 
 not make matters better : hold your peace, till you 
 can with decency leave the house, and go out to 
 your horses and dogs till your heart is again quiet.' 
 
 Rutherford was not writing religious commonplaces 
 when he wrote to Cardoness Castle ; if he had, we 
 Avould not have been reading his letters here to- 
 night. He wrote with his eye and his heai't set on 
 his correspondents. And thus it is that 'night- 
 drinking' occurs again and again in his letters to 
 young Gordon. The Cardoness bill to Dumfries for 
 drink was a heavy one ; but it seems never to have 
 occurred, even to the otherwise good people of those 
 days, that strong drink was such a costly as well as 
 such a dangerous luxury. It distresses and shocks 
 
JOHN GORDON OF CARDONESS 85 
 
 us to read about ' midnight drinking ' in Cardoness 
 Castle, and in the houses round about, after all they 
 had come through, but there it is, and we must 
 not eviscerate Rutherford's outspoken letters. The 
 time is not so far past yet -with ourselves when we 
 still went on drinking, though we were in debt for 
 the necessaries of life, and though our sons reeled 
 home from company we had made them early 
 acquainted with. If you will not even yet pass the 
 wine altogether, take a little less every day, and the 
 good conscience it will give you will make up for 
 the forbidden bouquet; till, as Rutherford said to 
 Gordon, ' You will more easily master the remainder 
 of your corruptions.' 
 
 Let us all try Samuel Rutherford's piecemeal way 
 of reformation with our own anger; let us put a bridle 
 on our mouths part of every day. Let us do this if we 
 can as yet go no further ; let us bridle our mouths 
 on certain subjects, and about certain people, and in 
 certain companies. If you have some one you 
 dislike, some one who has injured or offended you, 
 some rival or some enemy, whom to meet, to see, to 
 read or to hear the name of, always brings hell's 
 dunnest gloom into your heart — well, put off this 
 piece of your sin concerning him; do not speak 
 about him. I do not say you can put the poison 
 wholly out of your heart; you cannot: but you can 
 and you must hold your peace about him. And if 
 that beats you — if, instead of all that making you 
 more easily master of your corruption, it helps you 
 somewhat to discover how deep and how deadly it 
 is — then Samuel Rutherford will not have written 
 this old letter in vain for you. 
 
86 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 XI 
 ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON 
 
 'A man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise.' 
 Livingstone's Characteristics. 
 
 HE Gordons of Airds and Earlston could 
 set their family seal to the truth of 
 the promise that the mercy of the 
 Lord is from everlasting to everlasting 
 upon them that fear Him, and His 
 righteousness to children's children. For the life of 
 grace entered the Gordon house three long genera- 
 tions before it came to our Alexander of to-night, 
 and it still descended upon his son and his son's 
 son. His great-grandfather, Alexander Gordon also, 
 was early nicknamed ' Strong Sandy,' on account 
 of his gigantic size and his Samson-like strength. 
 While yet a young man, happily for himself and for 
 all his future children, as well as for the whole of 
 Galloway, Gordon had occasion to cross the English 
 border on some family business, to buy cattle or 
 cutlery or what not, when he made a purchase he 
 had not intended to make when he set out. He 
 brought home with him a copy of Wycliffe's contra- 
 band New Testament, 'and fvom the day he bought 
 that interdicted book till the day of his death, Strong 
 Sandy Gordon never let his purchase out of his own 
 hands. He carried his WyclifTe about with liim 
 wherever he went, to kirk and to market; he would 
 
ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON 87 
 
 as soon liave thought of leaving his purse or liis dirk 
 beliind him as liis Wycliffe, his bosom friend. And 
 many were the Sabbath-days that tlie laird of 
 Earlston read his New Testament in the Avoods of 
 Earlston to his tenants and neighbours, the Testament 
 in the one hand and the dirk in the other. Tamed 
 and softened as old Sandy Gordon became by that 
 taming and softening book, yet there were times 
 when the old Samson still came to the surface. As 
 the Sabbath became more and more sanctified in 
 Reformed Scotland, the Saints' days of the Romish 
 Calendar fell more and more into open neglect, till 
 the Romish clergy got an Act passed for the enforced 
 observance of all the fasts and festivals of the Romish 
 Communion. One of the enacted clauses forbade 
 a plough to be yoked on Christmas Day, on pain 
 of the forfeiture and public sale of the cattle 
 that drew the plough. Old Earlston, at once to 
 protest against the persecution, and at the same 
 time to save his draught-oxen, yoked ten of his 
 stalwart sons to the mid-winter plough, and, after 
 ploughing the whole of Christmas Day, openly 
 defied both priest and bishop to distrain his team. 
 Christmas Day, whatever its claims and privileges 
 might be, had no chance in Scotland till it came with 
 better reasons than the threat of a Popish king and 
 Parliament. The Patriarch of Galloway, as the south 
 of Scotland combined to call old Alexander Gordon 
 of Earlston, lived to the ripe age of over a hundred 
 years, and we are told that he kept family worship 
 himself to the day of his death, holding his WyclifTe 
 in his own hand, and yielding it and his place at the 
 family altar over to none. 
 
88 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 But it is with the name-son and great-grandson 
 of this sturdy old saint that we have chiefly to do 
 to-night. And I may say of him, to begin with, 
 that he was altogether worthy to inherit and to 
 hand on the tradition of family grace and truth that 
 had begun so early and so conspicuously with the 
 head of the Earlston house. ' Alexander Gordon of 
 Earlston/ says John Livingstone, in one of his price- 
 less little etchings, ' was a man of great spirit, but 
 much subdued by inward exercise, and who attained 
 the most rare experiences of do^^aicasting and up- 
 lifting.' And in Rutherford's fii'st letter to this 
 Earlston, written from Anwoth in iGsG, he says, in 
 that lofty oracular way of his, 'Jesus Christ has 
 said that Alexander Gordon must lead the ring in 
 Galloway in witnessing a good conscience.' This, 
 no doubt, refers to the prosecution that Gordon was 
 at that moment undergoing at the hands of the 
 Bisliop of Glasgow for refusing to admit a nominee 
 of the Bishop into the pulpit of a reclaiming parish. 
 It would have gone still Avorse with Earlston than it 
 did had not Lord Lome, the true patron of the 
 parish, taken his place beside Earlston at the 
 Bishop's bar, and testified his entire approval of all 
 that Earlston had done. With all that, the case 
 did not end till Earlston was banished beyond the 
 Tay for his resistance to the will of the Bishop of 
 Glasgow. This all took place in the early half 
 of the seventeenth century, so that Di*. Robert 
 Buclianan might with more correctness have en- 
 titled his able book ' The Two Hundred Years' 
 Conflict' than 'Tlic Ten,' so early was tlie battle 
 for Non-Intrusion begun in Galloway. Alexander 
 
ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON 89 
 
 Gordon was a Free Churchman 200 years before 
 the Disruption, and Lord Lome was the forerunner 
 of those evangelical and constitutional noblemen and 
 gentlemen in Scotland who helped so much to carry 
 through the Disruption of 1843. We find both Lord 
 Lome, and Earlston his factor, sitting as elders 
 beside one another in the Glasgow Assembly of 
 l638, and then we find Earlston the member for 
 Galloway in the Parliament of l641. 
 
 We do not know exactly on what occasion it was 
 that Earlston refused to accept the knighthood that 
 was offered him by the Crown ; but we seem to hear 
 the old Wycliffite come back again in his great- 
 grandson as he said, ' No, your Majesty, excuse and 
 pardon me ; but no.' Alexander Gordon felt that 
 it would be an everlasting dishonour to him and to 
 his house to let his shoulder be touched in knight- 
 hood by a sword that was wet, and that would soon 
 be still more wet, with the best blood in Scotland. 
 'No, your Majesty, no.' 
 
 Almost all that we are told about Earlston in the 
 histories of his time bears out the greatness of his 
 spirit ; that, and the stories that gives rise to, take 
 the eye of the ordinary historian ; but good John 
 Livingstone, though not a great historian in other 
 respects, is by far the best historian of that day for 
 our purpose. John Livingstone's Characteristics is 
 a perfect gallery of spiritual portraits, and the two 
 or three strokes he gives to Alexander Gordon 
 make him stand out impressively and memorably to 
 all who understand and care for the things of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 ' A man of great spirit, but much subdued by in- 
 
90 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ward exercise.' I do not need to tell you what 
 exercise is — at least bodily exercise. All that a 
 man does to draw out, develop, and healthfully 
 occupy his bodily powers in walking, riding, running, 
 wrestling, carrying burdens, and leaping over ob- 
 stacles — all that is called bodily exercise, and some 
 part of that is absolutely necessaiy every day for 
 the health of the body and for the continuance and 
 the increase of its strength. But we are not all body ; 
 we are soul as well, and much more soul than body. 
 Bodily exercise profiteth little, says the Apostle, — 
 compared, that is, with the exercise of the soul, of 
 the mind, and of the heart. Now, Alexander 
 Gordon was such an athlete of the heart that all 
 who knew him saw well what exercise he must have 
 gone thi'ough before he was subdued in his high 
 mind and proud spirit to be so humble, so meek, so 
 silent, so unselfish, and so full of godliness and 
 brotherly kindness — what a world of inward exercise 
 all that bespoke ! Alexander Gordon's patience 
 under wrong, liis low esteem of himself and of all 
 he did, his miraculous power over himself in the for- 
 giveness of enemies and in the forgetfulness of 
 injuries, his contentment amid losses and disappoint- 
 ments, his silence when other men were bursting to 
 speak, and his openness to be told that when he 
 did speak he had spoken rashly, unadvisedly, and 
 offensively — in all that Earlston M'as a conspicuous 
 example of what inward exercise carried on with 
 sufficient depth and through a sufficiently long life 
 will do even for a man of a hot temjier and a jiroud 
 heart. Alexander Gordon had, to begin with, a 
 large heart. A large heart was a family possession of 
 
ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON 91 
 
 tlie Gordons ; the fathers had it and the mothers 
 had it ; and whatever came and went in the family 
 estate, the Gordon heart was always entailed unim- 
 paired — increased indeed — upon the children. And 
 after some generations of true religion, inwardly 
 and deeply exercising the Gordon heart, it almost 
 came as a second nature to our Gordon to take to 
 lieart all that happened to him, and to exercise his 
 large and deep heart yet moi'e thoroughly with it. 
 The affairs of the family, the affairs of the estate, 
 the affairs of the Church, his duties as a landlord, a 
 f^irmer, a heritor, and a factor, and the persecutions 
 and sufferings that all these things brought upon 
 him, some of which we know — all that found its 
 way into Earlston's wide and deep and still un- 
 sanctified heart. And then, there is a law and a 
 provision in the life of grace that all those men come 
 to discover who live before God as Earlston lived, a 
 provision that secures to such men's souls a depth, 
 and an inwardness, and an increasing exercise that 
 carries them on to reaches of inwai'd sanctification 
 that the ruck and run of so-called Christians know 
 nothing about, and are incapable of knowing. 
 
 Such men as Earlston, while the daily rush of 
 outward things is let in deeply into their hearts, 
 are not restricted to these things for the ful- 
 ness of their inward exercise ; their own hearts, 
 though there were no outward world at all, would 
 sufficiently exercise them to all the gifts and graces 
 and attainments of the profoundest spiritual life. 
 For one thing, when once Earlston had begun to 
 keep watch over his own heart in the matter of its 
 motives — it was David Dickson, one fast-day at 
 
92 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Irvine, on 1 Sam. ii.j who first taught Gordon to 
 watch his motives — from that day Rutherford and 
 Livingstone, and all his family, and all his fellow- 
 elders saw a change in their friend that almost 
 frightened them. There was after that such a far- 
 off tone in his letters, and such a far-off look in his 
 eyes, and such a far-off sound in his voice as they all 
 felt must have come from some great, and, to them, 
 mysterious advance in his spiritual life ; but he never 
 told even his son William what it was that had of 
 late so softened and quieted his proud and stormy 
 heart. But, all the time, it was his motives. The 
 baseness of his motives even when he did what it 
 was but his duty and his praise to do, that quite 
 killed Earlston every day. The loathsomeness of a 
 heart that hid such motives in its unguessed depths 
 made him often weep in the woods which his grand- 
 father had sanctified by his Bible readings a century 
 before. Rutherford saw with the glance of genius 
 what was going on in his friend's heart, when, in 
 one letter, not referring to himself at all, Earlston 
 suddenly said, ' If Lucifer himself would but look 
 deep enough and long enough into his own heart, 
 the sight of it would make him a little child.' 
 ' Did not I say,' burst out Rutherford, as he read, 
 ' that Alexander Gordon would lead the ring in 
 Galloway ? ' 
 
 Earlston frightened into silence the Presbytery 
 of Kirkcudbright on one occasion also, Avhen at 
 their first meeting after he had spoken out so 
 bravely before the king and the Parliament, and 
 they were to move him a vote of thanks, he cried 
 out : ' Fathers and brethren, the heart is deceitful 
 
ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON 93 
 
 above all things, and desperately wicked, and you 
 do not know it. For I had a deep, malicious, re- 
 vcnjjjeful motive in my heart behind all my fine and 
 patriotic speeches in Parliament. I hated Monti'ose 
 more than I loved the freedom of the Kirk. Spare 
 me, therefore, the sentence of putting that act of 
 shame on your books ! ' It was discoveries like this 
 that accumulated in John Livingstone's note-book 
 till he blotted out all his instances and left only the 
 blessed result, ' Alexander Gordon, a man of great 
 spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise, and 
 who was visited Avith most rare experiences of 
 downcasting and uplifting.' No doubt, dear John 
 Livingstone ; we can well believe it. Too rare with 
 us, alas ! but every day with your noble friend ; 
 every day and every night, when he lay down and 
 when he rose up. His very dreams often cast him 
 down all day after them ; for he said. If my heart 
 were not one of the chambers of hell itself, such 
 hateful thinffs would not stalk about in it when the 
 watchman is asleep. Downcastings ! downcastings ! 
 Yes, down to such depths of self-discovery and 
 self-detestation and self-despair as compelled his 
 Heavenly Master to give commandment that His 
 prostrate servant should he lifted up as few men on 
 the eai-th have ever been lifted up, or could bear to 
 be. Yes ; they were rare experiences both of down- 
 castings and of upliftings ; when such downcastings 
 and upliftings become common the end of this 
 world will have come, and with it the very Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 The last sight we see of Alexander Gordon in 
 this world is after his Master has given command- 
 
94 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ment that the hist touch be put to His servant's 
 subdued and chiklHke humlHty. The old saint is 
 sitting in his grandfather's chair and his wife is 
 feeding him Hke a weaned child. John Livingstone 
 tells that Mr. John Smith, a minister in Teviot- 
 dale, had all the Psalms of David by heart, and that 
 instead of a curtailed, monotonous, and mechanical 
 grace before meat he always repeated a whole Psalm. 
 Earlston must have remembered once chning in the 
 Manse of Maxton at a Communion time; for, as his 
 tender-handed wife took her place beside his chair 
 to feed her helpless husband, he always lifted up his 
 palsied hand and always said to himself, to her, and 
 above all, to God, the 131st Psalm — 
 
 ' As child of mother weaned ; my soul 
 Is like a weaned child ; ' 
 
 till all the godly households in Galloway knew the 
 131st Psalm as Alexander Gordon of Earlston's grace 
 before meat. 
 
WILLIAM GORDON OF EARLSTON 95 
 
 XII 
 EARLSTON THE YOUNGER 
 
 ' A renowned Gordon, a patriot, a good Christian, a confessor, 
 and, I may add, a martyr of Jesus Christ.' — Livingstone's 
 Characteristics. 
 
 HOMAS BOSTON in his most interest- 
 ing autobiography tells us about one of 
 his elders who, though a poor man, 
 had always 'a brow for a good cause.' 
 Now nothing could better describe 
 the Gordons of Earlston than just that saying. For 
 old Alexander Gordon, the founder of the family, 
 lifted up his brow for the cause of the Bible and the 
 Sabbath-day when his brow was as yet alone in the 
 whole of Galloway ; his great-grandson Alexander 
 also lifted up his brow in his day for the liberty of 
 public worship and the freedom of the courts and 
 congregations of the Church of Scotland, and paid 
 heavily for his courage ; and his son William, of 
 whom we are to speak to-night, showed the same 
 brow to the end. The Gordons, as John Howie 
 says, have all along made no small figure in our best 
 Scottish histoiy, and that because they had always 
 a brow for the best causes of their respective days. 
 As Rutherford also says, the truth kept the causey in 
 the south-west of Scotland largely through the in- 
 telligence, the courage, and the true piety of the 
 Gordon house. 
 
96 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 While still living at home and assisting his father 
 in his faiins and fectorships, young Earlston was 
 already one of Rutherford's most intimate corre- 
 spondents. In a kind of reflex way we see what 
 kind of head and heart and character young Earlston 
 must already have had from the letters that Ruther- 
 ford wrote to him. If we are to judge of the 
 character and attainments and intelligence of Ruther- 
 ford's correspondents by the letters he wrote to 
 them, then I should say that William Gordon of 
 Earlston must have been a remarkable man very 
 early in life, both in the miderstanding and the 
 experience of divine things. One of the Aberdeen 
 letters especially, nmnbered 181 in Dr. Andrew 
 Bonar's edition, for intellectual power, inwai'dness, 
 and eloquence stands almost if not altogether at the 
 head of all the 365 letters Ave have from Rutherford's 
 pen. He never wrote an abler or a better letter than 
 that he wrote to William Gordon the younger of 
 Earlston on the ]6th of Jmie 1637. Not James 
 Durham, not George Gillespie, not David Dickson 
 themselves ever got a stronger, deeper, or more 
 eloquent letter from Samuel Rutherford than did 
 young William Gordon of Airds and Earlston. 
 William Gordon was but a young country laird, 
 taken up twelve hours every day and six days every 
 week with fences and fami-houses, with horses and 
 cattle, but I think an examination ])aper on personal 
 religion could be set out of Rutherford's letters to 
 him that would stagger the candidates and the 
 doctors of divinity for this year of grace 1891. 
 'William Gordon was a gentlemen,' says John 
 Howie, 'of good parts and endo^v^nents; a man 
 
WILLIAM GORDON OF EARLSTON 97 
 
 devoted to religion and godliness.' Unfortunately 
 we do not possess any of the letters young Earlston 
 wrote to Rutherford. I wish we did. I would have 
 liked to have seen that letter of Gordon's that so 
 'refreshed' Rutherford's soul; and that other letter 
 of which Rutherford says that Gordon will be sure 
 to ' come speed ' with Christ if he writes to heaven 
 as well about his troubles as he had written to 
 Rutherford in Aberdeen. What a detestable time 
 that was in Scotland when such a man as William 
 Gordon was fined, and fined, and fined ; hunted out 
 of his house and banished, till at last he was shot by 
 the soldiers of the Crown and thrown into a ditch as 
 if he had been a highwayman. 
 
 The first thing that strikes me in reading Ruther- 
 ford's letters to young Earlston and to several other 
 young men of that day is the extraordinary frank- 
 ness and self-forgetfulness of the writer. He takes 
 his yomig correspondents into his confidence in a 
 remarkable way. He opens up his whole heart to 
 them. He goes back with a startling boldness and 
 unresei've and plainness of speech on his own youth, 
 and he lays himself alongside of his youthful corre- 
 spondents in a way that only a strong man and a 
 humble could afford to do. Let young men read 
 Rutherford's letters to young William Gordon of 
 Earlston, and to young John Gordon of Cardoness, 
 and to young Lord Boyd, and such like, and they 
 will be sui-prised to find that even Samuel Rutherford 
 was once a young man exactly like themselves, and 
 that he never forgot the days of his youth nor the 
 trials and temptations and transgressions of those 
 perilous days. Let them read his Letters, and 
 
98 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 they will see that Rutherford could not only write 
 home to the deepest experiences of Lady Boyd and 
 Lady Kenmure and Marion M 'Naught, but that he 
 was quite as much at home with their sons and 
 daughters also. 
 
 Rutherford told young Earlston how ten-ibly he 
 had ' ravelled his o^^^l hesp ' in the days of his youth, 
 and he tells another of his correspondents that after 
 eighteen years he was not sure he had even yet got 
 his ravelled hesp put wholly right. Young Edin- 
 burgh gentlemen who have been born with the 
 silver spoon in their mouth will not understand what 
 a ravelled hesp is. But those who have been 
 brought up at the pirn-wheel in Thrums, and in 
 suchlike hand-loom to^vms, have the advantage of 
 some of their fellow-worshippers to-night. They do 
 not need to turn to Dr. Bonar's Glossaiy or to 
 Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary to find out what a 
 ravelled hesp is. They well remember the stem 
 yoke of their youth when they were sent supperless 
 to bed because they had ravelled their hesp, and 
 all the old times rush back on them as Rutherford 
 confesses to Earlston how recklessly he ravelled his 
 hesp when he was a student in Edinburgh, and how, 
 twenty times a day, he still i-avels it after he is 
 Christ's prisoner in Aberdeen. 
 
 When the hesp is ravelled the pirn is badly filled, 
 and then the shuttle is choked and arrested in the 
 middle of its flight, the M-eb is broken and knotted 
 and uneven, and the weaver is dismissed, or, at 
 best, he is fined in half his wages. And so, said 
 Rutherford, is it with the weaver and tlie web of 
 life, when a man's life-hcsp is ravelled in the morn- 
 
WILLIAM GORDON OF EARLSTON 99 
 
 ing of his days. I stood not long ago at the grave's 
 mouth of a dear and intimate friend of mine who 
 had fatally ravelled both his own hesp and that of 
 other people, till we had to get the grave-diggers to 
 take a cord and help us to bury him. Horace said 
 that in his day most men fled the empty cask ; and 
 all but two or three fled my poor friend's ravelled 
 hesp. He had recovered the lost thread befoi-e he 
 died, but his tangled life was past unravelling in 
 this world, and we ^\Tapped his ragged hesp around 
 him for a winding-sheet, and left him with Christ, 
 who so gi'aciously took the cumber of Rutherford's 
 ill-ravelled life also. Young men whose hesp still 
 runs even, and whose web is not yet torn, as Ruther- 
 ford says to Earlston, ' Make conscience of your 
 thoughts and study in everything to mortify your 
 lusts. Wash your hands in innocency, and God, who 
 knoweth what you have need of before you ask 
 Him, will Himself lead you to encompass His holy 
 altar, and thus to enter the harbour of a holy home 
 and an unravelled life,' 
 
 Rutherford's Lettei'S are all gleaming with illus- 
 trations, some homely enough, like the ill-ravelled 
 hesp, and some classically beautiful, like the arrow 
 that has gone beyond the bowman's mastery. Writ- 
 ing to young Lord Boyd about seeking Christ in 
 youth, and about the manifold advantages of an 
 early and a complete conversion, Rutherford says: 
 ' It is easy to set an arrow right before the string is 
 drawn, but when once the arrow is in the air the 
 bowman has lost all power over it.' Look around at 
 the men and women beside you and see how true 
 that is. Look at those whose arrow is shot, and see 
 
100 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 how impossible it is for them, even when they wish 
 it, either to call their arrow back or to correct its 
 erring flight. And thank God that you are still 
 in your youth, and that the arrow of your future life 
 is not yet shot. And while your arrow still lies 
 trembling on the string be sure your face is in the 
 right direction and your aim well taken. Rutherford, 
 with all his experience and all his frankness and all 
 his eloquence, could not tell his young corre- 
 spondents half the advantages of an early conver- 
 sion. Nor can I tell you half of the changes for 
 good that would immediately take place in you with 
 an early, immediate, and complete conversion. 
 Perhaps the very first thing some of you would do 
 would be to get a new minister and to join a new 
 church. Then on the week-day some of you would 
 at once leave your present business, and seek a new 
 means of livelihood in which you could at least 
 keep your hands and your conscience clean. Then 
 you would choose a new friend and a new lover, or 
 else you would get God to do for them what He 
 has been so good as to do for you, give them a new 
 heart with which to weave their hesp and shoot 
 their arrow. You would read new books and new 
 journals, or, else, you would read the old books and 
 the old journals in a new way. The Sabbath-day 
 would become a new day to you, the Bible a new 
 book, and your whole future a new outlook to you ; 
 ■ — but why particularise and specify, when all old 
 things would pass away, and all things would become 
 new ? Oh dear young men of Edinburgh, and 
 young men come up to Edinburgh to get your bow 
 •\vell strung and your arrow well winged, look well 
 
WILLIAM GORDON OF EARLSTON 101 
 
 before you let go the string, for, once your arrow is 
 shot, you camiot recall it so as to take a second aim. 
 With an early and a complete conversion you would 
 have the advantage also of having your whole life 
 for growth in grace and for the knowledge of your- 
 self, of the word of God and of Jesus Christ ; for the 
 formation of your character also, and for the service 
 of God and of your generation. And then when 
 your friends met around your grave, instead of 
 hiding you and your ravelled hesp away in shame 
 and silence, they would stand, a worshipping crowd, 
 saying over you : ' Those that be planted in the 
 house of the Lord shall floui'ish in the courts of our 
 God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age, 
 they shall be fat and flourishing.' 
 
 And then, like the true and sure guide to heaven 
 that Rutherford was, he led his young corre- 
 spondents on from strength to strength, and from 
 one degree and one depth of grace to another, as 
 thus, 'Common honesty will not take a man to 
 heaven. Many are beguiled with this, that they are 
 clear of scandalous sins. But the man that is not 
 born again cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 The righteous are scarcely saved. God save me 
 from a disappointment, and send me salvation. Speer 
 at Christ the way to heaven, for salvation is not 
 soon found ; many miss it. Say, I must be saved, 
 cost me w'hat it will.' And to a nameless young 
 man, supposed to be one of his Anwoth parishioners, 
 he writes, ' So my real advice is that you acquaint 
 yourself with prayer, and with searching the 
 Scriptures of God, so that He may shew you the 
 only true way that will bring rest to your soul. 
 
102 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Ordinary faith and country holiness will not save 
 you. Take to heart in time the weight and worth of 
 an immortal soul ; think of death, and of judgment at 
 the back of death, that you may be saved. — Your 
 sometime pastor, and still friend in God, S. R.' 
 The civility of the New Jerusalem, he is continually 
 reminding his genteel and correct-living correspon- 
 dents, is a very different thing from the civility of 
 Edinburgh, or Aberdeen, or St. Andi-ews. And so 
 it is, else it would not be worth both Christ and all 
 Christian men both living and dying for it. 
 
 And this leads Rutherford on, in the last place, to 
 say what Earlston, and Cardoness, and Lord Boyd^ 
 while yet in their unconversion and their early con- 
 version, would not understand. For, writing to 
 Robert Stuart, the son of the Pi'ovost of Ajt, 
 Rutherford says to him, ' Labour constantly for a 
 sound and lively sense of sin,' and to the Laird of 
 Cally, ' Take pains with your sah^ation, for without 
 much wrestling and sweating it is not to be won.' 
 A sound and lively sense of sin. As we read 
 these sound and lively letters, we come to see and 
 understand something of what their writer means 
 by that. He means that Stuart and Cally, Cardoness 
 and Earlston, young laymen as they were, were to 
 labour in sin and in their own hearts till they came 
 to see something of the ungodliness of sin, some- 
 thing of its fiendishness, its malignity, its loathe- 
 someness, its hell-deservingness, its hell-alreadyness. 
 ' All liis religious illuminations, affections, and 
 comforts,' sa3's Jonathan Edwards of David Brainerd, 
 ' were attended with evangelical humiliation, that is 
 to say, with a deep sense of his own despicableness 
 
WILLIAM GORDON OF EARLSTON 103 
 
 and odioiisness, his ig)iorance, ])ndej vileness, and 
 pollution. He looked on himself as the least and 
 the meanest of all saints, yea, very often as the 
 vilest and worst of mankind.' But let Rutherford 
 and Brainerd and Edwards pour out their blackest 
 vocabulary upon sin, and still sin goes and will go 
 without its proper name. Only let those Christian 
 noblemen and gentlemen to whom Rutherford WTote, 
 labour in their own hearts all their daysfor some sound 
 and lively and j^iercing sense of this unspeakably evil 
 thing, and they will know, as Rutherford wrote to 
 William Gordon, that they have got to some sound 
 and lively sense of sin Avhen they feel that there is 
 no one on earth or in hell that has such a sinful 
 heart as they have. The nearer to heaven you get, 
 the nearer will you feel to hell, said Rutherford to 
 young Earlston, till, all at once, the door will open 
 over you, and, or ever you are aware, you will be for 
 ever with Christ and the blessed; as it indeed was with 
 Wilham Gordon at the end. For as he was on his 
 way to join the Covenanters at Both well Bridge, he 
 was shot by a gang of English dragoons and flung 
 into a ditch. Jesus Christ, says Rutherford, went 
 suddenly home to His father's house all over with 
 his own blood, and it was surely enough for William 
 Gordon that he went home like his Master. 
 
104 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 XIII 
 ROBERT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX 
 
 'A single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed in 
 parliaments and public meetings after the year xd^)^.' —Living- 
 stone. 
 
 * Hall-binks are slippery.' — Gordon to Rutherford. 
 
 OBERT GORDON of Knockbrex, in 
 his religious character, was a combina- 
 tion of Old Honest and Mr. Fearing 
 in the Pilgrim's Progress. He was as 
 single-hearted and straightforward as 
 that worthy old gentleman was who early trysted 
 one Good-Conscience to meet him and give him his 
 hand over the river which has no bridge ; and he 
 was at the same time as troublesome to Samuel 
 Rutherford, his minister and correspondent, as 
 Greatheart's most troublesome pilgrim was to him. 
 In two well-chosen words John Livingstone tells us 
 the deep impression that the laird of Knockbrex 
 made on the men of his day. With a quite Scrip- 
 tural insight and terseness of expression, Livingstone 
 simply says that Robert Gordon was the most 
 * single-hearted and painfid ' of all the Christian men 
 known to his widely-acquainted and clear-sighted 
 biograjiher. 
 
 Now there may possibly be some need that the 
 epithet ' painful ' should be explained, as it is here 
 applied to this good man, but everybody knows 
 
ROBERT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX 105 
 
 without any explanation -what it is for any man to 
 be 'single-hearted.' This was the fine character 
 our Lord gave to Nathanael when He saluted him 
 as an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile. It 
 is singleness of heart that so clears up the under- 
 standing and the judgment that, as our Lord said 
 at another time, it fills a man's W'hole soul with 
 light. And Paul gives it as the best character that 
 a servant can bring to or carry away from his 
 master's house, that he is single-hearted and not an 
 eye-servant in all that he says and does. I keep 
 near me on my desk a book called Roget's Thesaurus, 
 which is a rich treasure-house of the English 
 language. And though I thought I knew what 
 Livingstone meant when he called Robert Gordon 
 a single-hearted man, at the same time I felt sure 
 that Roget -would help me to see Gordon better. 
 And so he did. For when I had opened his book at 
 tlie word ' single-hearted,' he at once told me that 
 Knockbrex was an open, frank, natural, straight- 
 forward, altogether trustworthy man. He was 
 above-board, outspoken, downright, blunt even, and 
 bald, always calling a spade a spade. And with 
 each new synonym Robert Gordon's honest portrait 
 stood out clearer and clearer before me, till I thought 
 I saw him, and wished much that we had more 
 single-hearted men like him in the public and 
 the private life of our day. 
 
 And then, as to his * painfulness,' we have that 
 so well expounded and illustrated in John Bunyan's 
 Mr. Fearing, that all I need to do is to recall that 
 inimitable character to your happy memory. ' He 
 was a man that had the root of the matter in him, 
 
106 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 but at tlie same time he was tlie most troublesome 
 pilgrim that ever I met with in all my days. He 
 lay roaring at the Slough of Despond for above a 
 month together. He would not go back neither. 
 The Celestial City, he said he should die if he came 
 not to it, and yet Avas dejected at every difficulty and 
 stumbled at every straw. He had, I think, a Slough 
 of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried 
 everywhere with him, or else he could never have 
 been as he was.' Yes, both Mr. Fearing and the 
 laird of Knockbrex were painful Christians. That 
 is to say, they took pains, special and exceptional 
 painsj with the salvation of their own souls. They 
 took their religion with tremendous earnestness. 
 They would have pleased Paul had they lived in his 
 day, for they both worked out their own salvation 
 Avith fear and trembling. They looked on sin and 
 death and hell with absorbing and overwhelming 
 solemnity, and they set themselves with all their 
 might to escape from these direst of evils. Pardon 
 of sin, peace with God, a clean heart and a Christian 
 character, all these things w ere their daily prayer ; 
 for these things they Avrestled many a night like 
 Jacob at the Jabbok. The day of death, the day of 
 judgment, heaven and hell — these things were more 
 present with them than the things they saw and 
 handled every day. And this was why they were 
 such troublesome pilgrims. This was why they 
 sometimes stumbled at what their neighbours called 
 a straw ; and this Avas why they feared neither king 
 nor bishop, man nor devil, they feared God and sin 
 and death and hell so much. This was Avhy, w'hile all 
 other men were so full of torpid assurance, they still 
 
UOBEUT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX 107 
 
 carried, to the annoyance and anger of all their serene- 
 minded neighbours, such a Slough of Despond in 
 tlieir anxious minds. This was why sin so poisoned 
 all their possessions and enjoyments that Greatheart 
 could not get Fearing, any more than Rutherford 
 could get Gordon, out of the Valley of Humiliation, 
 And this was why Gordon so often turned upon 
 Rutherford when he Avas exalted above measure, and 
 reminded his minister, in the old Scottish proverb, 
 that 'Hall-binks are slippery.' Seats of honour, 
 Mr. Samuel, are unsafe seats for unsanctified sinners. 
 Ecstasies do not last, and they leave the soul weaker 
 and darker than they found it. It is a comely thing 
 even for a saint to be well-clothed about with 
 humility, and the deepest valley is safer and seemlier 
 walking for a lame man than the mountain-top ; and 
 soon, till Rutherford admitted that Robert Gordon's 
 warnings were neither impertinent nor imtimeous. 
 The sin-stricken laird of Knockbrex was like Mi-. 
 Fearing at the House Beautiful. When all the other 
 pilgrims sat down without fear at the table, that so 
 timid and so troublesome pilgrim, remembering the 
 proverb, stole away behind the screen and found his 
 meat and his drink in overhearing the good conver- 
 sation that went on in the banquet-hall. Gordon 
 could not understand all Rutherfoi-d's joy. He did 
 not altogether like it. He did not answer the ecsbitic 
 letters so promptly as he answered those which were 
 composed on a soberer key. He was a blunt, plain- 
 spoken, matter-of-fact man ; he immensely loved and 
 honoured his minister, but he could not help re- 
 minding him after one of his specially enraptured 
 letters that ' Hall-binks are slippery seats.' The 
 
108 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 golden mean lay somewhere between the hall-biuk 
 and the ash-pit; somewhere between Rutherford's 
 ecstasy and Gordon's depi*ession. But as the Guide 
 said in the exquisite conversation, the wise God will 
 have it so, some must pipe and some must weep : 
 and, for my part, I care not for that profession that 
 begins not with heaviness of mind. Only, here was 
 the imperfection of Mr. Fearing and Robert Gordon, 
 that they would play upon no other music but this 
 to their latter end. So much so, that the thick 
 woods of Knockbrex are said to give out to this day 
 the sound of the sackbut to those who have their 
 ears set to such music ; there are men in that 
 countiy who say that they still hear it when they 
 pass the plantations of Knockbrex alone at night. 
 Knockbrex is now a fine modern mansion that is 
 sometimes let for the summer to city people seeking 
 solitude and rest. Among these thick woods and 
 along these silent sands Samuel Rutherford and 
 Robert Gordon were wont to walk and talk together. 
 And here still a man who wishes it may be free from 
 the noise and the huriying of this life. Here a man 
 shall not be let and hindered in his contemplations 
 as in other places he is apt to be. There are woods 
 here that he Avho loves a pilgrim's life may safely 
 walk in. The soil also all hereabouts is rich and 
 fruitful, and, under good management, it brings 
 forth by handfuls. The very shepherd boys here 
 live a merry life, and wear more of the herb called 
 heart' s-ease in their bosoms than he that is clad in 
 silk and velvet. What a rich inheritance to the 
 right heir is the old estate of Knockbrex ! What an 
 opportunity, and what an education, it must be to 
 
ROBERT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX 109 
 
 tenant Knockbrex with recollection, -with under- 
 standing, and with sympathy even for a season. 
 
 Robert Gordon would very willingly have remained 
 behind the screen all his days. He would very 
 willingly have given himself up to the care of his 
 estate, to the up-bringing of his children, and to the 
 working out of his own salvation, but such a man as 
 he now was could not be hid. The stone that is fit 
 for the Avail is not let lie in the ditch. We have a 
 valuable letter of Rutherford's addressed to Marion 
 M' Naught about the impending election of a 
 commissioner for Pai-liament for the town of Kirk- 
 cudbright. In that letter he urges her to try to 
 get her husband, William Fullarton, to stand for the 
 vacant seat. ' It is an honourable and necessary 
 service,' he says. And speaking of one of the 
 candidates, he further says : ' I fear he has neither 
 the skill nor the authority for the post.' Now, it 
 was either at this election, or it was at the next 
 election, that an influential deputation of the gentry 
 and burgesses and ministers and elders of the 
 district waited on Robert Gordon to get him to 
 stand for one of the vacant seats in Galloway ; and 
 once he was chosen and had shown himself to the 
 world he was never let return again to his home 
 occupations. ' He was much employed in those 
 years,' says Livingstone, ' in parliaments and public 
 meetings.' 
 
 There are some good men among us who think 
 that the world is so bad that it is fit for nothing 
 but to be abandoned to the devil and his angels 
 altogether, and that a genuine man of God is too 
 good to be made a member of Parliament or to be 
 
110 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 much seen on the platforms of pubUe meetings. 
 Such was not Samuel Rutherford's judgment, as will 
 be seen in his 36th Letter. And such was 
 not Robert Gordon's judgment, when he left the 
 woods and fields of Knockbrex and gave himself 
 wholly up to the politics of his entangled and 
 distressful day. What he would have said to the 
 summons had the marches been already redd between 
 Lex and Rex, and had the affairs of the Church of 
 Christ not been still too much mixed up with the 
 affairs of the State, I do not know. Only, as long 
 as the Crown and the Parliament had their hands 
 so deeply in the things of the Church, Knockbrex 
 was not hard to persuade to go to Parliament to 
 watch over interests that were dearer to him than 
 life, or family, or estate. Robert Gordon carried 
 the old family brow with him into all the debates 
 and dangers of that day ; and he added to all that 
 a singleness of heart and a painstaking mind all his 
 own. And it was no wonder that such a man was 
 much in demand at such a time. In our own far 
 happier time what a mark does a member of 
 Parliament still make, or a speaker at public 
 meetings, who is seen to be single in his heart, 
 and is at constant pains with himself and with all 
 his duties. It is at bottom our doubleness of heart 
 and our lack of sufficient pains with ourselves and 
 with the things of truth and righteousness that so 
 divide us up into bitter factions, hateful and hating 
 one another. And when all our public men are 
 like Robert Gordon in the singleness of their aims 
 and their motives, and when they are at their 
 utmost pains to get at the truth about all the 
 
ROBERT GORDON OF KNOCKBREX 111 
 
 subjects tliey are called to deal ■with, party, if not 
 parliamentary government, ■with all its vices and 
 mischiefs, ■will have passed a^way, and the absolute 
 Monarchy of the Kingdom of Heaven ■will have 
 come. 
 
 So much, then, is told us of Robert Gordon in 
 few words : ' A single-hearted and painful Christian, 
 much employed in parliaments and public meetings.' 
 To which may be added this extract taken out of 
 the Minute Book of the Covenanters' War Com- 
 mittee : ' The same day there was dely verit to the 
 said commissioners by Robert Gordoun of Knockbrax 
 sex silver spoones Scots Avorke, weightan vi. unce 
 xii. dropes.' Had Knockbrex also, like the Earlstons, 
 been fined by the bishops and harried by the 
 dragoons till he had nothing left to deliver to the 
 Commissioners but six silver spoons and a single 
 heart .'' It would seem so. Like the woman in the 
 Gospel, Gordon gave to the Covenant all that he 
 had. Had Robert Gordon been a Highlander instead 
 of a Lowlander; had he been a Ross-shire crofter 
 instead of a small laird in Wigtown, he would have 
 been one of the foremost of the well-known 'men.' 
 His temperament and his experiences would have 
 made him a prince among the ministers and the men 
 of the far north. Wei'e it nothing else, the pains he 
 spent on the growth of the life of grace in his own 
 soul, — that would have canonised him among the 
 saintliest of those saintly men. He would have set 
 the Question on many a Communion Friday, and 
 the Question in his hands would not have concerned 
 itself with surface matters. Was it because Ruther- 
 ford had now gone nearer that great region of 
 
112 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 experimental casuistry that he started that excellent 
 Friday problem in a letter from Aberdeen to 
 Knockbrex in 1637? With Rutherford everything, 
 — the most doctrinal, experimental, ecclesiastical, 
 political, all — ran always up into Christ, His love and 
 His loveableness. ' Is Chi'ist more to be loved for 
 gaining for us justification or sanctification ? ' Such 
 was one of the questions Rutherford set to his 
 correspondent in the south. Did any of you north- 
 country folk ever hear that question debated out 
 before one of your Highland communions ? If you 
 care to see how Rutherford the minister and 
 Knockbrex the man debated out their debt to Jesus 
 Christ, read the priceless correspondence that passed 
 between them, and especially, read the 170th 
 Letter. But first, and before that, do you either 
 know, or care to know, what either justification 
 or sanctification is ? When you do know and do 
 care for these supreme things, then you too will 
 in time become a single-hearted and painstaking 
 Christian like Robert Gordon, or else an ecstatic 
 and enraptured Christian like Samuel Rutherford. 
 And that again will be very much according to your 
 natural temperament, your attainments, and your 
 experiences. And nothing in this world will there- 
 after interest and occupy you half so much as just 
 those questions that ai*e connected first with all 
 that Christ is in Himself and all that He has done 
 for you, and then with the signs and the fruits of 
 the life of grace in your own souls. 
 
JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO 113 
 
 XIV 
 JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO 
 
 ' Remember these seven things. ' — Rutherford. 
 
 jHERE were plenty of cold Covenanters, 
 as they were called, in Kirkcudbright 
 in John Gordon's day, but the laird 
 of Rusco was not one of them, Rusco 
 Castle was too near Anwoth Kirk 
 and Anwoth Manse, and its owner had had Samuel 
 Rutherford too long for his minister and his near 
 neighbour to make it possible for him to be 'ane 
 cold covenanter quha did not do his dewtie in 
 eveiything committed to his charge thankfullie and 
 willinglie.' We find Gordon of Rusco giving good 
 reasons indeed, as he thought, why he should not be 
 sent out of the Stewartry on the service of the 
 covenant, but the Avar committee ' expelled his 
 resounes' and instantly commanded his services. 
 And from all we can gather out of the old Minute 
 Book, Rusco played all the noble part that Ruther- 
 ford expected of him in the making of Scotland and 
 in the salvation of her kirk. 
 
 Like the Psalmist in the hundred and second 
 Psalm, we take pleasure in the stones of Rusco 
 Castle, and we feel a favour to the very dust there- 
 of. Even in Rutherford's day that rugged old pile 
 
 H 
 
114 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 was sacred and beautiful to the eyes of Rutherford 
 and his people, because of what the grace of God 
 had wrought within its walls ; and, both for that, 
 and for much more like that, both in Rutherford's 
 own day and after it, we also look with awe and 
 with desire at the ruined old mansion-house. A 
 hundred years before John Gordon bade Rusco 
 farewell for heaven, we find a friend of John Knox's 
 on his deathbed there, and having a departure 
 from his deathbed administered to him there as 
 confident and as full of a desire to depart as John 
 Knox's own. ' The Last and Heavenly Speeches of 
 John, Viscount Kenmure ' also still echo through the 
 deserted rooms of Rusco, and after he had gone 
 up from it we find still another Gordon there with 
 his wife and children and farm-tenants, all warm 
 Covenanters, and all continuing the Rusco tradition 
 of godliness and virtue. At the same time Samuel 
 Ruthei-ford was not the man to take it for granted 
 that John Gordon and his household were all saved 
 and home in heaven because they lived within such 
 sacred walls and were all chui'ch members and warm 
 Covenanters. He was only the more anxious about 
 the Gordon family because they had such an ancestry 
 and were all bidding so fair to leave behind them 
 such a posterity. And thus it is that, from his isle 
 of Patmos, Samuel Rutherford, like the apostle John 
 to his seven churches, sends to John Gordon seven 
 things that are specially to be remembered and laid 
 to heart by the laird of Rusco. 
 
 1. Remember, in the first place, my dear brother, 
 those most solemn and too much forgotten words 
 of our Lord, that there are but few that be saved. 
 
JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO 115 
 
 Is that really so ? said a liberal-minded listener to 
 our Lord one day. Is that really so, that there are 
 but few that be saved ? Mind your o-\vni business, 
 was our Loi-d's answer. For there are many lost by 
 making their own and other men's salvation a 
 matter of dialectic and debate in the study and in 
 the Avorkshop rather than of silence, and godly 
 fear, and a holy life. Yes, there are few that be 
 saved, said Samuel Rutherford, writing again the 
 same year to Farmer Henderson, who occupied the 
 home-steading of Rusco. Men go to heaven in 
 ones and twos. And that you may go there, even if 
 it has to be alone, love your enemies and stand to the 
 truth I taught you. Fear no man, fear God only. 
 Seek Christ every day. You will find Him alone 
 in the fields of Rusco. Seek a broken heart for sin, 
 for, otherwise, you may seek Him all your days, but 
 you will never find Him. And it is not in our New 
 Testament only, and in such books as Rutherford's 
 Letters only, that we are reminded of the loneliness 
 of our road to heaven ; in a hundred places in the 
 wisest and deepest books of the heathen world we 
 read the same warning ; notably in the Greek 
 Tablet of Cebes, which reads almost as if it had 
 been cut out of the Sermon on the Mount. ' Do 
 you not see,' says the old man, 'a little door, and 
 beyond the door a way which is not much crowded, 
 for very few are going along it, it is so difficult of 
 access, so rough, and so stony ? ' ' Yes,' answers 
 the stranger. 'And does there not seem,' subjoins 
 the old man, ' to be a high hill and the road up it 
 very narrow, with precipices on each side ? Well, 
 that is the way that leads to the true instruction.' 
 
Il6 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ' A cause is not good,' says Rutherford in another of 
 his pungent books, ' because it is followed by many. 
 Men come to Zion in ones and twos out of a whole 
 tribe, but they go to hell in their thousands. The 
 way to heaven is overgrown with grass ; there are 
 the traces of but few feet on that way, only you 
 may see here and there on it the footprints of 
 Christ's bloody feet to let you know that you are 
 not gone wrong but are still on the right way.' 
 
 2. Remember also that other word of our Lord, — 
 that heaven is like a fortress in this, that it must be 
 taken by force. Only our Lord means that the 
 force must not be done to the gates or the walls of 
 heaven, but to our own hard hearts and evil lives. 
 ' I find it hard to be a Christian,' writes Rutherford 
 to Rusco. ' There is no little thrusting and thring- 
 ing to get in at heaven's gates. Heaven is a strong 
 castle that has to be taken by force.' ' Oh to have 
 one day more in my pulpit in Aberdeen ! ' cried a 
 great preacher of that day when he was dying. 
 ' What Avould you do .'' ' asked another minister who 
 sat at his bedside. ' I Avould preach to the people 
 the difficulty of salvation,' said the dying man. ' Re- 
 member,' wrote Rutherford to Rusco from the same 
 city, ' Remember that it is violent sweating and 
 striving that alone taketh heaven.' 
 
 3. Remember also that there are many who start 
 well at the bottom of the hill who never get to the 
 top. We ministers and elders know that only too 
 well ; we do not need to be reminded of that. There 
 are the names of scores and scores of young communi- 
 cants on our session books of whom we well remember 
 how we boasted about them when they took the foot 
 
JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO 117 
 
 of the hill, but we never mention theii* names now, or 
 only with a blush and in a whisper. Some take to 
 the hill-foot at one age, and some at another ; some 
 for one reason and some for another. A bereavement 
 awakens one, a sickness — their OAvn or that of 
 some one dear to them — another ; a disappointment 
 in love or in business will sometimes do it ; a fall 
 mto sin will also do it; a good book, a good 
 sermon, a conversation with a friend who has been 
 some way up the hill ; many things may be made 
 use of to make men and women, and young men and 
 women, take a start toward a better life and a better 
 world. But for ten, for twenty, who so start not two 
 ever come to the top. ' Heaven is not next door,' 
 writes Rutherford to Rusco ; if it were we would all 
 be saved.' There was a well-known kind of Christians 
 m Rutherford's day that the English Puritans called 
 by the nick-name of the Temporaries ; and it is to 
 pluck Rusco from among them that Rutherford 
 writes to hira this admonitory letter. And there is 
 an equally well-known type of Christian in our day, 
 though I do not know that any one has so happily 
 nick-named him as yet. 
 
 'The Scriptures beguiled the Pharisees,' writes 
 Rutherford; and the Christian I refer to is self- 
 beguiled with the very best things in the Scriptures. 
 The cross is always in his mouth, but you will never 
 find it on his back. He has got, at least in language, 
 as far as the cross, but he remains there. He says 
 the burden is off his back, and he takes care that he 
 shall keep out of that kind of life that would put it 
 on again. He has been once pardoned, and he 
 takes his stand upon that. He strove hard till lie 
 
118 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 was converted, and he sometimes strives hard to get 
 other men brought to the same conversion. But 
 his conversion has been all exhausted in the mere 
 etymology of the act, for he has only turned round 
 in his religious life, he has not made one single step 
 of progress. But let one of the greatest masters of 
 true religion that ever taught the Church of Christ 
 speak to us on the subject of this gin-horse Christian. 
 ' The Scriptures,' says Jonathan Edwards, ' eveiy- 
 where represent the seeking, the striving, and the 
 labour of a Christian as being chiefly to be gone 
 througli after his conversion, and his conversion as 
 being but the beginning of the work. And almost 
 all that is said in the New Testament of men's 
 watching, giving earnest heed to themselves, running 
 the race that is set before them, striving and agonis- 
 ing, pressing forward, reaching forth, crying to God 
 night and day ; I say, almost all that is said in the 
 New Testament of these things is spoken of and is 
 directed to God's saints. Where these things are 
 applied once to sinners seeking salvation, they are 
 spoken of the saint's prosecution of their high calling 
 ten times. But many have got in these days into 
 a strange anti-scriptural way of having all their 
 striving and wrestling over before they are converted, 
 and so having an easy time of it afterwards.' 
 
 4. Remember, also, wrote Rutherford, to look up 
 the Scriptures and read and lay to heart the lessons 
 of Esau's life and Judas' s, of the life of Balaam, and 
 Saul, and Pharaoh, and Simon Magus, and Caiaphas, 
 and Ahab, and Jehu, and Herod, and the man in 
 Matthew viii. 19, and the apostates in Hebrews vi. 
 For all these were at best but watered brass and 
 
JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO II9 
 
 reprobate silver. ' One tl.ay,' writes Mrs. William 
 Veitch of Dumfries in her autobiography, 'having 
 been at prayer, and coming into the room where one 
 was reading a letter of Mr. Rutherford's directed to 
 one John Gordon of Rusco — giving an account of 
 how far one might go and yet prove a hypocrite and 
 miss heaven — it occasioned great exercise in me.' 
 Dx\ Andrew Ronar is no doubt entirely right when 
 lie says that this letter, now open before us, must 
 have been the heart-searching letter that caused that 
 God-fearing woman, fresh from her knees, so great 
 exercise. Let us share her great exercise, and in 
 due time we shall share her great salvation. Not 
 otherwise. 
 
 5. ' And remember,' he proceeds, ' what your 
 besetting sin may cost you in the end. I beseech 
 you therefore and obtest you in the Lord, to make 
 conscience of all rash and passionate oaths, of raging 
 and avenging anger, of night-drinking, of bad 
 company, of Sabbath-breaking, of hurting any under 
 you by word or deed, of hurting your veiy enemies. 
 Except you receive the Kingdom of God as a little 
 child, you cannot enter it. That is a word that should 
 make your great spirit fall.' ' If men allow themselves 
 in malice and envy,' writes Thomas Shepard, a con- 
 temporai-y of Rutherford's, 'or in wanton thoughts, 
 that will condemn them, even though their corrup- 
 tions do not break out in any scandalous way. Such 
 thoughts are quite sufficient evidence of a rotten 
 heai't. If a man allows himself in malice or in envy, 
 though he thinks he does it not, yet he is a hypocrite ; 
 if in his heart he allows it he cannot be a saint of 
 God. If there be one evil way, though there have 
 
120 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 been many reformations, the man is an ungodly man. 
 One way of sin is exception enough against any 
 man's salvation. A small shot will kill a man as 
 well as a large bullet ; a small leak let alone will 
 sink a ship, and a small, and especially a secret and 
 spiritual sin, will cost a man his soul.' 
 
 6. ' Remember, also, your shortening sand-glass.' 
 On the day when John Gordon was born a sand- 
 glass with his name Avritten upon it was filled, and 
 from that moment it began to run down before God 
 in heaven. For how long it was filled God who 
 filled it alone knew. Whether it was filled to run 
 out in an hour, or to run till Gordon was cut down 
 in mid-tjme of his days, or till he had attained to 
 his three-score years and ten, or whether it was to 
 run on to the labour and sorrow of four-score years, 
 not even his guardian angel knew, but God only. 
 And then beside that sand-glass a leaf, taken out of 
 the seven-sealed book, was laid open, on the top of 
 which was found written the as yet unbaptized name 
 of this new-born child. And under his name was 
 found written all that John Gordon was appointed and 
 expected to do while his sand-glass was still running. 
 His opening life as child and boy and man in Gallo- 
 way ; his entrance on Rusco ; his friendship with 
 Samuel Rutherford ; his duties to his family, to his 
 tenants, to his Church, and to the Scottish Covenant ; 
 the inward life he was commanded and expected to 
 live alone with God ; the seven things he was eveiy 
 day to remember ; the evangelical graces of heart and 
 life and character he was to be told and to be enabled 
 to put on ; the death he was to die, and the ' freehold ' 
 he was after all these things to enter on in heaven. 
 
JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO 121 
 
 And it is of that sand-glass that was at that moment 
 running so fast and so low within the veil that 
 Rutherford writes so often and so earnestly to the 
 so-forgetful laird of Rusco, And how solemnising 
 it is, if anything would solemnise our hard hearts, 
 tlvit we all have a sand-glass standing before God 
 with our names written upon it, and that it is 
 running out before God day and night unceasingly. 
 We shall all be too suddenly solemnised when the 
 last grain of our measured-out sand has dropped 
 down, and the blind Fury will come, and without 
 pity and without remorse will slit our thin-spun 
 life with her abhorred shears. And that whether 
 our life-work is finished or no, half-finished or no, or 
 not even begun. The night cometh, and the shears 
 with it, when no man can work. Our family must 
 then be left behind us, however they have been 
 brought up; our farm also, however it has been 
 worked ; our estate also, however it has been 
 managed; our pulpit, our pew, our church, our 
 character, and even our salvation, and we must, all 
 alone with God, face and account for the empty 
 sand-glass and the accusing book. Is it any wonder 
 that John Gordon's minister, when he was in the 
 spirit in Patmos, should write him as we here read } 
 What kind of a minister would he have been, and 
 what a sand-glass, and what a book of angry account 
 he would have had soon to face himself, if he had 
 let all his people in AnAvoth live on and suddenly 
 die in total forgetfulness of the sand and the shears, 
 the book of duty and the book of judgment. 
 ' Remember,' Rutherford wrote, ' remember and 
 misspend not your short sand-glass, for your forenoon 
 
122 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 is already spent, your afternoon has come, and your 
 night will be on you when you will not see to work. 
 Let your heart, therefore, be set upon finishing your 
 journey and summing up and laying out the accounts 
 of your life and the grounds of your death alone 
 before God.' 
 
 7. And, above all, remember that after you have 
 done all, it is the blood of Christ alone that will set 
 you down safely as a freeholder in Heaven. But 
 His blood, and your everyday remembrance of His 
 blood, and your everyday obligation to it, will surely 
 set you, John Gordon of Rusco on earth, so downi a 
 freeholder in heaven. 
 
 ' Soon shall the cup of glory 
 
 Wash down earth's bitterest woes, 
 Soon shall the desert briar 
 
 Break into Eden's Rose : 
 I stand upon His merit, 
 
 I know no other stand, 
 Not e'en where glory dwelleth 
 
 In Immaniiel's land.' 
 
BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY 123 
 
 XV 
 
 BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY 
 
 ' Die well.' — Rutherford, 
 
 )AILIE JOHN KENNEDY, of Ayr, 
 ■was the remarkable son of a remark- 
 able ffither. Old Hugh Kemiedy's 
 death-bed was for long a glorious 
 tradition among the godly in the 
 West of Scotland. The old saint was visited in his 
 last hours on earth with a joy that was unspeakable 
 and full of gloiy : the mere report of it made an 
 immense impression both on the Church and the 
 world. And his son John, who stood entranced 
 beside his father's chariot of fire, never forgot the 
 transporting sight. He did not need Rutherford's 
 warning never to forget his father's example and 
 his father's end. For John Kennedy was a 'choice 
 Christian,' as a well-known writer of that day calls 
 him. And he was not alone. There were many 
 choice Christians in that day in Scotland. Were 
 there ever more, for its size, in any land or in any 
 church on the face of the earth } I do not believe 
 there ever were. Next to that favoured land that 
 produced the Psalmists and the Prophets, I know 
 no land that, for its numbers, possessed so many 
 men and women of a profoundly spiritual experience, 
 
124 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 and of an adoring and heavenly mind, as Scotland 
 possessed in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies. The Wodrow volumes should be studied 
 throughout by eveiy lover of his church and his 
 country, and especially by every student of divinity 
 and church history. 
 
 But we need go no further than Samuel Ruther- 
 ford's letter-bag ; for, when we open it, what rich 
 treasures of the religious life pour out of it ! What 
 minds and what hearts those men and Avomen had ! 
 And how they gave up their whole mind and heax*t 
 to the life of godliness in the land, and to the life 
 of God in their own hearts ! How thin and poor 
 our religious life appears beside theirs ! What 
 minister in Scotland to-day could w^ite such letters ? 
 And to whom could he address them after they 
 were written .'' Was it the persecution .'' Was it 
 the new reformation doctrines ? Was it the mascu- 
 line and Pauline preaching : preaching, say, like 
 Robert Bruce's and Rutherford's that did it .-' What 
 was it that raised up in Scotland such a crop of ripe 
 and rich saints ? Who are these, and whence came 
 they } 
 
 Rutherford was always on the outlook for oppor- 
 tunities to employ his private pen for the conversion 
 of sinners, and for the comfort, the upbuilding, and 
 the holiness of God's people. From his manse at 
 Anwoth, from his prison at Aberdeen, from his 
 class-room at St. Andrews, and from the Jerusalem 
 Chamber at Westminster, his letter-bag went out 
 full of those messages, so warm, so tender, so power- 
 ful, to his multitudinous coiTCspondents. Public 
 events, domestic joys and soitows, personal matters, 
 
BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY 125 
 
 special providences, — to turn them all to a good 
 result Rutherford was always on the watch. 
 
 News had come to Rutherford's ears of an almost 
 fatal accident that Kennedy had had through his 
 boat being swept out to sea ; and that was too good 
 a chance to lose of trj'ing to touch his corre- 
 spondent's heart yet more deeply about death, and 
 the due preparation for it. Read his letter to John 
 Kennedy on his deliverance from shipwreck. See 
 with what apostolic dignity and sweetness he salutes 
 Kemiedy. See how he lifts up Kemiedy's accident 
 out of the hands of winds and waves, and traces it 
 all up to the immediate hand of God. See how he 
 speaks of Kennedy's reprieve from death ; and how 
 the spared man should make use of his lengthened 
 days. Altogether, a noble, powerful, apostolic 
 letter; a letter that must have had a great in- 
 fluence in making Bailie Kennedy the choice 
 Christian that he was and that he became. We 
 have only three letters preserved of Rutherford's 
 to Kennedy. But we have sufficient evidence that 
 they Avere fast and dear friends. Rutherford writes 
 to Kennedy from Aberdeen, upbraiding him for 
 forgetting him ; and what a letter that also is ! It 
 stands well out among the foremost of his letters 
 for fulness of all the great qualities of Rutherford's 
 intellect and heart. 
 
 But it is with the shipwreck letter that we have 
 to do to-night ; and with the expressions in it we 
 have taken for our text : ' Die well, for the last tide 
 will ebb fast.' ' It is appointed to all men once 
 to die,' says the Apostle, in a most solemn passage. 
 Think of that, think often of that, think it out, 
 
126 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 think it through to the end. God has appointed 
 our death. He has our name down in His seven- 
 sealed Book ; and when the Lamb opens the Book, 
 and finds the place. He reads our name, and all 
 that is appointed us till death, and after death. 
 The exact and certain time of our death is all 
 appointed ; the place of it also ; and all the cir- 
 cumstances. Just when it is to happen ; to-night, 
 to-morrow, this year, next j^ear, perhaps not this 
 dying centuiy ; we shall perhaps live to write a.d. 
 1901 on our letters. Near or afar off, it is all 
 appointed. And all the circumstances of it also. 
 I don't know why Rutherford should say to Kennedy 
 that it is a terrible thing to ' die in one's day 
 clothes,' unless he hides a parable imder that. But 
 whether in day clothes or night clothes ; whether 
 like Dr. Andrew Thomson, our first minister, in 
 Melville Street, and with his hand on the latch- 
 key of his own door ; or, like Dr. Candlish, his 
 successor, in his bed, and repeating, now Shake- 
 speare, and now the Psalmist ; by the upsetting 
 of a boat, the shape in which death came near to 
 Kennedy, or by the upsetting of a coach, as I 
 escaped myself, not being ready. ' The Lord knew,' 
 writes Rutherford, ' that you had forgotten some- 
 thing that was necessary for your jouniey, and 
 let you go back for it. You had not all your 
 armour on wherewith to meet with the last enemy.' 
 By day or by night ; by land or by sea ; alone, or 
 surrounded by weeping friends ; in rapture like 
 Hugh Kennedy, or in thick darkness like your Lord; 
 all, all is appointed. Just think of it ; the types 
 may be cast, the paper may be woven, the ink may 
 
BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY 127 
 
 be made tliat is to announce to the world your death 
 and mine. It is all appointed, and we cannot alter 
 it or postpone it. The only thing we have any 
 hand in is this : whether our death, when it comes, 
 is to be a success or a failure ; that is to say, whether 
 we shall die well or ill. Since we die but once, 
 then, and since so much turns upon it, let us take 
 advice how we are to do it well. We cannot come 
 back to make a second attempt ; if we do not shoot 
 the gulf successfully, we cannot climb back and tiy 
 the leap again ; we die once, and, after death, the 
 judgment. Now, when we have any difficult thing 
 before us, how do we prepare ourselves for it ? Do 
 we not practise it as often as we possibly can .' If 
 it is running in a race, or wrestling in a match, or 
 playing a tune, or shooting at a target, do we not 
 assiduously practise it ? Yes, every sensible man is 
 careful to have his hand and his foot accustomed to 
 the trial before the appointed day comes. Practice 
 makes perfect : practise dying, then, as Rutherford 
 counsels you, and you will make a perfect thing of 
 your death, and not otherAvise. But how are we to 
 practise dying ? Fore-fancy it, as Rutherfox-d says. 
 Act it over beforehand ; die speculatively, as Good- 
 win says. Say to yourself. Suppose this were death 
 at my door to-night. Suppose he were to visit me 
 in the night, what would I say to hira, and what 
 would he say to me ? Make acquaintance Avith 
 death, Rutherford writes to Lady Kenmure also. 
 Learn his ways, his manner of approach, his lan- 
 guage, and his look. Conjure him up, practise upon 
 him, have your part rehearsed and ready to be per- 
 fonned. Let not a heathen be beforehand with 
 
128 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 you in dying. Seneca said that every night after 
 his lamp was out, and the house quiet, he went over 
 all his past day, and looked at it all in the light of 
 death. What he did after that he does not tell us ; 
 but Rutherford will tell you if you consult him what 
 you should do. Well, that is one way of practising 
 dying. For Sleep is the brother of Death. And to 
 meet the one brother right will prepare us to meet 
 the other. Speculate at night, then — speculate and 
 say. Suppose this were my last night. Suppose, O my 
 soul, thou wert to cast anchor to-morrow in Eternity, 
 how shouldst thou close thine eyes to-night ? 
 Speculate also at other men's funerals. When the 
 clod thuds down on their coffin, think yourself inside 
 of it. When you see the undertaker's man screwing 
 dowii the lid, suppose it yours. Take your own way 
 of doing it ; only, practise dying, and let not death 
 spring upon you unawares. Die daily, for, as Dante 
 says, ' The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight.' 
 
 Writing to another old man, Rutherford points out 
 to him the gracious jourpose of God in a})pointing him 
 his death in old age. ' It is,' says Rutherford, ' that 
 you may have full leisure to look over all your 
 accounts and papers before you take ship.' What a 
 tangle our papers also are in as life goes on ; and what 
 need we have of a time of leisure to set things right 
 before we hand them over. Rutherford, therefore, 
 makes us see old Carlton on his bed with his pillows 
 propping liim uj), and a drawer open on the bed, 
 and bundles of old letters and bills spread out before 
 him. Old love lettei-s ; old business letters; his 
 mother's letters to him when he was a boy at Edin- 
 burgh College ; letters in cipher that no human eye 
 
BAILIE JOHN KENNEDY 129 
 
 can read but those old, bleai-ed, weeping eyes that 
 fill that too late drawer with their tears. The old 
 voyager is looking over his papers before he takes 
 ship. And he comes on things he had totally for- 
 gotten : debts he had thought paid; petitions he had 
 thought answered; promises he had thought ful- 
 filled ; till he calls young Carlton, his son, to his 
 bedside, and tells him things that break both men's 
 hearts to say and to hear ; and commits to his son 
 and heir sad duties that should never have been 
 due ; debts, promises, obligations, reparations, such 
 that, to remember them, is a terrible experience on 
 an old man's deathbed. But what mercy that he 
 was not carried off, and his drawer unopened ! 
 
 Now, speaking of taking ship, when we are pre- 
 paring for a voyage, and a visit to another country 
 and another city, we * read up,' as we say, before we 
 set sail. Before we start for Rome we read our 
 Tacitus and our Horace, our Gibbon and our Meri- 
 vale. If it is Florence we take down Vasari and 
 Dante, Lord Lindsay and Mrs. Jamieson, and so on. 
 Now, if Eternity holds for us a new world, with 
 cities and peoples that are all new to us, should we not 
 prepare ourselves for them also ? Have you, then, 
 laid in a library for your old age, when, like old 
 Carlton, you will be lying waiting at the water-side ? 
 What books do you read when you wish to put on 
 the mind of a man who intends to die well ? ' Read 
 to me where I first cast my anchor,' said John Knox, 
 when dying, to his weeping Avife. Does your wife 
 know where you first cast your anchor } Does she 
 know already what to read to you when you are 
 preparing for the last voyage ? 
 I 
 
130 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 And then, having prepared for, and practised 
 dying well, play the man and perform it well when 
 the day comes. ' Die as your father died,' says 
 Rutherford to Kennedy. Now, that is too much to 
 ask of any man, because old Hugh Kennedy's death- 
 bed was what it was by the special grace of God. 
 You cannot command any man to die in rapture. 
 But Rutherford does not mean that, as he is carefid 
 to explain. He means, as he says, ' die believing.' 
 It will be your last act as a believer, therefore do it 
 well. You have been practising faith all your days ; 
 show that practice makes perfection at the end. As 
 Rutherford said to George Gillespie when he was on 
 his deathbed, 'Hand over all your bills, paid and 
 unpaid, to your surety. Give him the keys of the 
 drawer, and let him clear it out for himself after 
 you are gone.' And then, with the ruling passion 
 strong in death, he added, ' Die not on sanctification 
 but on justification, die not on inherent but on 
 imputed righteousness.' And then, to come to the 
 very last act of all, there is what we call the death- 
 grip. A dying man feels the whole world giving 
 way under him. All he built upon, leaned upon, 
 looked to, is like sliding sand, like sinking water ; 
 and he grasps at anything, anybody, the bed- 
 post, the bed-curtains, the bed-clothes, his wife's 
 hand, liis son's ai-m, the very air sometimes. On 
 what, on whom will you seize hold in your last gasj) 
 and death-grip } 
 
 ' Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee ! ' 
 
JAMES GUTHRIE 131 
 
 XVI 
 JAMES GUTHRIE 
 
 ' The short man who could not bow.' — Cromwell. 
 
 I AMES GUTHRIE was the son of the 
 laird of that ilk in the county of Angus. 
 St. Andrews was his alma maler, and 
 under her excellent nurture young 
 Guthrie scon became a student of no common 
 name. His father had destined him for the Epis- 
 copal Church, and, what with his descent from an 
 ancient and influential family, his remarkable 
 talents, and his excellent scholax-ship, it is not to be 
 wondered at that a bishop's mitre sometimes 
 dangled before his ambitious eyes, ' He was then 
 prelatic,' says Wodrow in his Analeda, 'and strong 
 for the ceremonies.' But as time went on, young 
 Guthrie's whole views of duty and of promotion 
 became totally changed, till, instead of a bishop's 
 throne, he ended his days on the hangman's ladder. 
 After having served his college some time as regent 
 or assistant professor in the Moral Philosophy Chair, 
 Guthrie took licence, and was immediately thereafter 
 settled as parish minister of Lauder, in the momentous 
 year 1638. And when every parish in Scotland sent 
 up its representatives to Edinburgh to subscribe the 
 covenant in Greyfriars Churchyard, the parish of 
 
132 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Lauder had the pride of seeing its young minister 
 take his hfe in his hand, hke all the best ministers 
 and truest patriots in the land. But just as Guthrie 
 was turning in at the gate of the Greyfriars, who 
 should cross the street before him, so as almost to run 
 against him, but the city executioner ! The omen 
 — for it was a day of omens — made the young 
 minister stagger for a moment, but only for a 
 moment. At the same time the ominous incident 
 made such an impression on the young Covenanter's 
 heart and imagination, that he said to some of his 
 fellow-subscribers as he laid down the pen, ' I 
 know that I shall die for what I have done tliis 
 day, but I cannot die in a better cause.' 
 
 In the lack of better authorities we are compelled 
 to trace the footsteps of James Guthrie through the 
 Laodicean pages of Robert Baillie for several years 
 to come. Baillie did not like Guthrie, and there 
 was no love lost between the two men. The one 
 man was all fire together in every true and noble 
 cause, and the other we spew out of our mouth at 
 every page of his indispensable book. As Carlyle 
 says, Baillie contrived to 'carry his dish level' 
 through all that terrible jostle of a time. And 
 accordingly while we owe Baillie our very gi-ateful 
 thanks that he kept such a diary, and carried on 
 such an extensive and regular correspondence during 
 all that distracted time, we owe him no other thanks. 
 He carried his dish level, and he had his reward. 
 
 As we ti'ace James Guthrie's passionate footsteps 
 for the years to come through Principal Baillie's 
 sufficiently gossiping, but not unshrewd, pages, we 
 soon see that lie is travelling fast and sure toward 
 
JAMES GUTHRIE 133 
 
 the Nether Bow. We hear continually from our 
 thne-serving correspondent of Guthrie's ' public 
 invective,' of his 'passionate debates,' of his 'vent- 
 ing of his mind,' of his 'peremptory letters,' of his 
 ' sharp writing,' and of his being ' rigid as ever,' and 
 so on. All that about his too zealous co-presbyter, 
 and then his fulsome eulogy of the returning king 
 — his royal wisdom, his moderation, his piety, and 
 his grave carriage — as also what he says of ' the con- 
 spicuous justice of God in hanging up the bones of 
 Oliver Cromwell, the disgracing of the two Good- 
 wins, blind Milton, John Owen, and others of that 
 maleficent crew,' all crowned with the naive remark 
 that 'the wisest and best are quiet till they see 
 whither these things will go ' — it is plain that while 
 our wise and good author is carrying his dish as level 
 as the uneven roads will allow, Guthrie is as plainly 
 carrying his head straight to the Cross of Edinburgh, 
 and to the iron spikes of the Canongate. 
 
 All the untold woes of that so woful time came 
 of the sword of the civil power being still grafted 
 on the crook of the Church ; as also of the insane 
 attempt of so many of our forefathers to solder the 
 crown of Charles Stuart to the crown of Jesus 
 Christ. How those two so fatal, and not even yet 
 wholly remedied, mistakes, brought Argyll to the 
 block and Guthrie to the ladder in one day in 
 Edinburgh, we read in the instructive and inspirit- 
 ing histories of that terrible time ; and we have 
 no better book on that time for the mass of readers 
 than just honest John Howie's Scots Worthies. 
 There is a passage in our Scottish martyr's last 
 defence of himself that has always reminded me of 
 
134 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Socrates' similar defence before the judges of 
 Athens. ' My lords,' said Guthrie, ' my conscience 
 I cannot submit. But this old and crazy body I do 
 submit, to do with it whatsoever you will ; only, I 
 beseech you to ponder well Avhat profit there is 
 likely to be in my blood. It is not the extinguish- 
 ing of me, or of many more like me, that will extin- 
 guish the work of reformation in Scotland. My 
 blood will contribute more for the propagation of 
 the Covenant and the full reformation of the kirk 
 than my life and liberty could do, though I should 
 live on for many years.' One can hardly help 
 thinking that Guthrie must have been reading The 
 Apology in his manse in Stirling at the moment he 
 was apprehended. But in the case of Guthrie, as in 
 the case of Socrates, no truth, no integrity, and no 
 eloquence could save him ; for, as Bishop Burnet 
 frankly says, ' It was resolved to make a public 
 example of a Scottish minister, and so Guthrie Avas 
 singled out. I saw him suffer,' the Bishop adds, 
 ' and he was so far from showing any fear that he 
 rather expressed a contempt of death.' James 
 Cowie, his precentor, and beadle, and body-sei"vant, 
 also saw his master suffer, and, like Bishop Burnet, 
 he used to tell the impression that his old master's 
 last days made upon him. ' When he had received 
 sentence of death,' Cowie told Wodrow's informant, 
 'he came forth with a kind of majesty, and his face 
 seemed truly to shine.' It needed something more 
 than this world could supply to make a man's face 
 to shine under the sentence that he be hanged at 
 the Cross of Edinbux-gh, his body dismembered, and 
 his head fixed on an iron spike in the West Port of 
 
JAMES GUTHRIE 135 
 
 the same city. The disgraceful and ghastly story of 
 his execution, and the hacking up of his body, may 
 all be read in Howie, beside a picture of the Nether 
 Bow as it still stands in our Free Church and Free 
 State Day. ' Art not Thou from everlasting, O Lord 
 my God } ' were James Guthrie's last words as he 
 stood on the ladder. ' O mine Holy One : I shall 
 not die, but live. Now lettest Thou Thy servant 
 depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy 
 salvation.' 
 
 There is one fine outstanding feature that has 
 always characterised and distinguished the whole of 
 the Rutherford circle in our eyes, and that is their 
 deep, keen Pauline sense of sin. Without this, 
 all their patriotism, all their true statesmanship, and 
 even all their martyrdom for the sake of the truth, 
 would have had, comparatively speaking, little or no 
 interest for us. What think ye of sin ? is the crucial 
 question we put to any character, scriptural or eccle- 
 siastical, who claims our time and our attention. If 
 they are right about sin, they are all the more likely 
 to be right about everj'thing else ; and if they are 
 either wrong or only shallow about sin, their teach- 
 ing and their experience on other matters are not 
 likely to be of much value or much interest to us. 
 We have had written over our portals against all 
 comers : Know thyself if thou wouldst either interest 
 us or benefit us, or with the understanding and the 
 spirit worship with us. And all the true Rutherford 
 circle, without one exception, have known the true 
 secret and have given the true password. Their 
 keen sense and scriptural estimate of the supreme 
 evil of sin first made them correspondents of Ruther- 
 
136 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ford's ; and as that sense and estimate grew in them 
 they passed on into an inner and a still more inner 
 circle of those Scottish saints and martyrs who cor- 
 responded with Rutherford, and closed, with so 
 much honour and love, around him. And the two 
 Guthries, James and William, as we shall see, were 
 famous even in that day for their praying and for 
 their preaching about sin. 
 
 There is an excellent stoiy told of James Guthrie's 
 family worship in the manse of Stirling, that bears 
 not unremotely on the matter we have now on 
 hand. Guthrie was wont to pray too much, both 
 at the family altar and in the pulpit, as if he had 
 been alone with his own heart and God. And 
 he carried that bad habit at last to such a length in 
 his family, that he almost drove poor James Cowie, 
 his man-servant, out of his senses, till when Cowie 
 could endure no longer to be singled out and exposed 
 and denounced before the whole family, he at last 
 stood up with some boldness before his master and 
 demanded to be told out, as man to man, and not in 
 that cruel and injurious way, what it was he had 
 done that made his master actually every day thus 
 denounce and expose him. ' O James, man, pardon 
 me, pardon me. I was, I see now, too much taken 
 up with my own heart and its pollutions to think 
 enough of you and the rest.' ' It was that, and the 
 like of that,' witnessed Cowie, ' that did me and my 
 wife more good than all my master's well-studied 
 sermons.' The intimacy and tendtirness of the 
 minister and his man went on deeper and grew 
 closer, till at the end we find Cowie reading to 
 him at his own request the Ejjistle to the 
 
JAMES GUTHRIE 137 
 
 Romans, and when the reader came to the passage, 
 ' I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,' the 
 listener burst into tears, and exclaimed, 'James, 
 James, halt there, for I have nothing but that to 
 lippen to.' And then, on the ladder, and before a 
 great crowd of Edinburgh citizens : ' I own that I 
 am a sinner — ^yea, and one of the vilest that ever 
 made a profession of religion. My corruptions have 
 been strong and many, and they have made me a 
 sinner in all things — yea, even in following my duty. 
 But blessed be God, who hath showed His mercy 
 to such a wretch, and hath revealed His Son unto 
 me, and made me a minister of the everlasting 
 Gospel, and hath sealed my ministry on the hearts 
 of not a few of His people.' James Guthrie's ruling 
 passion, as Cowie remarked, was still strong in his 
 death. 
 
 On one occasion Guthrie and some of his fellow- 
 ministers were comparing experiences and confess- 
 ing to one another their ' predominant sins,' and 
 when it came to Guthrie's turn he told them that 
 he was much too eager to die a violent death. For, 
 said he, I would like to die with all my wits about me. 
 I would not like eyesight and memory and reason 
 and faith all to die out on my deathbed and leave me 
 to tumble into eternity bereft of them all. Guthrie 
 was greatly afraid at the thought of death, but it was 
 the premature death of his reason, and even of his 
 faith, that so much alarmed and horrified him to think 
 of. He envied the men who kneeled down on the 
 scaffold, or leaped off the ladder, in full possession 
 at the last moment of all their senses and all their 
 graces. ' Give me a direct answer, sir,' demanded 
 
138 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Dr. Johnson of his physician when on his deathbed. 
 . . . ' Then I will take no more opiates, for I have 
 prayed that I may be able to render up my soul to 
 God unclouded.' And when pressed by his attendants 
 to take some generous nourishment, he replied 
 almost with his last breath, ' I will take anything 
 but inebriating sustenance.' 
 
 But in nothing was good James Guthrie's tender- 
 ness to sin better seen than in the endless debates 
 and dissensions of which that day was so full. So 
 sensitive was he to the pride and the anger and the 
 ill-will that all controversy kindles in our hearts 
 that, as soon as he felt any unholy heat in his own 
 heart, or saw it in the hearts of the men he debated 
 with, he at once cut short the controversy with 
 some such words as these : ' We have said too much 
 on this matter already; let us leave it till we 
 love one another more.' If hot-blooded Samuel 
 Rutherford had sat more at James Guthrie's feet in 
 the matter of managing a controversy, his name 
 would have been almost too high and too spotless 
 for this present life. Samuel Rutherford's one vice, 
 temper, was one of James Guthrie's chief virtues. 
 
 We have only two, or at most three, of the many 
 letters that must have passed between Ruthei-ford 
 and Guthrie preserved to us. And, as is usual with 
 Rutherford when he writes to any member of his 
 innermost circle, he writes to Guthrie so as still 
 more completely to win his heart. And in nothing 
 does dear Rutherford win all our hearts more than 
 in his deep humility, and quick, keen sense of his 
 own inability and utter unworthiness. ' I am at a 
 low ebb,' he writes to Guthrie from the Jerusalem 
 
JAMES GUTHRIE 139 
 
 Cliamber, 'yea, as low as any gracious soul can 
 possibly be. Shall I ever see even the borders of 
 the good land above?' I read that fine letter 
 again last Sabbath afternoon in my room at hospit- 
 able Helenslee, overlooking the lower reaches of 
 the Clyde, and as I read this passage, I recollected 
 the opportune sea-view commanded by my window. 
 I had only to rise and look out to see an excellent 
 illustration of my much-exercised author ; for the 
 forenoon tide had just retreated to the sea, and the 
 broad bed of the river was left by the retreated tide 
 less a river than a shallow, clammy chamiel. Shoals 
 of black mud ran out ft-om our shore, meeting and 
 mingling with shoals of black mud from the opposite 
 shore. There was scarce clean water enough to 
 float the multitude of buoys that dipped and dragged 
 in their bed of mire. That any ship, to call a 
 ship, could ever work its way up that sweltering 
 sewer seemed an utter impossibility. There was 
 Rutherford's low ebb, then, under my very eyes. 
 There was low water indeed. And the low water 
 seemed to laugh the waiting seamen's hopes to 
 scorn. But next morning my heart rose high as I 
 looked out at my window and saw all the richly- 
 laden vessels lighting their fires and spreading their 
 sails, and setting their faces to the replenished river. 
 And I thought of Samuel Rutherford's ship, far past 
 all her ebbing tides now, and for ever anchored in 
 her haven above. 
 
 On the wall of my room in the same beautiful 
 house there was a powerful cartoon of Peter's 
 crucifixion, head downwards, for his Master's sake. 
 The masterpiece of Filippino Lippi I felt to be an 
 
140 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 excellent illustration also of Rutherford's letter to 
 James Guthrie and the rest of the ministers and 
 elders who were imprisoned in the Castle of 
 Edinburgh for daring to remind Charles Stuart of 
 the contents of the Covenant to which both he and 
 the whole nation had solemnly sworn. ' If Christ 
 doth own me,' Rutherford wrote to the martjTS in 
 the Castle, ' let me be laid in my grave in a bloody 
 winding-sheet ; let me go from the scaffold to the 
 spikes in four quarters — grave or no grave, as He 
 pleases, if only He but owns me,' And I seemed 
 to see the crucified disciple's glorified Master 
 appearing over his reversed cross and saying, ' Thou 
 art Peter, and with this thy blood I will sow wide- 
 spread my Church.' Yes, my brethren, if Christ 
 but owns us, that will far more than make up to us 
 in a moment for all our imprisonments, and all our 
 martyrdoms, and all our ebbing tides down here. 
 ' Angels, men, and Zion's elders eye us in all our 
 suffering for Christ's sake, but what of all these ? 
 Christ is by us, and looketh on, and writeth it all up 
 Himself.' 
 
 James Guthrie was hanged and dismembered at 
 the Cross of Edinburgh on the first day of June, 
 1661. His snow-white head was cut off, and was 
 fixed on a spike in the Nether Bow. James Guthrie 
 got that day that Avhich he had so often prayed for — 
 a sudden plunge into everlasting life with all his 
 senses about him and all his graces at their brightest 
 and their keenest exercise. 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 141 
 
 XVII 
 WILLIAM GUTHRIE 
 
 * A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.' — Solomon. 
 
 ;iLLIAM GUTHRIE was a great 
 humorist, a great sportsman, a great 
 preacher, and a great writer. The 
 true Guthrie blood has always had a 
 drop of humour in it, and the first 
 minister of Fenwick Avas a genuine Guthrie in this 
 respect. The finest humour springs up out of a 
 wide and a deep heart, and it always has its roots 
 watered at a well-head of tears. ' William Guthrie 
 was a great melancholian,' says Wodrow, and as we 
 read that we are reminded of some other great 
 melancholians, such as Blaise Pascal and John 
 Foster and William Cowper. William Guthrie knew, 
 by his temperament, and by his knowledge of himself 
 and of other men, that he was a great melancholian, 
 and he studied how to divert himself sometimes in 
 order that he might not be altogether drowned with 
 his melancholy. And thus, maugre his melancholy, 
 and indeed by reason of it, William Guthrie was a 
 great humorist. He was the life of the party on the 
 moors, in the manse, and in the General Assembly. 
 But the life of the party when he was present was 
 always pure and noble and pious, even if it was 
 
142 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 sometimes somewhat hilarious and boisterous. ' If 
 a man's melancholy temperament is sanctified,' says 
 Rutherford in his Covenant of Gi'cice, ' it becomes to 
 him a seat of sound mortification and of humble 
 walking.' And that was the happy result of all 
 William Guthrie's melancholy ; it was always alle- 
 viated and relieved by great outbursts of good 
 humour; but both his melancholy and his hilarity 
 always ended in a humbler walk. Samuel Rutherford 
 confides in a letter to his old friend, Alexander 
 Gordon, that he knows a man who sometimes 
 wonders to see any one laugh or sport in this so 
 sinful and sad life. But that was because he had 
 embittered the springs of laughter in himself by the 
 wormwood sins of his youth. William Guthrie had 
 no such remorseful memories continually taking him 
 by the throat as his divinity professor had, and thus 
 it was that with all his melancholy he was known 
 as the greatest humorist and the greatest sports- 
 man in the Scottish Kirk of his day. No doubt he 
 sometimes felt and confessed that his love of fun 
 and frolic was a temptation that he had to watch 
 well against. In his Saving Interest he speaks of 
 some sins that are wrought up into a man's natural 
 humour and constitution, and are thus as a right 
 hand and a right eye to him. ' My memment ! ' he 
 confessed to one who had rebuked him for it, ' I 
 know all you would say, and my merriment costs 
 me many a salt tear in secret.' At the same time 
 this was often remarked with wonder in Guthrie, 
 that however boisterous his fun was, in one moment 
 he could turn from it to the most serious things. 
 'It was often observed,' says Wodrow, 'that, let 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 143 
 
 Mr. Guthrie be never so merry, he was presently in 
 a frame for the most spiritual duty, and the only 
 account I can give of it,' says wise Wodrow, 'is, 
 that he acted from spiritual pi'inciples in all he did, 
 and even in his relaxations/ Poor Guthrie had a 
 terrible malady that preyed on his most vital part con- 
 tinually — a malady that at last carried him off in the 
 mid-tirae of his days, and, like Solomon in the proverb, 
 he took to a merry heart as an alleviating medicine. 
 Like our own Thomas Guthrie, too, William 
 Guthrie was a great angler. He could gaff out a 
 salmon in as few minutes as the deftest-handed 
 gamekeeper in all the country, and he could stalk 
 down a deer in as few hours as my lord himself who 
 did nothing else. When he was composing his 
 Saving Interest, he somehow heard of a poor country- 
 man near Haddington who had come through some 
 extraordinary experiences in his spiritual life, and 
 he set out from Fenwick all the way to Haddington 
 to see and converse with the much-experienced man. 
 All that night and all the next day Guthrie could 
 not tear himself away from the conversation of the 
 man and his wife. But at last, looking up and down 
 the country, his angling eye caught sight of a trout- 
 stream, and, as if he had in a moment forgotten all 
 about his book at home and all that this saintly 
 man had contributed to it, Guthrie asked him if he 
 had a fishing-rod, and if he would give him a loan 
 of it. The old man felt that his poor rough 
 tackle was to be absolutely glorified by such a 
 minister as Guthrie condescending to touch it, but 
 his good wife did not like this come-down at the end 
 of such a visit as his has been, and she said so. She 
 
144 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 was a clever old woman, and I am not sure but she 
 had the best of it in the debate that followed about 
 ministers fishing, and about their facetious conversa- 
 tion. The Haddington stream, and the dispute 
 that rose out of it, recall to my mind a not unlike 
 incident that took place in the street of Ephesus, in 
 the far East, just about 1800 years ago. John, the 
 venerable Apostle, had just finished the fourteenth 
 chapter of his great Gospel, and felt himself unable 
 to recollect and write out any more that night. 
 And coming out into the setting sun he began to 
 amuse himself with a tame partridge that the 
 Bactrian convert had caught and made a present of 
 to his old master. The partridge had been waiting 
 till the pen and the parchment were put by, and 
 now it was on John's hand, and now on his shoulder, 
 and now circling round his sportful head, till you 
 would have thought that its owner was the idlest 
 and foolishest old man in all Ephesus. A hunts- 
 man, who greatly respected his old pastor, was 
 passing home from the hills and was sore distressed 
 to see such a saint as John was trifling away his 
 short time with a stupid bird. And he could not 
 keep from stopping his horse and saying so to the 
 old Evangelist. 'What is that you carry in your 
 hand ? ' asked John at the huntsman with great 
 meekness. ' It is my bow with which I shoot wild 
 game up in the mountains,' replied the huntsman. 
 ' And why do you let it hang so loose ? You cannot 
 surely shoot anything with your bow in that con- 
 dition ! ' ' No,' answered the amused huntsman, ' but 
 if I always kept my bow strung it would not rebound 
 and send home my arrow when I needed it. I 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 145 
 
 unstring my bow on the street that I may the better 
 shoot with it when I am up among my quarry.' 
 ' Good,' said the Evangehst, and I have learned a 
 lesson from you huntsmen. For I am playing with 
 my partridge to-night that I may the better finish 
 my Gospel to-morrow. I am putting everything out 
 of my mind to-night that I may to-morrow the 
 better recollect and set down a prayer I heard 
 offered up by my Master, now more than fifty years 
 ago.' We readers of the Fourth Gospel do not 
 know how much we owe to the Bactrian boy's tame 
 partridge, and neither John Owen nor Thomas 
 Chalmers knew how much they owed to the fishing- 
 rods and curling-stones, the fowling-pieces and the 
 violins that crowded the corners of the manse of 
 Fenwick. I do not know that William Guthrie 
 made a clean breast to the Presbytery of all the 
 reasons that moved him to refuse so many calls to 
 a city charge, though I think I see that David 
 Dickson, the Moderator, divined some of them by 
 the joke he made about the moors of Fenwick to 
 one of the defeated and departing deputations. 
 
 William Guthrie, the eldest son and sole heir of 
 the laird of Pitforthy, might have had fishing and 
 shooting to his heart's content on his own lands of 
 Pitforthy and Easter Ogle had he not determined, 
 when mider Rutherford at St. Andrews, to give 
 himself up wholly to his preaching. But, to put 
 himself out of the temptation that hills and streams 
 and lochs and houses and lands would have been to 
 a man of his tastes and temperament, soon after his 
 conversion William made over to a younger brother all 
 his possessions and all his responsibilities connected 
 
146 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 therewith, in order that he miglit give himself up 
 wholly to his preaching. And his reward Avas that 
 he soon became, by universal consent, the greatest 
 practical preacher in broad Scotland. He could not 
 touch Rutherford, his old professor, at pure theology ; 
 he had neither Rutherford's learning, nor his ecstatic 
 eloquence, nor his surpassing love of Jesus Christ, 
 but for handling broken bones and guiding an 
 anxious inquirer no one could hold the candle to 
 Williain Guthrie. Descriptions of his preaching 
 abound in the old books^ such as this : A Glasgow 
 merchant was compelled to spend a Sabbath in 
 Arran, and though he did not understand Gaelic, 
 he felt he must go to the place of public worship. 
 Great was his delight when he saw William Guthrie 
 come into the pulpit. And he tells us that though 
 he had heard in his day many famous preachers, he 
 had never seen under any preacher so much concern 
 of soul as he saw that day in Arran, under the 
 minister of Fenwick. There was scarcely a dry eye 
 in the whole church. A gentleman who was well 
 known as a ntiost dissolute liver was in the church 
 that day, and could not command himself, so deeply 
 was he moved under Guthrie's sermon. That day 
 was remembered long afterwards when that prodigal 
 son had become an eminent Christian man. We see at 
 one time a servant girl coming home from Guthrie's 
 church saying that she cannot contain all that she 
 has heard to-day, and that she feels as if she would 
 need to hear no more on this side heaven. Another 
 day Wodrow's old mother has been at Fenwick, 
 and comes home saying that the first prayer was 
 more than enough for all her trouble without any 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 147 
 
 sermon at ail. ' He had a taking and a soaring 
 gift of preaching,' but it was its intensely practical 
 character that made Guthrie's pulpit so powerful 
 and so popular. The veiy fact that he could go 
 all the way in those days from Fenwick to Hadding- 
 ton, just to have a case of real soul -exercise 
 described to him by the exercised man himself, 
 speaks volumes as to the secret of Guthrie's 
 poAver in the pulpit. His people felt that their 
 minister knew them ; he knew himself, and there- 
 fore he knew them. He did not pronounce windy 
 orations about things that did not concern or 
 edify them. He was not learned in the pulpit, 
 nor eloquent, or, if he was — and he was both — all 
 his talents, and all his scholarship, and all his 
 eloquence were forgotten in the intensely practical 
 turn that his preaching immediately took. All the 
 broken hearts in the west country, all those whose 
 sins had found them out, all those who had learned 
 to know the plague of their o-vvn heart, and who 
 were passing under a seai-ching sanctification — all 
 such found their way from time to time from great 
 distances to the Kirk of Fenwick. From Glasgow 
 they came, and from Paisley, and from Hamilton, 
 and from Lanark, and from Kilbride, and from 
 many other still more distant places. The lobbies 
 of Fenwick Kirk were like the porches of Bethesda 
 with all the blind, halt, and withered from the 
 whole country round about. After Hutcheson of 
 the Minor Prophets had assisted at the communion 
 of Fenwick on one occasion, he said that, if there 
 was a church full of God's saints on the face of 
 the earth, it was at Fenwick communion-table. 
 
148 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Pitforthy and Glen Ogle, and all the estates in 
 Angus, were but dust in the balance compared 
 with one Sabbath-day's exercise of such a preach- 
 ing gift as that of William Guthrie. ' There is no 
 man that hath forsaken houses and lands for My 
 sake and the Gospel's, but shall receive an hundred- 
 fold now in this life, and in the world to come 
 life everlasting.' 
 
 But further, besides being a great humorist and a 
 great sportsman and a great preacher, William 
 Guthrie was a great writer. A great wi-iter is 
 not a man who fills our dusty shelves with his 
 forgotten volumes. It is not given to any man to 
 fill a whole library with first-rate work. Our greatest 
 authors have all Avritten little books. Job is a small 
 book, so is the Psalms, so is Isaiah, so is the Gospel 
 of John, so is the Epistle to the Romans, so is the 
 Confessions, so is the Comedy, so is the Imilation, so are 
 the Pilgrim and the Grace Abounding, and though 
 William Guthrie's small book is not for a moment to 
 be ranked with such master-pieces as these, yet 
 it is a small book on a great subject, and a book 
 to which I cannot find a second among the big- 
 religious books of our day. You will all find out 
 your own favourite books according to your own 
 talents and tastes. My calling a book great is nothing 
 to you. But it may at least interest you for the 
 passing moment to be told what two men like 
 John Owen, in the seventeenth century, and 
 Thomas Chalmers, in the nineteenth, said about 
 William Guthrie's one little book. Said John 
 Owen, drawing a little gilt copy of The Great 
 Interest out of his pocket, ' That author I take to 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 149 
 
 be one of the greatest divines that ever wrote. 
 His book is my vade mecian. I carry it always 
 with me. I have written several folios, but there 
 is more divinity in this little book than in them 
 all.' Believe John Owen. Believe all that he 
 says about Guthrie's Saving Interest ; but do not 
 believe what he says about his own maligned 
 folios till you have read twenty times over his 
 Person and Gloiy of Christ, his Holi/ Spirit, his 
 Spiritual-mindedness, and his Mortificalion, DominioH, 
 and Indwelling of Sin. Then hear Dr. Chalmers : 
 ' I am on the eve of finishing Guthrie, which I 
 think is the best book I ever i-ead.' After you have 
 read it, if you ever do, the likelihood is that you 
 will feel as if somehow you had not read the right 
 book when you remember what Owen and Chalmers 
 have said about it. Yes, you have read the right 
 enough book ; but the right book has not yet got 
 in you the right reader. There are not many 
 readers abroad like Dr. John Owen and Dr. Thomas 
 Chalmers. 
 
 In its style William Guthrie's one little book is 
 clear, spare, crisp, and curt. Indeed, in some 
 places it is almost too spare and too curt in its 
 bald simplicity. True students will not be deterred 
 from it when I say that it is scientifically and ex- 
 pei'imentally exact in its treatment of the things 
 of the soul. They will best understand and 
 appreciate this statement of Guthrie's biographer 
 that ' when he was working at his Saving Interest 
 he endeavoured to inform himself of all the Chris- 
 tians in the country who had been under great 
 depths of exercise, or were still under such depths, 
 
150 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 and endeavoured to converse with them.' Guthrie 
 is ahnost as dry as Euclid himself, and almost as 
 severe, but, then, he demonstrates almost with 
 mathematical demonstration the all-important things 
 he sets out to prove. There is no room for rhetoric 
 on a finger-post ; in a word, and, sometimes without a 
 word, a finger-post tells you the right way to take 
 to get to your journey's end. And many who have 
 wandered into a far country have found their way 
 home again under William Guthrie's exact marks, 
 clear evidences, and curt directions. You open 
 the little book, and there is a sentence of the 
 plainest, directest, and least entertaining or attrac- 
 tive prose, followed up with a text of Scripture to 
 prove the j^lain and indisputable prose. Then 
 there is another sentence of the same prose, sup- 
 ported by two texts, and thus the little treatise 
 goes on till, if you are happy enough to be interested 
 in the author's subject-matter, the eternal interests 
 of your own soul, a strong, strange fascination 
 begins to come off the little book and into your 
 understanding, imagination, and heart, till you 
 look up again what Dr. Owen and Dr. Chalmers 
 said about your favourite author, and feel fortified 
 in your valuation of, and in your affection for, William 
 Guthi-ie and his golden little book. 
 
GEORGE GILLESPIE 151 
 
 XVIII 
 GEORGE GILLESPIE 
 
 ' Our apprehensions are not canonical.' — Rutherford. 
 
 EORGE GILLESPIE was one of that 
 remarkable band of statesmanlike 
 ministers that God gave to Scotland 
 in the seventeenth century. Gillespie 
 died while yet a yomig man, but 
 before he died, as Rutherford wrote to him on his 
 deathbed, he had done more work for his Master 
 than many a hundred grey-headed and godly 
 ministers. Gillespie and Rutherford got acquainted 
 with one another when Rutherford was beginning 
 his Avork at Anwoth. In the good providence of 
 God, Gillespie was led to Kenmure Castle to be 
 tutor in the family of Lord and Lady Kenmure, 
 and that threw Rutherford and Gillespie continually 
 together. Gillespie was still a probationer. He 
 was ready for ordination, and many congregations 
 were eager to have him, but the patriotic and 
 pure-minded youth could not submit to receive 
 ordination at the liands of the bishops of that day, 
 and this kept him out of a church of his own long 
 after he was ready to begin his ministry. But 
 the time was not lost to Gillespie himself, or to 
 the Church of Christ in Scotland, — the time that 
 
152 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 threw Rutherford and Gillespie into the same 
 near neighbotu-hood, and into intimate and affec- 
 tionate friendship. The mere scholarship of the 
 two men Avould at once draw them together. 
 They read the same deep books ; they reasoned 
 out the same constitutional, ecclesiastical, doctrinal, 
 and experimental problems ; till one day, rising 
 off their knees in the woods of Kenmure Castle, 
 the two men took one another by the hand and 
 swore a covenant that all their days, and amid 
 all the trials they saw were coming to Scotland 
 and her Church, they would remain fast friends, 
 would often thiiik of one another, would often 
 name one another before God in prayer, and would 
 regularly write to one another, and that not on 
 church questions only and on the books they were 
 reading, but more especially on the life of God in 
 their own souls. Of the correspondence of those 
 two remarkable men we have only three letters 
 preserved to us, but they are enough to let us 
 see the kind of letters that must have frequently 
 passed between Kenmure Castle and Aberdeen, 
 and between St. Andrews and Edinburgh during 
 the next ten years. 
 
 Gillespie was born in the parish manse of Kirk- 
 caldy in 1613 ; he was ordained to the charge of 
 the neighbouring congi-egation of Wemyss in l638, 
 was translated thence to Edinburgh in 1642, and 
 then became one of the four famous deputies who 
 were sent up from the Chin-ch of Scotland to sit 
 and represent lier in the Westminster Assembly in 
 1643. Gillespie's great ability was well known, his 
 •wide learning and his remarkable controversial powers 
 
GEORGE GILLESPIE 153 
 
 had been already well proved, else such a young 
 man Avould never have been sent on such a mission ; 
 but his appearance in the debates at Westminster 
 astonished those who knew him best, and won for 
 him a name second to none of the oldest and ablest 
 statesmen and scholars who sat in that famous house. 
 ' That noble youth,' Baillie is continually exclaiming, 
 after each new display of Gillespie's learning and 
 power of argument ; ' That singular ornament of our 
 Church ' ; ' He is one of the best wits of this isle,' 
 and so on. And good John Livingstone, in his wise 
 and sober Characteristics, says that, being sent as a 
 Commissioner from the Church of Scotland to the 
 Assembly of Divines at Westminster, Gillesjiie ' pro- 
 moted much the work of reformation, and attained 
 to a gift of clear, strong, pressing, and calm debating 
 above any man of his time.' 
 
 Many stories were told in Scotland of the debat- 
 ing 2)owers of young Gillespie as seen on the floor of 
 the Westminster Assembly. Selden was one of the 
 greatest lawyers in England, and he had made a 
 speech one day that both friend and foe felt was 
 unanswerable. One after another of the Constitu- 
 tional and Evangelical party tried to reply to Sel- 
 den' s speech, but failed. ' Rise, George, man,' said 
 Rutherford to Gillespie, who was sitting with his 
 jiencil and note-book beside him. ' Rise, George, 
 man, and defend the Church which Christ hath pux-- 
 chased with His own blood.' George rose, and 
 when he had sat down, Selden is reported to have 
 said to some one who was sitting beside him, ' That 
 yoinig man has swept away the learning and labour 
 of ten years of my life.' Gillespie's Scottish 
 
154 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 brethren seized upon his note-book to preserve and 
 send home at least the heads of his magnificent 
 speech, but all they found in his little book were 
 these three words : Da hicem, Dornine ; Give light, O 
 Lord. Rutherford had foi-eseen all this from the days 
 when Gillespie and he talked over Aquinas and Calvin 
 and Hooker and Amesius and Zanchius as they took 
 their evening walks together on the sands of the 
 Solway Firth, It is told also that when the Com- 
 mittee of Assembly was engaged on the composition 
 of the Shorter Catechism, and had come to the 
 question, What is God? like the able men they 
 were, they all shrank from attempting an answer to 
 such an unfathomable question. In their perjilexity 
 they asked Gillespie to offer prayer for help, when 
 he began his prayer with these words : ' O God, 
 Thou art a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchange- 
 able in Thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, 
 goodness, and truth.' As soon as he said Amen, his 
 opening sentences were remembered, and taken 
 down, and they stand to this day the most scriptural 
 and the most complete answer to that unanswerable 
 question that we have in any creed or catechism 
 of the Christian Church. 
 
 As her best tribute to the talents and services of 
 her youngest Commissioner, the Edinburgh Assembly 
 of 1 6i8 appointed Gillespie her Moderator ; but his 
 health was fast failing, and he died in the December 
 of that year, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. The 
 inscription on his tombstone at Kirkcaldy ends with 
 these sober and true words : ' A man })rofound in 
 genius, mild in disposition, acute in argimient, flow- 
 ing in eloquence, unconquered in mind. He drew 
 
GEORGE GILLESPIE 155 
 
 to liimself the love of the good, the envy of the 
 bad, and the admiration of all.' Such was the life 
 and work of George Gillespie, one of the most in- 
 timate and confidential coiTcspondents of Samuel 
 Rutherford ; — for it was to him that Rutherford ^vTote 
 the words now before us, * Our apprehensions are 
 not canonical.' 
 
 Every line of life has its own language, its own 
 peculiar vocabulary, that none but its experts, and 
 those who have been brought up to it, know. Go 
 up to the Parliament House and you will hear the 
 advocates and judges talking to one another in a 
 professional speech that the learned layman no more 
 than the ignorant can understand. Our doctors, again, 
 have a shorthand symbolism that only themselves and 
 the chemists understand. And so it is with every 
 business and jjrofession ; each several trade strikes 
 out a language for itself. And so does divinity, and, 
 especially, experimental divinity, of which Ruther- 
 ford's letters are full. We not only need a glossary 
 for the obsolete Scotch, but we need the most 
 simple and everj'day expressions of the things of the 
 soul explained to us till once we begin to speak and to 
 MTite those expressions ourselves. There are judges 
 and advocates and doctors and specialists of all kinds 
 among us who will only be able to make a far-off 
 guess at the meaning of my text, just as I could 
 only make a far-off guess at some of their trade 
 texts. This technical term, 'apprehension,' does 
 not once occur in the Bible, and only once or 
 twice in Shakespeare. 'Our death is most in 
 apprehension,' says that master of expression ; 
 and, again, he says that 'we cannot outfly our 
 
156 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 apprehensions.' And Milton has it once in Samson, 
 who says : — 
 
 'Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with deadly stings, 
 Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts.' 
 
 But, indeed, we all have the thing in us, though we 
 may never have put its proper name upon it. We all 
 know what a forecast of evil is — a secret fear that 
 evil is coming upon us. It lays hold of our heart, 
 or of our conscience, as the case may be, and will 
 not let go its hold. And then the heart and the 
 conscience run out continually and lay hold of the 
 future evil and carry it home to our terrified 
 bosoms. We apprehend the coming evil, and feel 
 it long before it comes. We die, like the coward, 
 many times before our death. 
 
 Now, Rutherford just takes that well-known word 
 and applies it to his fears and his sinkings of heart 
 about his past sins, and about the unsettled wages 
 of his sins. His conscience makes him a coward, 
 till he thinks every bush an officer. But then he 
 reasons and remonstrates with himself in his deep 
 and intimate letter to Gillespie, and says that these 
 his doubts, and terrors, and apprehensions are not 
 canonical. He is writing to a divine and a scholar, 
 as well as to an experienced Christian man, and he 
 uses words that such scholars and such Christian 
 men quite well understand and like to make use of. 
 The canon that he here refers to is the Holy 
 Scriptures ; they are the rule of our faith, and they 
 are also the rule of God's faithfulness. What God 
 has said to us in His word, that we must believe 
 and hold by; that, and not our deserts or our 
 
GEORGE GILLESPIE 157 
 
 apprehensions, must rule and govern our faith and 
 our trust, just as God's word will be the rule and 
 standard of His dealings with us. His word rules 
 us in our faith and life ; and again it rules Him also 
 in His dealings with our faith and with our life. 
 God does not deal with us as we deserve ; He does 
 not deal with us as we, in our guilty apprehensions, 
 fear He will. He deals with the apprehensive, 
 penitent, believing sinner according to the grace 
 and the truth of His word. His promises are 
 canonical to Him, not our apprehensions. 
 
 Thomas Goodwin, that perfect prince of pulpit 
 exegetes, lays down this canon, and continually 
 himself acts upon it, that ' the context of a scripture 
 is half its interpi-etation ; ... if a man Avould open 
 a place of scripture, he should do it rationally ; he 
 should go and consider the words before and the 
 words after.' Now, let us apply this rule to the 
 interpretation of this text out of Rutherford, and 
 look at the context, before and after, out of which it 
 is taken. 
 
 Remembering his covenant with young Gillespie 
 in the woods of Kenmure, Rutherford Avrote of 
 himself to his friend, and said : — ' At my first entry 
 on my banishment here my apprehensions worked 
 despairingly upon my cross.' By that he means, 
 and Gillespie would quite well understand his 
 meaning, that his banishment from his work threw 
 him in upon his conscience, and that his conscience 
 whispered to him that he had been banished from 
 his work because of his sins. God is angry with 
 you, his conscience said ; He does not love you, He 
 has not forgiven you. But his sanctified good sense. 
 
158 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 his deep knowledge of God's word, and of God's 
 ways with His people, came to his rescue, and he 
 went on to say to Gillespie that our apprehensions 
 are not canonical. No, he says, our ajiprehensions 
 tell lies of God and of His grace. So they do in our 
 case also. When any trouble falls upon us, for any 
 reason, — and there are many reasons other than His 
 anger why God sends trouble upon us, — conscience 
 is up immediately with her interpretation and 
 explanation of our troubles. This is your wages 
 now, conscience says. God has been slow to wrath, 
 but His patience is exhausted now. As Rutherford 
 says in another letter, our tearful eyes look asquint 
 at Christ and He appears to be angiy, when all the 
 time He pities and loves us. Is there any man 
 here to-night whose apprehensions are working 
 upon his cross ? Is there any man of God here who 
 has lost hold of God in the thick dax'kness, and who 
 fears that his cross has come to him because God is 
 angry with him ? Let him hear and imitate what 
 Rutherford says when in the same distress : ' I will 
 lay inhibitions on my apprehensions/ he says ; ' I 
 will not let my unbelieving thoughts slander Christ. 
 Let them say to me " there is no hope," yet I will 
 die saying, It is not so ; I shall yet see the salvation 
 of God. I will die if it must be so, under water, 
 but I will die gri2:)ping at Christ. Let me go to 
 Iiell, I will go to hell believing in and loving Christ.' 
 Rutherford's worst apprehensions, his best-grounded 
 apprehensions, could not sui'vive an assault of faith 
 like that. Imitate him, and impx'ove upon him, and 
 say, that with a thousand times worse apprehensions 
 than ever Rutherford could have, yet, like him, you 
 
GEORGE GILLESPIE 159 
 
 will make your bed in hell, loving, and adoring, and 
 justifying Jesus Christ. And, if you do that, hell 
 will have none of you ; all hell will cast you out, and 
 all heaven will rise up and carry you in. 
 
 ' Challenges ' is another of Rutherford's technical 
 terms that he constantly uses to his expert corre- 
 spondents. ' I was under great challenges,' he says, 
 in this same letter ; and in a letter written the same 
 month of March to William Rigg, of Athernie, he 
 says, ' Old challenges revive, and cast all down.' 
 Dr. Andrew Bonar, Rutherford's expert editor, gives 
 this glossary upon these passages : ' Charges, self- 
 upbraidings, self-accusations.' Challenges of con- 
 science came to Rutherford like these : ' Why art 
 thou writing letters of counsel to other men ? 
 Counsel thyself first. Why art thou appealed to 
 and trusted and loved by God's best people in 
 Scotland, when thou knowest that thou art a Cain 
 in malice and a Judas in treachery, all but the 
 outbreaks ? Why art thou taking thy cross so easily, 
 when thou knowest the unsettled controversy the 
 Lord still has with thee ? ' ' Hall binks are slippeiy,' 
 wrote stern old Knockbrex, challenging his old 
 minister for his too great joy. ' Old challenges now 
 and then revive and cast all down again.' That 
 reminds me of a fine passage in that great book of 
 Rutherford's, Christ Dying, where he shows us how to 
 take out a new charter for all our possessions, and for 
 the salvation of our souls themselves when our salva- 
 tion, or our possessions and our right to them, is chal- 
 lenged. It is better, he says, to hold your souls and 
 your lands by prayer than by obedience, or conquest, 
 or industr)'. Have you wisdom, honour, learning, 
 
160 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 parts, eloquence, godliness, grace, a good name, 
 wife, children, a house, peace, ease, pleasure ? 
 Challenge yourself how you got them, and see that 
 you hold them by an unchallengeable charter, even 
 by prayer, and then by grace. And if you hold 
 these things by any other charter, hasten to get a 
 new conveyance made and a new title drawn out. 
 And thus old, and angry, and threatening challenges 
 will work out a charter that cannot be challenged. 
 
 And, then, when George Gillespie was lying on 
 his deathbed in Edinburgh, with his pillow filled 
 with stinging apprehensions, as is often the case 
 with God's best servants and ripest saints, hear 
 how his old friend, now professor of divinity in 
 St. Andrews, writes to him : — 
 
 ' My reverend and dear brother, look to the east. 
 Die well. Your life of faith is just finishing. 
 Finish it well. Let your last act of faith be your 
 best act. Stand not upon sanctification, but upon 
 justification. Hand all your accounts over to free 
 grace. And if you have any bands of apprehension 
 in your death, recollect that your apprehensions are 
 not canonical.' And the dying man answered : 
 ' There is nothing that I have done that can stand 
 the touchstone of God's justice. Christ is my all, 
 and I am nothing.' 
 
JOHN FERGUSHILL l6l 
 
 XIX 
 JOHN FERGUSHILL 
 
 Ho, ye that have no money, come and buy in the poor man's 
 market. ' — Rutherford. 
 
 iT makes us think when we find two 
 such men as Samuel Rutherford and 
 John Fergushill falling back for their 
 own souls on a Scripture like this. 
 We naturally think of Scriptures like 
 this as specially sent out to the chief of sinners ; to 
 those men who have sold themselves for naught, or, 
 at least, to new beginners in the divine life. We 
 do not readily think of great divines and famous 
 preachers like Rutherford, or of godly and able 
 pastors like Fergushill, as at all either needing such 
 Scriptures as this, or as finding their OAvn case at all 
 met in them. But it is surely a great lesson to us 
 
 all a great encouragement and a great rebuke — to 
 
 find two such saintly men as the ministers of 
 Anwoth and Ochiltree reassuring and heartening one 
 another about the poor man's market as they do in 
 their letters to one another. And their case is just 
 another illustration of this quite familiar fact in the 
 Church of Christ, that the preachers who press their 
 pulpits deepest into the doctrines of grace, and 
 who, at the same time, themselves make the greatest 
 attainments in the life of grace, are just the men, 
 
 L 
 
162 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 far more than any of their hearers, both to need 
 and to accept the simplest, plainest, freest, fullest 
 offer of the Gospel. If the men of the house of 
 Israel will not accept the peace you preach to them, 
 said our Lord to His first apostles, then take that 
 peace home to yourselves. And how often has that 
 been repeated in the preaching of the Gospel since 
 the days of Peter and John ! How often have our 
 best preachers preached their best sermons to them- 
 selves ! ' I preached the following Lord's Day,' says 
 Boston in his diary, ' on " Why art thou cast down, 
 O my soul ? ' ' and my sermon was mostly on my own 
 account.' And it was just because Boston preached 
 so often in that egoistical way that the people of 
 Ettrick were able to give such a good accovnit of 
 what they heard. Weep yourselves, if you would 
 have your readers weep, said the shrewd old Roman 
 poet to the shallow poetasters of his Augustan day. 
 And the reproof and the instruction come up from 
 every pew to every pulpit still. ' Feel what you say, 
 if you would have us feel it. Believe what you say, 
 if you would have us believe it. Flee to the refuge 
 yourselves, if you would have us flee. And let us 
 see you selling all in the poor man's market, if you 
 would see vis also selling all and coming after you.' 
 The people of Anwoth and Ochiltree were very 
 well off in this resjiect also that their ministers did 
 not bid them do anything that they did not first do 
 themselves. The truest and best apostolical suc- 
 cession had come to those two parishes in that their 
 two pastors Avere able, with a good conscience be- 
 fore God and before their people, to say with Paul 
 to the Philippians : ' Those things, which ye have 
 
JOHN FERGUSHILL l63 
 
 both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in 
 me do ; and the God of peace shall be with you/ 
 
 As to the merchandise of the poor man's market, — 
 that embraces everything that any man can possibly 
 need or find any use for either in this world or in 
 the next. Absolutely everything is found in the 
 poor man's market — everything, from God Himself, 
 the most precious of all things, down to the sinner 
 himself, the most vile and worthless of all things. 
 The whole world, and all the Avorlds, are continually 
 thrown into this market, both by the seller and by 
 the purchaser. The seller holds nothing back from 
 this market, and the purchaser comes to this market 
 for everything. Even what he already possesses ; 
 even what he bought and paid for but yesterday ; 
 even what everybody else would call absolutely the 
 poor man's own, he throws it all back again upon 
 God every day, and thus holds all he has as his 
 instant purchase of the great Merchantman. The 
 poor man's market is as far as possible from being a 
 Vanity Fair, but the catalogues and the sale-lists of 
 that fair may be taken as a specimen of the things that 
 change hands continually in the poor man's market 
 also. For here also are sold such merchandise as 
 houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, 
 pleasures and delights of all sorts ; wives, husbands, 
 children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, 
 souls, gold, silver, and what not. All these things 
 God sells to poor men eveiy day ; and for all these 
 things, as often as they need any of them. His poor 
 men come to His market for them. And, as has 
 been said, even after they have got possession of 
 any or all of these things, as if the market had an 
 
164 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 absolute fascination for them, like gamblers who 
 cannot stay away from the wheel, they are back 
 again, buying and selling what, but yesterday, they 
 took home with them as the best bargain they had 
 ever made. Yes, the things that, once possessed, 
 either by inheritance or by purchase or by gift, you 
 would think they would die rather than part with 
 — a patrimony in ancient lands and houses, a 
 possession they had toiled and pi*ayed and waited 
 for all their days, Christ on His cross, their own 
 child in his cradle — absolutely everything they 
 possess, or would die to possess, they part Avith 
 again, just that they may have the excitement, the 
 debate, the delight, the security, and the liberty of 
 purchasing it all over again every day in the poor 
 man's market. 
 
 Over all this merchandise God Himself is the 
 Master Merchant. It all belongs to Him, and 
 He has put it all into the poor man's purchase. 
 He owns all the merchandise, and He has opened 
 the market : He invites and advertises the pur- 
 chasers, fixes the prices, and settles the conditions 
 of sale. And the first condition of sale is that 
 all intending purchasers shall come to Himself 
 immediately for whatever they need. All negotia- 
 tion here must be held immediately with God. 
 There are no middlemen here. They have their 
 own place in the mai-kets of earth ; but there is no 
 room and no need for them here. The producer 
 and the purchaser meet immediately here. He 
 employs whole armies of servants to distribute and 
 deliver His goods, but the bargain itself must be 
 struck with God alone. The price must be paid 
 
JOHN FERGUSHILL l65 
 
 directly to Him ; and then, with His own hand, He 
 will wTite out your right and title to your purchase. 
 Let every poor man, then, be sure to draw near to 
 God, and to God alone. Di-aw near to God, and He 
 will draw near to you. Ho, ye that have no money : 
 incline your ear, and come to Me : hear, and your 
 soul shall live ! 
 
 Now, surely, one of the most remarkable things 
 about the purchasers in this market is just their 
 fewness. We find Isaiah in his day canvassing the 
 whole of Jerusalem, high and low, and glad to get 
 even one purchaser here and another there. And 
 Rutherford, looking back to Anwoth from Aberdeen, 
 was not sure that he had got even so much as one 
 really earnest purchaser brought near to God. And 
 thus it was that, while at Anwoth, he was so much 
 in that market himself. Partly on the jDrinciple 
 that preachers are bidden to take to themselves for 
 their trouble what their proud people refuse, and 
 partly because Rutherford Avas out of all sight the 
 poorest man in all Anwoth. 
 
 Now, what made Isaiah and Rutherford and 
 Fergushill such poor men themselves, was just this, 
 that they came out of every money-making enter- 
 prise in the divine life far poorer men than they 
 entered it. There are some unlucky men in life 
 who never prosper in anything. Everything goes 
 against them. Everything makes shipwreck into 
 which they adventure their time and their money 
 and their hope. They go into one promising con- 
 cern after another with flying colours and a light 
 heart. Other men have made great fortunes here, 
 and so will they ; but before long their old evil luck 
 
166 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 has overtaken them, and they are glad that they 
 are not all their life in prison for the uttermost 
 farthing. And so on, till at last they have to go to 
 the poor man's market for the last decencies of 
 their death and burial ; for their winding-sheet^ and 
 their coffin, and their grave. And so was it with 
 the ministers of Anwoth and Ochiltree ; and so it is 
 with all that poverty-stricken class of ministers to 
 which they belonged. For, whatever their attain- 
 ments and perfoniiances in preaching or in pastoral 
 work may do to enrich others, one thing is certain : 
 all they do only impoverishes to pennilessness the 
 men who put their whole life and their whole heart 
 into the performance of such work. Their whole 
 service of God, both in the public ministry of the 
 word, and in their more personal submission to His 
 law, has this fatal and hopeless principle ruling it, 
 that the better it is done, and the more completely 
 any man gives himself up to the doing of it, the 
 poorer and the weaker it leaves him who does it. 
 So much so, that while he leads other men into the 
 way of the greatest riches, he himself sinks deeper 
 and deeper into poverty of spirit every day. Till, 
 out of sheer pity, and almost remorse, that His ser- 
 vice should entail such poverty on all His servants, 
 Christ sends them out continually less with an 
 invitation to their people than to themselves, saying 
 always to them, ' Take the invitation to yourselves ; 
 and he of My servants who hath no money let him 
 buy without money and bear away what he will.' 
 ' My dear Fergushill, our Lord is not so cruel as to 
 let a poor man see salvation and never let him touch 
 it for want of money ; indeed, the on.ly thing that 
 
JOHN FERGUSHILL l67 
 
 commendeth sinners to Christ is their extreme 
 necessity and want. Ho, he that hath no money, 
 that is the poor man's market/ When James 
 Guthrie was lying ill and like to die, he called in his 
 man, James Cowie, to read in the Epistle to the 
 Romans to him, and when Cowie came to these 
 words, ' I will have mercy on whom I will have 
 mercy,' his master burst into tears, and said, 
 'James, I have nothing but that to lippen to.' 
 
 Look now at the prices that are demanded and 
 paid in the poor man's market. And, paradoxical 
 and past all miderstanding as are so many of the 
 things connected with this matter, the most para- 
 doxical and past all miderstanding of them all is 
 the price that is always asked, and that is sometimes 
 paid, in that market. When any man comes here 
 to buy, it is not the value of the article on sale that 
 is asked of him ; but the first question that is asked 
 of him is, How much money have you got ? And if 
 it turns out that he is rich and increased with goods, 
 then, to him, the price, even of admittance to this 
 market, is all that he has. The very entrance- 
 money, before he comes in sight of the stalls and 
 tables at all, has already stripped him bare of 
 every penny he possesses. And that is why so 
 few purchasers are found in this market; they 
 do not feel able or willing to pay down the 
 impoverishing entrance-price. As a matter of fact, 
 it is a very unusual thing to find a young man 
 who has been so well taught about this market 
 by his parents, his schoolmasters, or even by his 
 ministers, that he is fit to enter early on its great 
 transactions. And increasing years do not tend of 
 
168 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 themselves to reconcile him to the terms on which 
 God sells His salvation. The price in the poor 
 man's market is absolutely everything that a rich 
 man possesses ; and then, when he has nothing left, 
 when he has laid down all that he has, or has lost 
 all, or has been robbed of all, only then the full 
 paradox of the case comes into his view ; for then 
 he begins to discover that the price he could not 
 meet or face so long as he was a rich and a well-to- 
 do man is such a price that, in his absolute penury, 
 he can now pay it down till all the market is his own. 
 Multitudes of poor men up and do^vn the land 
 remember well, and will never forget, this poor man 
 Rutherford's so Isaiah-like words, ' Our wants best 
 qualify us for Christ'; and again, 'All my own stock 
 of Christ is some hunger for Him.' ' Say Amen to 
 the promises, and Christ is yours,' he wrote to Lady 
 Kenmure. ' This is surely an easy market. You 
 need but to look to Him in faith ; for Christ suffered 
 for all sin, and paid the price of all the pi'omises.' 
 
 ' Faith cannot be so difficult, surely/ says William 
 Guthrie in his Savi?ig Interest, ' when it consists of so 
 much in desire.' Now, both its exceeding difficulty and 
 its exceeding ease also just consist in that. Nothing 
 is so easy to a healthy man as the desire for food ; 
 but, then, nothing is so impossible to a dead man, or 
 even to a sick man, as just desire. Desire sounds 
 easy, but how few among us have that capacity and 
 that preparation for Christ and His salvation that 
 stands in desire. Have you that desire .'' Really and 
 truly, in your heart of hearts, have you that desire ? 
 Then how well it is with you ! For that is all that 
 God looks for in him Avho comes to the poor man's 
 
JOHN FERGUSHILL 169 
 
 market; indeed, it is the only cuiTency accepted 
 there. Isaiah's famous invitation is drawn out just 
 to meet the case of a man who has desire, and 
 nothing but desire, in his heart. All the encourage- 
 ments and assurances that his evangelical genius can 
 devise are set forth by the prophet to attract and 
 to win the desiring heart. The desiring heart says 
 to itself, I would give the whole world if I had it 
 just to see Christ, just to be near Christ, and just, 
 if it were but possible, that I should ever be the 
 least thing like Christ. Now^ that carries God. 
 God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, cannot 
 resist that. No true father could, and least of all 
 a father who loves his son, and who has such a son 
 to love as God has in Christ. Well, He says ; if 
 you love and desire, honour and estimate My Son 
 like that, I cannot deny Him the rewai-d and the 
 pleasure of possessing you and your love. And 
 thus, without any desert in you — any desert but 
 sheer desire — you have made the greatest, the easiest, 
 the speediest, the most splendid purchase that all 
 the poor man's market affords. No, William Guthrie ; 
 faith is not so veiy difficult to the sinner who has 
 desire. For where desire of the right quality is, and 
 the right quantity, there is everything. And all the 
 merchandise of God is at that sinner's nod and bid. 
 
 Ho, then, he that hath no money, but only the 
 desire for money, and for what money can, and for 
 what money cannot, buy, come and buy, without 
 money and without price. Instead of money, instead 
 of merit, even if you have nothing but Rutherford's 
 only fitness for Christ, ' My loathsome Avretchedness/ 
 then come with that. Come boldly Avith that. 
 
170 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Come as if you had in and on you the complete 
 opposite of that. The ojijiosite of loathsomeness is 
 delightsomeness ; and the opposite of wretchedness 
 is happiness. Yes ! but you will search all the Book 
 of God and all its promises, and you will not find 
 one single letter of them all addressed to the 
 abounding and the gladsome and the self-satisfied. 
 It is the poor man's market ; and this market goes 
 best when the poor man is not only poor, but poor 
 beyond all oi'dinary poverty : poor, as Samuel 
 Rutherford always was, to 'absolute and loathsome 
 wretchedness.' Let him here, then, whose sad case 
 is best described in Rutherford's dreadful words, let 
 him come to Rutherford's market and make Ruther- 
 ford's mei'chandise, and let him do it now. Ho, he 
 that hath no money, he that hath only misery, let 
 him come, and let him come now. 
 
JAMES BAUTIE 171 
 
 XX 
 JAMES BAUTIE, STUDENT OF DIVINITY 
 
 ' You crave my mind.' — Rutherford. 
 
 S a rule the difficulties of a divinity 
 student are not at all the difficulties 
 of the best of his future people. A 
 divinity student's difficulties are 
 usually academic and speculative, 
 whereas the difficulties of the best people in his 
 coming congregation will be difficulties of the most 
 intensely real and practical kind. And thus it is 
 that we so often hear lately-ordained ministers con- 
 fessing that they have come to the end of their 
 resources and experiences, and have nothing either 
 fresh or certain left to preach to the people about. 
 Just as, on the other hand, so many congregations 
 complain that they look up to the jiulpit from 
 Sabbath to Sabbath and are not fed. It is not 
 much to be wondered at that a raw college youth 
 cannot all at once feed and guide and extricate 
 an old saint ; or that a minister, v»'hose deepest 
 difficulties hitherto have been mostly of the de- 
 bating society kind, should not be able to afford 
 much help to those of his people who are wading 
 through the deep and drowning waters of the 
 spiritual life. And whether something could not 
 
172 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 be done by the institution of chairs of genuine 
 pastoral and experimental theology for the help 
 of our students and the good of our people is 
 surely a question that well deserves the earnest 
 attention of all the evangelical churches. Mean- 
 time we are to be introduced to a divinity student 
 of the middle of the seventeenth century who was 
 early and deeply exercised in those intensely real 
 problems of the soul which occupied such a large 
 place both in the best religious literature and in the 
 best pulpit work of that intensely earnest day. 
 James Bautie, or Beattie, as we shall here call him 
 on Dr. Bonar's suggestion, was a candidate for the 
 ministry such that the ripest and most deeply 
 exercised saints in Scotland might well have rejoiced 
 to have had such an able and saintly youth for their 
 preacher on the Sabbath-day as well as for their 
 pastor all the week. As James Beattie's college 
 days drew on to an end he became more and more 
 exercised about his mental deficiencies, and still 
 more about his spiritual unfitness to be anybody's 
 minister. Beattie had, to begin with, this always 
 infallible mark of an able man — an increasing sense 
 of his own inability : and he had, along with that, 
 this equally infellible mark of a spiritually-minded 
 man — an overwhelming sense of his utter lack of 
 anything like a spiritual mind. No man but a very 
 able man could have written the letter that Beattie 
 wrote about himself to Samuel Rutherford ; and 
 Rutherford's letter back to Beattie will not be a bad 
 test of a divinity student whether he has enough of 
 the true divinity student mind in him to read that 
 letter, to understand it, and to translate it. Beattie 
 
JAMES BAUTIE 173 
 
 had an excellent intellect, and his excellent intellect 
 had not been laid out at college on those windy 
 fields that so pufF up a beginner in knowledge and 
 in life ; his whole mind had been given up already 
 to those terrible problems of the soul that both 
 humble and exalt the man who spends his life among 
 them. Beattie's future congregation will not vaunt 
 themselves about their minister's ability or scholar- 
 ship or eloquence ; his sermons will soon push his 
 people back behind all such superficial matters. 
 Beattie's preaching and his whole pastorate will 
 soon become another illustration of the truth that it 
 is not gifts but graces in a minister that will in the 
 long-run truly edify the body of Christ. You have 
 James Beattie's jiortrait as a divinity student in 
 Rutherford's 249th letter, and you will find a com- 
 plementary portrait of Beattie as a grey-haired 
 pastor in Dr. Stalker's Preacher and his Models. 
 ' He was a man of competent scholarship, and had 
 the reputation of having been in early life a power- 
 ful and popular preacher. But it was not to those 
 gifts that he owed his unique influence. He moved 
 through the town, with his white hair and somewhat 
 staid and dignified demeanour, as a hallowing 
 presence. His very passing in the street was a 
 kind of benediction ; the people, as they looked 
 after him, spoke of him to each other with affection- 
 ate reverence. Children were proud when he laid 
 his hand on their heads, and they treasured the 
 kindly words which he spoke to them. They who 
 laboured along with him in the ministry felt that his 
 mere existence in the community was an irresistible 
 demonstration of Christianity and a tower of strength 
 
174. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 to every good cause. Yet he had not gained this 
 position of influence by brilliant talents or great 
 achievements or the pushing of ambition; for he 
 was singularly modest, and would have been the 
 last to credit himself with half the good he did. 
 The whole mystery lay in this, that he had lived in 
 the town for forty years a blameless life, and was 
 known by everybody to be a godly and a prayerful 
 man. The prime quahfication for the ministry is 
 goodness.' 
 
 Beattie as a student challenged himself severely 
 on this account also, that some truths found a more 
 easy and unshaken credit with him than other truths. 
 This is a common difficulty with many of our modern 
 students also, and how best to advise with them 
 under this real difficulty constantly puts their pro- 
 fessors and their pastors to the test. Whatever 
 Beattie may have got, I confess I do not get much 
 help in this difficulty out of Rutherford's letter back 
 to Beattie. Rutherford, with all his splendid gifts 
 of mind and heart, had sometimes a certain dogmatic 
 and dictatorial way with him, and this is just the 
 temper that our students still meet with too often 
 in their old and settled censors. The ' torpor of 
 assurance ' has not yet settled on the young divine 
 as it has done on too many of the old. There was 
 a modest, a genuine, and an every way reasonable 
 difficulty in this part of Beattie's letter to Ruther- 
 ford, and I wish much that Rutherford had felt 
 himself put upon his quite capable mettle to deal 
 with the difficulty. Or, if he had not time to go to 
 the bottom of all Beattie's deep letter, as he says 
 he has not, he might have referred his correspond- 
 
JAMES BAUTIE 175 
 
 ent — for his correspondent was a well-read student 
 — to a great sermon by the greatest of English 
 Churchmen — a semnon that a reader like Rutherford 
 must surely have had by heart, entitled, ' A Learned 
 and Comfortable Sermon of the Certainty and Per- 
 petuity of Faith in the Elect.' But, unfortunately for 
 England and Scotland both, England was thrusting 
 that sermon and all the other writings of its author 
 on the Church of Christ in Scotland at the point of 
 the bayonet, and that is the very worst instrument 
 that can be employed in the interests of truth and 
 of ecclesiastical comprehension and conformity. And 
 among the many things we have to be thankful for 
 in our more emancipated and more catholic day, it is 
 not the least that Rutherford and Hooker lie in peace 
 and in complemental fulness beside one another on 
 the tables of all our students of divinity. 
 
 Coming still closer home to himself, our divinity 
 student puts this acute difficulty to his spiritual 
 casuist : Whether a man of God, and especially a 
 minister of Christ, can be right who does not love 
 God for Himself, for His nature and for His character 
 solely and purely, and apart altogether from all His 
 benefactions both in nature and in grace. James 
 Beattie had been brought up with such a love for 
 the Kirk of Scotland, and for her ministers and her 
 people ; he had of late grown into such a love for 
 his books also, and for the work of the ministry, that 
 in examining himself in prospect of his approaching 
 licence he had felt afraid that he loved the thought of 
 a study, and a pulpit, and a manse, and its inhabitants, 
 and, indeed, the whole prospective life of a minister, 
 with more keenness of affection than he loved the 
 
176 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 souls of men, or even his Master Himself. And 
 he put that most distressing difficulty also before 
 Rutherford. Now there was an expression on that 
 matter that was common in the pulpits of Rutherford's 
 school in that day that Rutherford would be sure to 
 quote in his second letter to Beattie, if not in his 
 first. It was a Latin proverb, but all the common 
 people of that day quite well understood it, not to 
 speak of a student like Beattie. AUquid in Christo 
 formosms Salvatore, wrote Rutherford to distressed 
 Beattie ; that is to say. There is that in Christ which 
 is far more fair and sweet than merely His being a 
 Saviour. Never be content, that is, till you can rise 
 up above manses and pulpits and books and sermons, 
 and even above your own salvation, to see the piu-e 
 and infinite loveliness of Christ Himself. Dost 
 thou, O my soul, love Jesus Christ for Himself alone, 
 and not only as thy Redeemer ? though to love Him 
 as such He doth allow thee, yet thei*e is that in 
 Christ that is far more amiable than merely in His 
 being thy Saviour. And yet the two kinds of love may 
 quite well stand together, writes Rutherford, just as 
 a child loves his mother because she is his mother, 
 and yet his love leaps the more out when she gives 
 him an apple. At the same time, to love Christ for 
 Himself alone is the last end of a true believer's love. 
 It was one of the great experimental problems 
 much agitated among the greater evangelical divines 
 of that deep, cleai*-eyed, and honest day, Why the 
 truly regenerate are all left so full of all manner 
 of indwelling sin. We never hear that question 
 raised nowadays, nor any question at all like tliat. 
 The only difficulty in our day is why any man should 
 
JAMES BAUTIE 177 
 
 have any difficulty about his own indwelling sin at all. 
 But neither Beattie, nor Rutherford, nor any of the 
 masters who remain to us had got so for as we. And 
 as for the Antinomian, perfectionist, and higher-life 
 preachers of that day, they are all so dead and for- 
 gotten that you would not know their names even 
 if I repeated them. Beattie, as a beginner in the 
 spiritual life, had made this still not uncommon 
 mistake. He had taken those New Testament 
 passages in w-hich the apostles portray an ideal 
 Christian man as he stands in the election and 
 calling of God, and as he will be found at last and 
 for ever in heaven, and he had prematurely and 
 inconsequently applied all that to himself as a young 
 man under sanctification and under the painful and 
 humiliating beginnings of it ; and no wonder that, so 
 confusing the very first principles of the Gospel, he 
 confused and terrified himself out of all jieace and 
 all comfort and all hope. Now, that was just the 
 kind of difficulty with which Rutherford could deal 
 with all his evangelical freedom and fulness, depth 
 and insight. No preacher or writer of that day held 
 up the absolute necessity of holiness better than 
 Rutherford did ; but then, that only the more com- 
 pelled him to hold up also such comfort as he 
 conveys in his consoling and reassuring letter to 
 despairing Beattie : ' Comparing the state of one truly 
 regenerate, whose heart is a temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, with your own, which is full of uncleamiess 
 and corruption, you stand dumb and dare not 
 call Christ heartsomely your own. But, I answer, 
 the best regenerate have their defilements, and, 
 wash as they will, there Avill be the filth of sin in 
 
 M 
 
178 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 their hearts to the end. Glory alone will make our 
 hearts pure and perfect, never till then will they be 
 absolutely sinless.' And if we, Rutherford's so 
 weak-kneed successors, preached the law of God 
 and true holiness as he preached those noble 
 doctrines, the sheer agony of our despairing people 
 would compel us to preach also the true nature, the 
 narrow limits, and the whole profovuid laws of evan- 
 gelical sanctification as we never preach, and scarce 
 dare to preach, those things noAv. They who preach 
 true holiness best are just thereby the more compelled 
 to preach its partial, tentative, elementary, and 
 superficial character in this life. And the hearer 
 who knows in the word of God and in his own 
 heax't what indeed true holiness is, will insist on 
 having its complementary ti'uths frequently preached 
 to him to keep him from despair; or else he will turn 
 continually to those great divines who, though dead, 
 yet preach such things in their noble books. And that 
 those books are not still read and preached among 
 us, and that the need for them and their doctrines is 
 so little felt, is only another illustration of the true 
 proverb that where no oxen are the crib is clean. 
 
 James Beattie was in very good company when 
 he said that he must have more assurance, both of 
 his gifts and his graces, before he could enter on his 
 ministry. For Moses, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and 
 many another minister who could be named, have all 
 felt and said the same thing. Now that he is near 
 the door of the pulpit, Beattie feels that he cannot 
 enter it till he has more certainty that it is all right 
 with himself. But our young ministers will attain 
 to assurance not so much by consulting Rutherford, 
 
JAMES BAUTIE 179 
 
 skilled casuist in such matters as he is, as by them- 
 selves going forward in a holy life and a holy minis- 
 try. ' It is not God's design,' says Jonathan Edwards, 
 ' that men should obtain assurance in any other way 
 tlian by mortifying corruption, increasing in grace, 
 and obtaining the lively exercises of it. Assurance 
 is not to be obtained so much by self-examination as 
 by action. Paul obtained assurance of winning the 
 prize more by running than by reflecting. The 
 swiftness of his pace did more toward his assui'ance 
 of the goal than the strictness of his self-examina- 
 tion.' ' I wish you a share of my feast,' replies 
 Rutherford. ' But, for you, hang on our Lord, and 
 He will fill you with a sense of His love, as He has 
 so often filled me. Your feast is not far off. Hunger 
 on ; for there is food already in your hunger for 
 Christ. Never go away from Him, but continue to 
 fash Him ; and if He delays, yet come not away, 
 albeit you should fjill aswoon at His feet.' Pray, 
 says Rutherford, and you will not long lack assur- 
 ance. Work, says Edwards, and assurance of God's 
 love will be an immediate earnest of your full 
 waffes. 
 
180 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 XXI 
 
 JOHN MEINE, JUNR., STUDENT OF 
 DIVINITY 
 
 • If you would be a deep divine I recommend you to sancti- 
 fication. ' — Rutheiford. 
 
 LD John Meine's shop was a gi'eat howf 
 of Samuel Rutherford's all the time of 
 his student life in Edinburgh. Young 
 Rutherford had got an introduction to 
 the Canongate shopkeeper from one 
 of the elders of Jedburgh, and the old shopkeeper and 
 the young student at once took to one another, and 
 remained fast friends all their days. John Meine's 
 shop was so situated at a corner of the Canongate 
 that Rutherford could see the Tolbooth and John 
 Knox's house as he looked up the street, and 
 Holyrood Palace as he looked down, and the young 
 divine could never hear enough of Avhat the old 
 shopkeeper had to tell him of Holyrood and its 
 doings on the one hand, and of the Reformer's 
 house on the other. The very paving-stones of the 
 Canongate were full of sermons on the one hand, 
 and of satires on the other, in that day. ' He Avas 
 an old man when he came to live near my father's 
 shop,' John Meine would say to the eager student. 
 ' But, even as an errand boy, taking parcels up his 
 stair, I felt what a good man's house I was in, and I 
 used to wish I was already a man, that I might 
 
JOHN MEINE, JUNIOR 181 
 
 either be a soldier or a minister.' The divinity 
 student often sat in the shopkeeper's pew on 
 Sabbath-days, and after sermon they never went 
 home till they had again visited John Knox's grave. 
 And as they turned homeward, old Meine woultl 
 lay his hand on young Rutherford's shoulder and 
 say : ' Knoxes will be needed in Edinburgh again, 
 before all is over, and who knows but you may be 
 elect, my lad, to be one of them ? ' 
 
 Barbara Hamilton, who lived above her husband's 
 shop, was almost more young Rutherford's intimate 
 friend than even her intimate husband. Barbara 
 Hamilton was both a woman of eminent piety and 
 of a high and bold jiublic spirit. And stories are 
 still told in the Wodrow Books of her interest and 
 influence in the affairs of the Kirk and its silenced 
 ministers. The godly old couple had two children : 
 John, called after his father, and Barbai*a, called 
 after her mother, and Barbara assisted her mother 
 in the house, while John ran errands and assisted 
 his father. Rutherford and the little boy had made 
 a great friendship while the latter was still a boy ; 
 and one of Rutherford's fellow-students had made a 
 still deeper friendship up-stairs than any but the 
 two friends themselves suspected. Twenty years 
 after this Barbara Hume will receive a letter from 
 Samuel Rutherford, written in the Jerusalem 
 Chamber at Westminster, consoling and sanctifying 
 her for the death of his old friend William Hume, 
 lately chaplain in the Covenanters' army at New- 
 castle. 
 
 By the time that Rutherford was minister at 
 Anwoth, and then prisoner in Aberdeen, John 
 
182 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Meine, junior, had grown up to be almost a minister 
 himself. He is not yet a minister, but he is now a 
 divinity student, hard at work at his books, and 
 putting on the shopkeeper's apron an hour every 
 afternoon to let his father have a rest. The old 
 merchant used to rise at all hours in the morning, 
 and spend the early summer mornings on Arthur's 
 Seat Avith his Psalm-book in his hand, and the 
 winter mornings at his shop fire, reading translations 
 from the Continental Reformers, comparing them 
 with his Bible, singing Psalms by himself and 
 offering prayer. Till his student son felt, as he 
 stood behind the counter for an hour in the after- 
 noon, that he was like Aaron and Hur holding up 
 his father's pi'aying and prevailing hands. 
 
 There have always been speculative difficulties 
 and animated debates in our Edinburgh Theological 
 Societies, and, from the nature of the study, from 
 the nature of the human mind, and from the nature 
 of the Scottish mind, thei'e will always be. John 
 Meine's difficulties were not the same difficulties 
 that exercise the minds of the young divines in our 
 day, but they were anxious and troublesome enough 
 to him, and he naturally turned to his old friend at 
 Anwoth for counsel and advice. When Rutherford 
 came in to Edinburgh, there was always a prophet's 
 chamber in Barbara Hamilton's house ready for 
 him ; and when the winter session came to a close 
 her young son would set off to Anwoth with a 
 thousand questions in his head. But Aberdeen was 
 too far away, and, though the posts of that day were 
 expensive and uncertain, the old merchant did not 
 grudffe to see his son's letters sent off to Samuel 
 
JOHN MEINE, JUNIOR 183 
 
 Rutherford. Samuel Rutherford knew that John 
 Meine, junior, was not shallow in his divinity, young 
 as he was, nor an entire stranger to sanctification, 
 else he would not have -wi-itten that still extant 
 letter back to him : — ' I have little of Christ in this 
 prison, little but desires. All my present stock of 
 Christ is some hunger for Him ; I cannot say but 
 that I am rich in that. But, blessed be my Lord, 
 who taketh me as I am. Christ had only one 
 summer in His year, and shall we insist on two ? 
 My love to your father. And, for yourself, if you 
 would be a deep divine, I recommend you to 
 sanctification.' What with his father and his mother, 
 his books, his acquaintance with Rutherford and 
 Hume, and, best of all, his acquaintance with his 
 o\^^l evil heart, young John Meine must have been 
 a somewhat deep divine already, else Rutherford 
 would not have cast such pearls of experience down 
 before him. 
 
 A divine, according to our division of labour, is a 
 man who has chosen as his life-work to study the 
 things of God ; the things, that is, of God in Christ, 
 in Sjripture, in the Church, and in the heart and 
 life of man. John and James and Peter and Andrew 
 ceased to be fishermen, and became divines when 
 Christ said to them ' Follow me.' And after seventy 
 years of sanctification the second son of Zebedee 
 had at last attained to divinity enough to receive 
 the Revelation, to write it out, and to be called by 
 the early Church John the Divine. 
 
 But what is this process of sanctification that 
 makes a young man already a deep divine ? What 
 is sanctification .'' Rutherford had a deep hand in 
 
184 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 drawing up the well-known definition, and, therefore, 
 we may take it as not far from the truth : ' Sancti- 
 fication is the work of God's free grace, whereby 
 we are renewed in the whole man after the image 
 of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto 
 sin and live unto righteousness.' That, or something 
 like that, was the recipe that Samuel Rutherford 
 sent south to John Meine, student of divinity, with 
 the assurance that, if he followed it close enough 
 and long enough, it would result in making him a 
 deep divine. I wonder if he took the recipe; I wonder 
 if he kept to it ; I wonder how he pictured to himself 
 the image of God ; I wonder, nay, I know^ how he 
 felt as he submitted his whole man — body, soul, 
 and spirit — to the renewing of the Holy Ghost. And 
 did he begin and continue to die more and more 
 unto sin, till he died altogether to this sinful world, 
 and live more and more unto righteousness, till he 
 went to live with Knox, and Rutherford, and 
 Hume, and his father and mother in the Land of 
 Life? 
 
 ' Did he begin with regeneration ? ' Dr. John 
 Duncan, of the New College, asked his daughter, 
 one Sabbath when she had come home from church 
 full of praise of a sermon she had just heard on 
 sanctification. Dr. Duncan was perhaps the deepest 
 divine this century has seen in Edinburgh ; and his 
 divinity took its depth from the same study and the 
 same exercise that Rutherford recommended to John 
 Meine. Dr. Duncan was a great scholar, but it was 
 not his scholarship that made him such a singularly 
 deep divine. He was a profound philosopher also ; 
 but neither was it his philosophy. He was an 
 
JOHN MEINE, JUNIOR 185 
 
 immense reader also ; but neither was it the piles of 
 books ; it was, he tells us, first the new heart that 
 he got as a student in Aberdeen, and then it was 
 the life-long conflict that went on within hira 
 between the old heart and the new. And it is this 
 that makes sanctification rank and stand out as the 
 first and the oldest of all the experimental sciences. 
 Long before either of the Bacons were born, the 
 humblest and most obscure of God's saints wei*e 
 working out their own salvation on the most 
 approved scientific principles and methods. Long 
 before science and philosophy had discovered and 
 set their seal to that method, the Church of Christ 
 had taught it to all her true children, and all her 
 best divines had taken a deep degree by means of 
 it. What experimentalists were David and Asajjh 
 and Isaiah and Paul ; and that, as the subtlest and 
 deepest sciences must be pursued, not upon foreign 
 substances but upon themselves, upon their own 
 heart, and mind, and will, and disposition, and 
 conversation, and character. Aristotle says that 
 'Young men cannot possess practical judgment, be- 
 cause practical judgment is employed upon individual 
 facts, and these are learned only by experience, 
 and a youth has not expei*ience, for experience is 
 gained only by a coiu-se of years.' 
 
 ' A truly great divine,' was Jonathan Edwards' 
 splendid certificate to our own Thomas Boston. 
 Now, when we read his Memoirs, wTitten by himself, 
 we soon see what it was that made Boston such a 
 truly great and deep divine. It was not the num- 
 ber of his books, for he tells us how he was pained 
 when a brother minister opened his book-press and 
 
186 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 smiled at its few shelves. ' I may be a great book- 
 man,' writes Rutherford to Lady Kenmure, ' and 
 yet be a stark idiot in the things of Christ.' It was 
 not his knowledge of Hebrew, though he almost 
 discovered that hidden language in Ettrick. No, 
 but it was his discovery of himself, and his experi- 
 mental study of his own heart. ' My duties, the 
 best of them, would damn me ; they must all be 
 washed with myself in that precious blood. Though 
 I cannot be free of sin, God Himself knows that He 
 would be welcome to make havoc of all my lusts 
 to-night, and to make me holy. I know no lust I 
 would not be content to part with to-night. The 
 first impression on my spirit this morning was my 
 utter inability to put away sin. I saw that it was 
 as possible for a rock to raise itself as it was for me 
 to raise my heart from sin to holiness.' 
 
 But the study of divinity is not a close profession : 
 a profession for men only, and from which women are 
 shut out ; nor is the method of it shut off from any 
 woman or any man. ' I comisel you to study sancti- 
 fication,' wrote Rutherford, the same year to the 
 Lady Cardoness. And if you think that Ruther- 
 ford was a closet mystic and an unpractical and 
 head-carried enthusiast, too good for this rough 
 world, read his letter to Lady Cardoness, and con- 
 fess your ignorance of this great and good man. 
 ' Deal kindly with your tenants,' he ^rntes, ' and let 
 your conscience be your factor ' ; and again, ' When 
 your husband's passion overcomes him, my counsel 
 to your ladyshij) is, that a soft answer putteth away 
 wrath.' And lastly, ' Let it not be said that the 
 Lord hath forsaken your house because of your 
 
JOHN MEINE, JUNIOR 187 
 
 neglect of the Sabbath-day and its exercises. I 
 counsel you to study sanctification among your 
 tenants, and beside your husband, and among 
 your children and your guests. Your lawful and 
 loving pastor, in his only, only Lord, — Samuel 
 Rutherford. 
 
188 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 XXII 
 ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 
 
 ' Mr. Rutherford's letter desiring me to deny 
 myself.' — Brodie's Diary. 
 
 LEXANDER BRODIE ^vas born at 
 Brodie in the north countrj' in the 
 year l6l7. That was the same year 
 that saw Samuel Rutherford matricu- 
 late in the College of Edinburgh. Of 
 young Brodie's early days we knoAV nothing ; for, 
 though he has left behind him a full and faithful 
 diary both of his personal and family life, yet, un- 
 fortunately, Brodie did not begin to keep that diary 
 till he was well advanced in middle age. Young 
 Brodie's father died when his son and heir was but 
 fourteen years old, and after taking part of the 
 curriculum of study in King's College, Aberdeen, 
 the young laird married a year before he had come 
 to his majority. His excellent wife was only spared 
 to be with him for two years when she was taken 
 away from him, leaving him the widowed ffither 
 of one son and one daughter. 
 
 As time goes on we find the laird of Brodie a 
 member of Parliament, a member of General 
 Assembly, and a Lord of Session. He was one of 
 the commissioners also, who were sent out to the 
 
ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 189 
 
 Hague to carry on negotiations with Charles, and 
 during the many troubled years that followed that 
 mission, we find Brodie corresponding from time to 
 time with Cromwell and his officers, and with 
 Charles and his courtiers, both about public and 
 private affairs. Brodie was one of the ablest men 
 of his day in Scotland, and he should have stood in 
 the very front rank of her statesmen and her saints ; 
 but, as it is, he falls very far short of that. We 
 search the signatures of the National Covenant in 
 vain for the name of Alexander Brodie, and the 
 absence of his name from that noble roll is already 
 an ill-omen for his future life. David Laing, in his 
 excellent preface to Brodie's Diarij, is good enough 
 to set down the absence of Brodie's name from the 
 Covenant to his youth and retired habits. I wish I 
 could take his editor's lenient view of Brodie's 
 absence from Greyfriars church on the testing 
 day of the Covenant. It would be an immense 
 relief to me if I could persuade myself to look at 
 Brodie in that matter with Mr. Laing's eyes. I 
 have tried hard to do so, but I cannot. Far younger 
 men than the laird of Brodie were in the Greyfriars 
 churchyard that day, and far more modest men than 
 he was. And I cannot shut my eyes to what 
 appears to me, after carefully studying his life and 
 his character, a for likelier if a far less creditable 
 reason. After the Restoration Brodie's life, if life 
 it could be called, was spent in a constant terror 
 lest he should lose his estates, his liberty, and his 
 life in the prelatic persecution ; but, with his sleep- 
 less management of men, if not with the blessing of 
 God and the peace of a good conscience, Alexander 
 
190 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Brodie died in his own bed, in Brodie Castle, on 
 the 17th of April, 1680. 
 
 There were some things in which Alexander 
 Brodie ran well, to employ the apostle's expression; 
 in some things, indeed, no man of his day ran 
 better. To begin with, Brodie had an excellent 
 intellect. If he did not always run well it was not 
 for want of a sound head or a sharp eye. In read- 
 ing Brodie' s diary you all along feel that you are 
 under the hand of a very able man, and a man who 
 all his days does excellent justice to his excellent 
 mind, at least on its intellectual side. The books 
 he enters as having read on such and such a date, 
 the catalogues of books he buys on his visits to 
 Edinburgh and London, and the high planes of 
 thought on which his mind dwells when he is at his 
 best, all bespeak a very able man doing full justice 
 to his great ability. The very examinations he puts 
 himself under as to his motives and mainsprings in 
 this and that action of his life ; the defences and 
 exculpations he puts forward for this and that part 
 of his indefensible conduct ; the debate he holds 
 now with the presbyterian party and now with the 
 prelatist; the very way he puts his finger down on 
 the weak and unsound places in both of the oppos- 
 ing parties ; and, not least, his power of aphoristic 
 thought and expression in the running diary of his 
 spiritual life, all combine to leave the conviction on 
 his reader's mind that Lord Brodie was one of the 
 very ablest men of a very able day in Scotland. I 
 open his voluminous diary at random, and I at once 
 come on such passages as these : * If substantial 
 duties are neglected or slighted it is a shrewd sus- 
 
ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 191 
 
 picion, be the repentance what it will, that all is not 
 right. Lord, discover Thyself in the duties of the 
 time, and in every substantial duty. At the same 
 time, hang not the weight of our wellbeing on our 
 duties, but on Christ by faith. I am a reeling, 
 unstable, staggering, unsettled, lukewarm creature. 
 For Thy compassion's sake forgive and heal, warm, 
 establish, enlighten, draw me and I will follow. I 
 am full of self-love, darkness in my judgment, fear 
 to confess Thee, or hazard myself, or my estate, or 
 my peace. . . . We poor creatures are commanded by 
 our affections and our passions ; they are not at our 
 command ; but the Holy One doth exercise all His 
 attributes at His own will ; they are all at His 
 command ; they are not passions or perturbations in 
 His mind, though they transport us. When I would 
 hate, I cannot. When I would love, I cannot. 
 When I would grieve, I cannot. When I would 
 desire, I cannot. But it is the better for us that 
 all is as He wills. . . . Another of the deep deceits 
 of my heart is this, that I have more affection in 
 prayer than I have corresponding holiness in my 
 walk or conversation. I wondered not to see the 
 men of the world so taken up with covetous, ambi- 
 tious, vain projects, for no man's head and heart can 
 be so full of them as my head and heart are. Oh keep 
 me from these unsober, distempered, mad, unruly 
 thoughts ! When I am away from Thee then I am 
 quite out of my wit. But God can make use of poison 
 to expel poison. Oh, if I were examined and brought 
 to tlie light, what a monstrous creature I would be 
 seen to be ! For as I see myself I am no better than 
 a devil, void of sincerity and of uprightness in what 
 I do myself, and yet judge others, condemning in 
 
192 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 another man what I excuse and even approve in 
 myself: pkmged in deep snares of self-love, not 
 loving others nor judging nor acting for others as I 
 do for myself and for my relations.' And then a 
 passage which might have been taken from The 
 Confessions itself : ' Ere I come to glory and to my 
 journey's end, I shall have spent so much of Thy 
 free grace — what in pardoning, what in preventing, 
 what in convincing, what in enlightening, what in 
 strengthening, and confirming, and upholding ; what 
 in watering and making me to grow ; what in growth 
 of sanctification, knowledge, faith, experience, 
 patience, mortification, uprightness, steadfastness, 
 watchfulness, humiliation, resolution, and self- 
 denial ; what for public, what for private, and what 
 for the family; what against snares on the right 
 hand and on the left; — O Lord, the all-sufficiency 
 of Thy grace ! ' Surely the man must run well and 
 must make a good goal at last who can write about 
 sin and grace in himself in that fashion ! And that is 
 not all he wrote on that subject and in that style. 
 You have no idea of the wealth of personal and 
 experimental matter there lies buried in Alexander 
 Brodie's diary. When I first read Brodie's big 
 diary I said to myself. What a treasure is this I 
 have stumbled upon ! Here is yet another of 
 Scotland's statesmen, scholars, and eminent saints. 
 Here, I thought, is an author on the inward life to 
 be set beside Bi*ae and Halyburton, if not beside 
 Shepard and Edwards themselves. 
 
 In the religious upbringing also, and lifelong care 
 of his or])haned son and daughter, Brodie was all 
 we could wish to see. In the sanctification and 
 
ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 193 
 
 wise occupation ot the Sabbath-day ; in the family 
 preparation for communion seasons ; in the personal 
 and private covenants he encouraged his children 
 to make with God in their own religious life ; in the 
 company he brought to his house and to his table ; in 
 his own devotional habits at home — in all these all- 
 important matters Brodie was all that a father of 
 children too early bereft of their mother ought to 
 be. Till we do not wonder to find his son com- 
 mencing his diary on the day of his father's death 
 in this way : ' My precious, worthy, and dear father ! 
 I can hardly apprehend the consequence of it to 
 the land, and the Church, and his family. The 
 Lord give instruction. I have seen the godly 
 conversation, holy and Christian walk of a father, 
 his watchfulness and fruitfulness, his secret com- 
 munion with God, and yet I cannot say that my 
 heart has been won to God by his example.' 
 A complete directory, indeed, for a Highland gentle- 
 man's household religion might easily be collected 
 out of Alexander Brodie's domestic diary. 
 
 Another thing that greatly di-ew me to Brodie 
 when I first read his diary was his noble and truly 
 Christian acknowledgment of God in all the manifold 
 experiences and events of his daily life. ' 23rd Juli/, 
 1661. — Came through the fells in England to 
 Alsbori and dined there, saw a country full of grass, 
 plentiful in comparison of us, and acknowledged 
 God in it. . . . Thus I saw a large beautiful 
 country, not straitened with the poverty that ray 
 native soil labours under. I desired to consider and 
 understand this. ... I saw a mighty city, London, 
 numerous, many souls in it, great plenty of things, 
 
 N 
 
194 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 and thought him a great king that had so many 
 things at his command ; yet how much greater is 
 He who hath at His command all things created in 
 heaven and on earth, ^\^lo shall not fear Him ? 
 . . . August 17. —Went this afternoon with Cassilis 
 to the Bridge for natural refreshment, and I saw 
 this populous city, and plenty in it. I therein saw 
 something of the Lord's providence, who hath 
 divided the kingdoms of the earth and given them 
 their habitations, not all alike, but as His wisdom 
 hath seen fit. I saw the copper-works also, and 
 acknowledged the Lord in the gifts and the faculties 
 He hath given to the children of men. 27. — I did 
 see the Lord Mayor, his solenmities, and desired to 
 be instructed by M'hat I saw. The variety of the 
 Lord's creatures on other parts of the earth was 
 represented. Li this I did acknowledge Him. 
 But all the glory of the city neither abides nor can 
 make its o"\vner any the happier. It cannot be laid 
 hold upon. It is not solid ; it is but in conceit. Oh 
 learn me to be crucified to all this and the like, and 
 make me wise unto salvation ! Nov. Q. — Dined at 
 Billingsgate ; saw the prison of King's Bench at 
 Southwark, and the workers of glass, in all which I 
 saw the manifold wisdom of God in all the gifts 
 and faculties He hath given to the sons of men. 
 But alas ! I am so barren of any thoughts of God, 
 and so have I found myself this day and at all times.' 
 
 'Yet, all these fences, and their whole array, 
 One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.' 
 
 Now, there is no more cunning bosom sin in some 
 men than the sin of covetousness, and that sin iu 
 
ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 195 
 
 Alexander Brodie's heart and life blew almost, if not 
 altogetlier, away all these and many more fences of 
 his salvation. Well as David Laing edits Alexander 
 Brodie's Diary, unfortunately for some of his readers 
 he leaves his index an index of names only, neglect- 
 ing things. And thus I have had to extemporise an 
 index for myself under such sad heads as those of 
 Brodie's 'passionateness,' his 'covetousness,' his 'time- 
 serving ' and ' tuft-hunting,' and suchlike. And I 
 am compelled in truth to say that the entries in ray 
 index under ' covetousness' and under ' time-serving' 
 and * tergiversation ' is a long and yet far from 
 exhaustive list. And now, acting, I hope, on the 
 Scriptiu-al principle that 
 
 ' The saints are lowered that the world may rise,' 
 
 I shall say a single word on each of Brodie's two so 
 besetting sins. And, doing in the matter of Brodie's 
 vices as I have just done in the matter of his virtues, 
 I shall let the singularly honest Diarist speak for 
 himself. I certainly would not dare, on any evidence, 
 to characterise or condemn a man like Brodie as he 
 will now characterise and condemn himself. ^Julij 30, 
 1653. — I find covetousness getting deeper and deeper 
 into my heart, insatiable desires of lands and riches, 
 the desire of acquiring my neighbour's property, 
 and many vain projects and want of contentment, 
 albeit I have already what might satisfy and well 
 content me. I find that it is not ten hundred times 
 what I possess that would content and stay my mind 
 from greedy lusts and insatiable desires. \\'hat 
 avails prayer as long as these lusts remain ? I 
 scarcely allow meat and fish and beer and victual to 
 
196 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 my family and to tlie poor. Lord, pity ! 21 Aug. 
 — Sin and snare are inseparable from this haste to 
 be rich. Lord, in this Thou punishest one sin with 
 another, with unrighteousness, oppression, uneven- 
 ness, uncharitableness, deceit, falsehood, rigour to 
 tenants, straitenedness to the poor. 24 Sept. — 
 Read 1 Cor. viii. 14, 15, which did reprove my 
 straitenedness, my coldness, and my parsimony. 
 19 Juli/. — Was taken up inordinately with trash 
 and hagg. Let not the Loi-d impute it ! 9 Oct. 
 — My heart challenged me that I could so freely 
 lay out money on books, plenishing, clothes to my- 
 self, and was so loth to lay out for the Lord. Oh, 
 what does this presage and witness but that I am of 
 the earth and that my portion is not blessed, but 
 that my goods are rather accursed ! 4 Nov. — Neil 
 Campbell staid with me. I found my niggardly 
 nature still encroaching upon me, and made my sup- 
 plication for escape. Juli/ 1. — Because I have not 
 employed my wealth in charitable uses, therefore 
 does the Lord take other ways more grievous to me 
 to scatter what I have so sinfully kept back.' And 
 so on, alternately scrimping and confessing ; filling 
 his pockets with money, and praying that he may 
 be enabled to open them, he goes on till we read 
 such miserably self-deceiving entries as this almost 
 at the end of his doleful diary : ' I purpose, if the 
 Lord would give strength and grace and constancy, 
 and an honest and sound heart, to lay by some 
 money for such uses from time to time, whereof 
 this much shall be a sign and memorial.' 
 
 And then, as to his fear of man, his time-serving, 
 and vacillation in the day of difficult duty, hear his 
 
ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 197 
 
 own humiliating confessions: ^ Jan. 20, l6G2. — My 
 perplexity continues as to whether I shall move now 
 or not, stay or return, hold by Lauderdale, or make 
 use of the Bishop. I desired to reflect on giving 
 titles, speaking fair, and complying. I found 
 Lauderdale changed to me, and I desired to spread 
 this out before God. I went to Sir George Mushet's 
 funeral, where I was looked at, as I thought, like a 
 speckled bird. I apprehend much trouble to myself, 
 my family, and my affairs, from the ill-will of those 
 who govern. May God keep me under the shadow 
 of His wings. Oct. l6. — Did see the Bishop, and 
 in my discourse with him did go far in fair words 
 and the like. The 31. — James Urquhart was with 
 me. Oh that I could attain to his steadfastness and 
 firmness ! But, alas ! I am soon overcome ; I soon 
 yield to the least difficulty. The 26. — Duncan 
 Cuming was here, and I desired him to tell the 
 honest men in the south that though I did not come 
 up their length, I hoped they would not stumble at 
 me.' In other words, * Tell the prisoners in the 
 Bass and in Blackness, and the martyrs of the Grass- 
 market and the Tolbooth, that Lord Brodie is a 
 Presbyterian at heart, and ought to be a Covenanter 
 and a sufferer with his fellows ; but that he loves 
 Brodie Castle and a whole skin better than he loves 
 the Covenant and the Covenanters, or even the 
 Surety of the better covenant.' And having de- 
 spatched his sympathetic message to the honest men 
 in the South, he takes up his pen again to carry on 
 his diar)% which he carries on in these actual terms. 
 Believe me, I copy literally and scrupulously from the 
 humiliating book. ' Die Dom. — I find great averse- 
 
198 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 ness in myself to suffering. I am afraid to lose life or 
 estate. I hold it a duty not to abandon those honest 
 ministers that have stuck to the Reformation. And 
 if the Lord would strengthen me, I would desire to 
 confess the truth like them. ... I questioned 
 whether I might not safely use means to decHne 
 the cross and to ward off the vnraih of the Lords and 
 the Magistrates. Shall I begin to hear Mr. \\'illiam 
 Falconer ? Shall I write to Seaforth and Argj'll to 
 ask them to clear and vindicate me .'' Shall I for- 
 bear to hear that honest minister, James Urquhart, 
 for a time, seeing the storm is like to foil on me if I 
 do so ? What counsel shall I give my son ? Shall 
 I expose myself and my family to danger at this 
 time ? What is Thy will ? What is my duty >' And 
 then this able and honest hypocrite has the grace to 
 add : ' A grain of sound faith would easily answer 
 all these questions.' I have a sheaf of such pas- 
 sages. It is sickening work to speak and hear such 
 things. But they must sometimes be spoken and 
 heard, if only to afford a reply to Paul's question in 
 the text : ' Ye did rim well ; what did hinder you ? ' 
 How well Alexander Brodie ran for a time, and how 
 well he might have run to the end but for those two 
 sins that did so easily beset him — the love of money 
 and the fear of man ! But under the arrest and over- 
 throw that those two so mean and so contemptible 
 vices brought on Brodie, we see his spiritual life, or 
 what might have ripened into spiritual life, gradually 
 but surely decaying, even in his diary, till we read 
 this last entry on the day of his death : * My dark- 
 ness has not taken an end, nor my confusions.' 
 Alexander Brodie being long dead yet speaketh 
 
ALEXANDER BRODIE OF BRODIE 199 
 
 with terrible power in every page of his solemnising 
 diary. Young men of Scotland, he says, young 
 statesmen, young senators of the College of Justice, 
 young churchmen, young magistrates, young land- 
 lords, and all young men of talent and of influence, 
 sons of the Cavaliers and the Covenanters alike — 
 seek the right and the true, the just and the 
 honourable, in your day ; choose it for your part, 
 and take your stand firmly and boldly upon it. 
 Make hazards in order to stand upon it. Read my 
 humbling life, and take warning from me. And 
 when your times are confused and perplexed ; when 
 truth and duty are not wholly and commandingly 
 clear; give a good conscience the benefit of the 
 doubt, and suspect the side on which safety and 
 promotion and public praise lie. Pray without 
 ceasing, and then live as you pray. And then my 
 diary shall not have been WTitteu and left open 
 among you in vain. 
 
^00 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 XXIII 
 JOHN FLEMING, BAILIE OF LEITH 
 
 ' I wish that I could satisfy your desire in drawing up and 
 framing for you a Christian Directory.' — Ridherford. 
 
 rAMUEL RUTHERFORD and John 
 Fleming, Bailie of Leith, were old and 
 fast friends. Away back in the hapjjy 
 days when Rutherford was still a 
 student, and was still haunting the 
 back-shop of old John Meine in the Canongate of 
 Edinburgh, he had formed a fast friendship with the 
 young wood-merchant of Leith. And all the trials 
 and separations of life, instead of deadening their 
 love for one another, or making them forget one 
 another, had only drawn the two men the closer to 
 one another. For when Rutherford's two great 
 troubles came upon him, — first his dismissal from the 
 Latin regency in Edinburgh University, and then 
 his banishment from his pulpit at Anwoth, — John 
 Fleming came forward on both occasions with 
 money, and with letters, and with visits that were 
 even better than money, to the penniless and friend- 
 less professor and exiled pastor. ' Sir, I thank 
 you kindly for your care of me and of my brother. 
 I hope it is laid up for you and remembered in 
 heaven.' 
 
JOHN FLEMING 201 
 
 Robert M'Ward, the first editor of Rutherford's 
 Letters, with all his assiduity, was only able to 
 recover four letters out of the heap of correspond- 
 ence that had passed between the rich timber- 
 merchant of Leith and the exiled minister, but 
 those four tell us volumes, both about the intimacy 
 of the two men and about the depth and the 
 worth of the bailie's character. Fleming wrote 
 a letter to Rutherford in the spring of 1637, which 
 must have run in some such terms as these : — ' My 
 life is fast ebbing away, and I am not yet begun 
 aright to live. I am in mid-time of my days. I 
 sometimes feel that I am coming near the end of 
 them ; and what evil days they have been ! My 
 business that my father left me is prosperous. I 
 have a good and kind wife, as you know. My 
 children are not wholly without promise. My place 
 in this town is far too honourable for me, and I have 
 many dear friends among the godly both in Leith 
 and in Edinburgh. But I feel bitterly that I have 
 no business to mix myself among them, and to be 
 counted one of them. For, what with the burden- 
 some affairs of this great seaport, and my own grow- 
 ing business, my days and my nights are like a 
 weaver's shuttle. I intend and I begin well, but 
 another year and another year comes to an end and 
 I am just where I was. I have had some success, 
 by God's blessing, in making money, but I am a 
 bankrupt before Him in my soul. My inward life is 
 a ravelled hesp, and I need guidance and direction 
 if I am ever to come out of this confusion and to 
 come to any good. Protestant and Presbyterian as I 
 am,' he goes on, ' if I could only find a director who 
 
202 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 would take trouble with me and command me as I 
 take trouble with and command my servants^ I vow 
 to you that I would put the reins without reserve 
 into his hands. Will you not take me in hand? 
 You know me of old. We used to talk in dear old 
 John Meine's back-shop on week-nights and upstairs 
 on Sabbath nights about these things. And long as 
 it is since we saw much of one another, I feel that 
 you know me out and in, and through and through, 
 as no one else knows me. Tell me, then, what I am 
 to do with myself. I will try to do what you tell me, 
 for I am wearied and worn out with my stagnant and 
 miserable life. Pity me, Mr. Samuel, my honoured 
 and dear friend, for my pirn is almost run out, and I 
 am not near saved.' 
 
 'My worthy and dearly beloved brother in the 
 Lord,' replied Rutherford to Fleming, ' I dare not 
 take it upon me to lay down rules and directions for 
 your inner life. I have not the judiciousness, nor the 
 experience, nor the success in the inner life myself 
 that would justify me. And, besides, there is no 
 lack of such Directories as you ask me for. Search 
 the Scriptures. Buy Daniel Rogers, and Richard 
 Greenham, and especially William Perkins. My own 
 wall is too much broken down, my own garden is too 
 much overrun with weeds; I dare not attempt to lay 
 down the law to you. But I will do this since you 
 are so importunate ; I will tell you, as you have told 
 me, some of my own mistakes and failings and ship- 
 wrecks, and the rocks on which I have foundered 
 may thug be made to carry a lantern to light your 
 ship safely past them.' 
 
 ' Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and wiite ; 
 
JOHN FLEMING 203 
 
 and, like Sir Philip Sydney, Samuel Rutherford 
 looked into his own heart, and drew a Directory out 
 of it for the better Christian conduct of his friend 
 John Fleming. 
 
 1. Now — would you believe it ? — the first thing 
 Samuel Rutherford found his own heart accusing 
 him in before God was, of all things, the way he 
 had wasted his time. Would you believe it that the 
 student who was summer and winter in his study 
 at three o'clock in the morning, and the minister 
 who, as his people boasted, was always preparing his 
 sermons, always visiting his people, always writing 
 books, and always entertaining strangers, — would you 
 believe it that one of his worst consciences was for 
 the bad improvement of his time ? What an insati- 
 able thirst for absolute and unearthly perfection God 
 has awakened in the truly gracious heart ! Give the 
 truly gracious heart a little godliness and it cries 
 out night and day for more. Give it more, and 
 it straightway demands all. Give it all and it still 
 accuses you that it has literally got none at all. 
 Samuel Rutherford gave all his time and all his 
 strength to his pastoral and his professorial duties, 
 and yet when he looked into his own heart to write 
 a letter to Bailie Fleming out of it, his whole heart 
 condemned him to his face because he had so mis- 
 managed his time, and had not aright redeemed it. 
 ' You complain that your time is fast speeding away, 
 and that you have not even begun to employ it well. 
 So is mine. I give a good part of my time to my 
 business, as you say you do to yours; but, just like 
 you, that leaves me no time to give to God. God 
 forgive me for the way I forget Him and neglect 
 
204 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Him all the time that I am bustling about in the 
 things of His house ! Let us both begin, and me 
 especially, to give some of God's best earthly gift 
 back to Him again. Let us spare a little of His 
 time that He allows us and bestow it back again 
 upon Himself. He values nothing so much as a 
 little of our allotted time. Let us meditate on Him 
 more, and pray more to Him. Let us throw up 
 ejaculations of prayer to Him more and more while 
 we are at our daily employments ; you in the 
 timber-yard, down among the ships, at the desk, 
 and at the Council-table; and I among my books, 
 and among my people, and in my pulpit. These 
 are always golden moments to me, and why they do 
 not multiply themselves into hours and days and 
 years is to me but another proof of my deep 
 depravity. And, John Fleming, sanctify you the 
 Sabbath. As you love and value your immortal 
 soul, sanctify and do not waste and desecrate the 
 Sabbath. Let no man steal from you a single hour 
 of the Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou labour and 
 do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath 
 of the Lord thy God.' 
 
 2. And again and again in his letters to Fleming 
 Rutherford returns to the sins of the tongue. 
 Rutherford himself was a great sinner by his tongue, 
 and he seems to have taken it for granted that the 
 bailies of Leith were all in the same condemnation. 
 ' Observe your words well,' he writes out of the 
 bitterness of his own heart. * Make conscience of 
 all your conversations.' Cut off a right hand, pluck 
 out a right eye, says Christ. And I wonder that 
 half of His disciples have not bitten out their 
 
JOHN FLEMING 205 
 
 offending tongues. Wliat a world of injury and of 
 all kinds of iniquity has the tongue always and 
 everywhere been ! In Jerusalem in David's day ; 
 and still in Jerusalem in James's day ; in Anwoth 
 and Aberdeen and St. Andrews in Rutherford's day ; 
 and in Lcith in John Fleming's day ; and still in all 
 these places in our ovn.i day. The tongue can no 
 man tame, and no wonder, for it is set on fire of 
 hell. ' I shall show you,' says Rutherford, ' what I 
 would fain be at myself, howbeit I always come 
 short of my purpose.' Rutherford made many 
 enemies both as a preacher and as a doctrinal and 
 an ecclesiastical controversialist. He was a hot, if 
 not a bad-blooded man himself, and he raised both 
 hot and bad blood in other men. He was a 
 passionate-hearted man, was Rutherford; he would 
 not have been our sainted Samuel Rutherfoi-d if he 
 had not had a fast and a high-beating heart. And 
 his passionate heart was not all spent in holy love to 
 Jesus Christ, though much of it was. For the dregs 
 of it, the unholy scum and froth of it, came out too 
 much in his books of debate and in his differences 
 with his own brethren. His high-mettled and almost 
 reckless sense of duty brought him many enemies, 
 and it was his lifelong sanctification to try to treat 
 his enemies aright, and to keep his own heart and 
 tongue and pen clean and sweet towards them. And 
 he divined that among the merchants and magistrates 
 of Leith, anger and malice, rivalry and revenge were 
 not unknown any more than they were among their 
 betters in the Presbytery and the General Assembly. 
 He knew, for Fleming had told him, that his very 
 prosperity and his father's prosperity had procured 
 
206 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 for Fleming many enemies. The Norway timber 
 trade was not all in the Fleming hands for nothing. 
 The late Council election also had left Fleming 
 many enemies, and his simple duty at the Council- 
 table daily multiplied them. It was quite unac- 
 countable to him how enemies sprang up all around 
 him, and it was well that he had such an open-eyed 
 and much-experienced correspondent as Rutherford 
 was, to whom he could confide such ghastly 
 discoveries, and such terrible shocks to faith and 
 trust and love. ' Watch well this one thing. Bailie 
 Fleming, even your deep desire for revenge. Be 
 sure thab it is in your heart in Leith to seek revenge 
 as well as it is in my heart here in Aberdeen. 
 Watch, as you would the workings of a serpent, 
 the workings of your sore-hurt heart in the matter 
 of its revenges. Watch how the calamities that 
 come on your enemies refresh and revive you. 
 Watch how their prosperity and their happiness 
 depress and darken you. Disentangle the desire 
 for revenge and the delight in it out of the rank 
 thickets of your wicked heart ; drag that desire and 
 delight out of its native darkness ; know it, name it, 
 and it will be impossible but that you Avill hate it 
 like death and hell, and yourself on account of it. 
 Do you honestly wish, as you say you do, for 
 direction as to your duty to your many enemies in 
 Leith, and to God and your own soul among them ? 
 Then begin with this : watch and find yourself out 
 in your deep desire for revenge, and in your secret 
 satisfaction and delight to hear it and to speak it. 
 Begin with that ; and, then, long after that, and as 
 the divine reward of that, you will be enabled to 
 
JOHN FLEMING 207 
 
 begin to try to love your enemies, to bless them 
 that curse you, to do good to them that hate you, 
 and to pray for them that despitefully use you and 
 persecute you. You need no Directory for these 
 things from me when you have the Sermon on the 
 Mount in your own New Testament.' 
 
 3. And, still looking into his own heart and writing 
 straight out of it, Rutherford says to Fleming, ' I 
 have been much challenged in my conscience, and 
 still am, for not referring all I do to God as my last 
 and chiefest end.' Which is just Samuel Rutherford's 
 vivid way of taking home to himself the first question 
 of the Shorter Catechism which he had afterwards 
 such a deep hand in drawing up. I do not know any 
 other author Avho deals so searchingly with this great 
 subject as that pi'ince among experimental divines, 
 Thomas Shepard, the founder of Yale in New 
 England. His insight is as good as his style is bad. 
 His English is execrable, but his insight is nothing 
 short of divine. ' The pollution of the whole man, 
 and of all his actions,' he says in his Parable of the 
 Ten Virgins, ' consists chiefly in his self-seeking, in 
 making ourselves our utmost end. This makes our 
 most glorious actions vile; this stains them all. 
 And so the sanctification of a sinner consists chiefly 
 in making the Lord our utmost end in all that we 
 do. Every man living seeks himself as his last end 
 and chiefest good, and out of this captivity no 
 human power can redeem us. . . . Make this your 
 last and best end — to live to Christ and to do His 
 will. This is your last end ; this is the end of your 
 being born again — nay, of your being redeemed by 
 His blood — that you may live unto Christ.' And 
 
208 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 in the same author's Meditations and Spiritual Ex- 
 periences, he says, ' On Sabbath morning I saw that 
 I had a secret eye to my own name in all that I did, 
 and I judged myself to be worthy of death because 
 I was not weaned from all created glory, from all 
 honour and praise, and from the esteem of men. . . , 
 On Sabbath, again, when I came home, I saw into 
 the deep hypocrisy of my own heart, because in my 
 ministry I sought to comfort and quicken the people 
 that the glory might reflect on me as well as on 
 God. . . . On the evening before the sacrament I saw 
 it to be my duty to sequester myself from all other 
 things and to prepare me for the next day. And I 
 saw that I must pitch first on the right end, I saw 
 that mine own ends were to procure honour to 
 myself and not to the Lord, There was some poor 
 little eye in seeking the name and glory of Christ, 
 yet I sought not it only, but my own glory, too. 
 After my Wednesday sermon I saw the pride of my 
 heart acting thus, that when I had done public 
 work my heart would presently look out and inquire 
 whether I had done it well or ill. Hereupon I saw 
 my vileness to be to make men's opinions my rule, 
 and that made me vile in mine own eyes, and 
 that more and more daily.' ' I have been much 
 challenged,' writes Rutherford to Fleming, ' because 
 I do not refer all I do to God as my last end : that 
 I do not eat and drink and sleep and journey and 
 speak and think for God.' And, the fanatic that he 
 is, he seems to think that that is the calling and 
 chief end not only of ministers like himself and 
 Shepard, but of the bailies and timber-merchants 
 of Edinburgh and Leith also. 
 
JOHN FLEMING 209 
 
 4. Lastly, in the closing sentences of this inex- 
 haustible letter, Rutherford says to his waiting and 
 attentive correspondent : ' Growth in grace, sir, 
 should be cared for by you above all other things.' 
 And so it should. Literally and absolutely above 
 all other things. Above good health, above good 
 name, above wealth, and station, and honoui*. These 
 things, take them all together, if need be, are to be 
 counted loss in order to gain growth in grace. But 
 what is growth in grace } It is growth in every- 
 thing that is truly good ; but Fleming, as he read 
 his Directory daily, would always think of growth 
 in grace as the right improvement of his remaining 
 time, and, especially, its religious use and dedication 
 to God ; as also of the government of his own un- 
 tamed tongue ; the extinction of the desire for 
 revenge, and of all delight in the injury of his 
 enemies ; and, above all, and including all, in making 
 God his chief end in all that he did. How all- 
 important, then, is a sound and Scriptural Directory 
 to instruct us how Ave are to grow in grace. And 
 how pi'ecious must that directory-letter have been 
 to a man in dead earnest like John Fleming. It 
 was precious to his heart, you may be sure, above 
 all his ships, and all his woodyards, and all his fine 
 houses, and all his seats of honour. And if his 
 growth in gi'ace in Leith has now become full-grown 
 gloiy in Heaven, how does he there bless God to-day 
 that ever he met with Samuel Rutherford in old 
 John Meine's shop in his youth, and had him for a 
 friend and a director all his after-days. And when 
 John Fleming at the table above forgets not all His 
 benefits, high up, you may be very sure, among 
 () 
 
210 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 them all he never forgets to put Samuel Rutherford's 
 letters ; and, more especially, this very directory- 
 letter we have read here for our own direction 
 and growth in grace this Communion-Sabbath 
 night. 
 
THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM 211 
 
 XXIV 
 THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLINI 
 
 ' For .want of time I have put you all in one \G\Xtx .' — Rutherford. 
 
 [HERE is a well-known passage in 
 Lycidas that exactly describes the 
 religious condition of the parish of 
 Kilmacolra in the year l639. For the 
 shepherd of that unhappy sheepfold 
 also had climbed up some other way before he knew 
 how to hold a sheephook, till, week after week, the 
 hungry sheep looked up and were not fed. The 
 parishioners of Kilmacolm must have been fed to 
 some purpose at one time, for the two letters they 
 write to Rutherford in their present starvation bear 
 abundant witness on every page to the splendid 
 preaching and the skilful pastorate that this parish 
 must at one time have enjoyed. There must have 
 been men of no common ability, as well as of no 
 common profundity of spiritual life in Kilmacolm 
 during those trying years, for the letters they wrote 
 to Rutherford Avould have done credit to any of 
 Rutherford's ablest and best correspondents — to 
 William Guthrie, or David Dickson, or Robert Blair, 
 or John Livingstone. Indeed, the expert author of 
 the Therapeuiica himself would have been put to it 
 
212 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 to answer fully and satisfactorily those two so acute 
 and so searching letters. The Kihnacolm people 
 had heard about the famous answers that Samuel 
 Rutherford, now home again in Anwoth, had written 
 both from Anwoth and from Aberdeen to all classes 
 of people and on all kinds of subjects; copies, 
 indeed, of some of those now already wide-spi-ead 
 letters had come to Kilmacolm itself, till, at one of 
 their private meetings for conference and prayer, it 
 was resolved that a small committee of their elders 
 should gather up their painful experiences in the 
 spiritual life that got no help from the parish pulpit, 
 and should set them by way of submission and con- 
 sultation before the great spiritual casuist. Every- 
 body else was getting what counsel and comfort they 
 needed from the famous adviser of Anwoth, and why 
 not they, the neglected parishioners of Kilmacolm .-• 
 And thus it was that two or three of the oldest and 
 ablest men in the kirk-session so wrote to Rutherford, 
 as, after some delay, to get back the elaborate letter 
 from Anwoth numbered 28 6 in Dr. Bonar's edition. 
 I am tempted to think it possible that the old, 
 long-experienced, and much-exercised saints of 
 Kilmacolm may have demanded a little too much 
 of their minister : at any rate, I am quite as anxious 
 to hear what Rutherford shall say to them as they 
 can be to hear from him themselves. And all that 
 leads me to believe that not only must there have 
 been some quite remarkable people in the parish 
 chui'ch at that date, but that they must also have 
 had some very special pulpit and pastoral work 
 expended on them in former years. Or, if not that, 
 then their case is just another illustration of what 
 
THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM 213 
 
 Rutherford says in his reassuring answer, namely, 
 that the life of grace among a people is not at all 
 tied up to the lips of their minister. Whicli, again, 
 is just another way of putting what the Psalmist 
 says of himself in his humble and happy boast : ' I 
 have more understanding than all my teachers, 
 for Thy testimonies are my meditation. I under- 
 stand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy 
 precepts.' 
 
 1. The first complaint that came to Anwoth from 
 Kilmacolm was expressed in the quaint and graphic 
 language natural to that day. ' Security, strong and 
 sib to nature, is stealing in upon us.' The holy law 
 of God, they mean, was never preached in their 
 parish ; at any rate, it was never carried home to 
 any man's conscience. Nobody was ever disturbed. 
 Nobody's feelings were ever hurt. Nobody in all 
 the parish had ever heard a voice of thunder saying. 
 Thou art the man. Toothless and timid generalities 
 made up all the preaching they ever heard either 
 on the ethical or on the evangelical side : and 
 generalities disturb no man's peace of mind. The 
 pulpit of Kilmacolm was but too sib to the pew, and 
 both pulpit and pew slept on together in undisturbed 
 security. And that supplied Samuel Rutherford 
 with an excellent text for a sermon he was con- 
 tinually preaching in every utterance of his — the 
 constant danger we all lie under as long as we ai-e 
 in this life. Danger from sin, and, in its owni still 
 subtler way, as nuich danger from grace ; danger 
 from want, and danger from fulness ; danger from 
 our weakness, and danger from our strength. So 
 much danger is there that if any man in this life is 
 
214 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 in a state ot security about himself he is surely the 
 foolishest of all foolish men. For, 
 
 Thy close pursuers' busy hands do plant 
 Snares in thy substance, snares attend thy want ; 
 Snares in thy credit, snares in thy disgrace ; 
 Snares in thy high estate, snares in thy base ; 
 Snares tuck thy bed, and snares attend thy board ; 
 Snares watch thy thoughts, and snares attack thy word ; 
 Snares in thy quiet, snares in thy commotion ; 
 Snares in thy diet, snares in thy devotion ; 
 Snares lurk in thy resolves, snares in thy doubt ; 
 Snares lurk within thy heart, and snares without ; 
 Snares are above thy head, and snares beneath ; 
 Snares in thy sickness, snares are in thy death. 
 
 What a fool and what a sluggard nature must be, as 
 Rutherford here says she is, if she can lull us into 
 security about ourselves in such a hfe as this ! And 
 what a noble field does this snare-filled life supply 
 for all a preacher's boldest and best powers ! 
 
 2. They have some new beginners in Kilmacolm 
 in spite of all its spiritual stagnation, and the older 
 people are full of anxiety lest those new beginners 
 should not be rightly directed. ' Tell them for one 
 thing,' says Rutherford in rei)ly, ' to dig deep while 
 they are yet among their foundations. Tell them 
 that a sick night for sin is not so common either 
 among young or old as I would like to see it. Make 
 them to understand what I mean by digging deep. 
 I mean deep into their own heart in order to dis- 
 cover and lay bare to themselves the corrupt motives 
 from which they act every day even in the very best 
 things they do. And that of itself will give them 
 many sufficiently sick days and nights too, both as 
 new beginners and as old believers. And tell them, 
 
THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM 215 
 
 also, from me, that once they have seen themselves 
 in their own hearts, and Jesus Christ in His heart, it 
 will be impossible for them ever to go back from 
 Him. Absolutely impossible. So much so that it 
 is perfectly certain that he who goes back from 
 Christ has never really seen himself or Christ either. 
 He may have seen something somewhat more or less 
 like Christ, but, all the time, it was not Christ. Let 
 your soul once come up to close quarters with 
 Christ, and I defy you ever to forget Him again. 
 Tell all your new beginners that from me, Samuel 
 Rutherford, who, after all, am not yet well begun 
 
 myself.' 
 
 3. 'You complain bitterly of a dead ministry in 
 your bounds. I have heard as much. But I will 
 reply that a living ministiy is not indispensable to a 
 parish. All our parishes ought to have it, and we 
 ought to see to it that they all get it ; but neither 
 the conversion of sinners, nor the sanctification and 
 comfort of God's saints, is tied up to any man's lips. 
 You will read your unread Bibles more: you will 
 buy more good books : you will meet more in private 
 converse and prayer : and it will not be bad for you 
 for a season to look above the pulpit, and to look 
 Jesus Christ Himself more immediately in the face.' 
 As Fraser of Brea also said in a striking passage in 
 his diary, so Rutherford says in his reply letter : ' in 
 your sore famine of the water of life, run your pipe 
 right up to the fountain.' 
 
 4. If the parishioners of Kilmacolm were severe 
 on their minister it was not that they let themselves 
 escape. And there was something in their present 
 letters that led Rutherford to warn them against a 
 
216 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 mistake that only people of the Kilmacolm type 
 will ever fall into. ' Some of the people of God,' 
 says their sharp-eyed censor, ' slander the grace of 
 God in their own soul.' And that is true of some of 
 God's best people still. We meet with such people 
 now and then in our own parishes to-day. They 
 are so possessed with penitence and humility ; they 
 have such high and inflexible and spiritual standards 
 for measuring themselves by ; the law has so fatally 
 entered their innermost souls that they will not even 
 admit or acknowledge what the grace of God has, 
 to all other men's knowledge, done in them. Seek 
 out, says Rutherford, the signs of true grace in your- 
 selves as well as the signs of secret sin. And when 
 you have found such and such an indubitable sign 
 of grace, say so. Say this, and this, and this, pointing 
 it out, is assuredly the work of God in my soul. 
 When you, after all defeat, really discover your soul 
 growing in grace; in patience under injuries; in 
 meekness under reproofs and corrections ; in love 
 for, or at least in peace of heart toward, those you 
 at one time did not like, but disliked almost to 
 downright hatred ; in silent and assenting accept- 
 ance, if not yet in actual and positive enjoyment, 
 of another man's talents and success, gain and fame ; 
 in the decay and disappearance of party spirit, and 
 in openness to all the good and the merit of other 
 men ; in prayerfulness ; in liberality, and so on ; 
 when you cannot deny these things in yourself, 
 then speak good of Christ, and do not traduce and 
 backbite His work because it is in your own soul. 
 ' Some wretches murmur of want while all the time 
 their money in the bank and their fat harvests 
 
THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM 217 
 
 make them liars.' Rutherford thinks he has put his 
 finger upon some such saintly liars in the kirk- 
 session of Kihnacolm. 
 
 5. ' Fear your light, my lord,' Avrote Rutherford 
 to Lord Craighall from Aberdeen ; ' stand in awe of 
 your light.' But the poor Kilmacohn people did 
 not need that sharp rebuke, for they had written to 
 Rutherford at their ovt'n instance to consult him in 
 their terror of conscience about this very matter, 
 till Rutherford had to exhaust his vocabulary of 
 comfort in trying to pacify his correspondents just 
 in this sufficiently disquieting matter of light in the 
 mind with great darkness in the heart and the life. 
 Our light in this world, he tells them, is a broad 
 and shining field, whereas our life of obedience is 
 at best but a short and straggling furrow. Only in 
 heaven shall the broad and basking fields of light 
 and truth be covered from end to end with the 
 songs of the rejoicing reapers. And Rutherford is 
 very bold in this matter, because he knows he has the 
 truth about it. A perfect life, he says, up to our 
 ever-increasing light, is impossible to us here, if only 
 because our light always increases with eveiy new 
 progress in duty. The field of light expands to a 
 new length and breadth every time the plough 
 passes through it. And, knowing well to whom he 
 writes on this subject, Rutherford goes on to say that 
 there is a sorrow for sin, and for shortcoming in 
 service, that is as acceptable Avith God in the evan- 
 gelical covenant as would be the very service itself. 
 But, then, it must be what Rutherford calls 'honest 
 sorrow after a sincere aim.' And let no man 
 easily allow himself to take shelter under that, lest 
 
218 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 it turn out to him like taking shelter in a thunder- 
 storm under a lightning rod. For what an aim must 
 that be, and then, what a sorrow, that is as good in 
 the sight of God as a full obedience is itself. At 
 the same time, ' A sincere aim, and then an honest 
 sorrow, both of the right quality and quantity, 
 taken together with Christ's intercession, must be 
 our best life before God till we be over in the other 
 country where the law of God will get a perfect 
 soul in which to fulfil itself. Your complaint on 
 this head is already booked in the New Testament 
 (Rom. vii. 18).' 
 
 6. ' The less sense of liberty and sweetness, the 
 more true spirituality in the service of God,' is 
 Rutherford's reply to their next perplexity. Ought 
 we to go on with our work and with our worship 
 when our hearts are dry and when we have no 
 delight in what we do } That is just the time to 
 persevere, replies their evangelical guide, for it is in 
 the absence of all sense of liberty and sweetness that 
 our duties prove themselves to be truly spiritual. A 
 sweet service has often its sweetness from an alto- 
 gether other source than the spiritual world. Let a 
 man be engaged in divine service, or in any other 
 religious work, and let him have sensible support 
 and success in it ; let him have liberty and enjoy- 
 ment in the pei'formance of it ; and, especially, let 
 him have the praise of men after it, and he will 
 easily be deceived into thinking that he has had 
 God's Spirit with him, and the light of God's 
 countenance, whereas all the time it has only been 
 an outpouring on his deceived heart of his own lying 
 spirit of self-seeking, self-pleasing, and self-exalting. 
 
THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM 219 
 
 While, again, a man's spirit may be all clay as dry 
 as the heath in the wilderness, and all other men's 
 spirits around him and toward him the same, yet 
 a very rich score may be set down beside that 
 unindulged servant's name against the day of the 
 ' well-dones.' ' I believe that many think that 
 obedience is lifeless and formal unless the wind be 
 in the west, and all their sails are filled with the 
 joys of sense. But I am not of their mind who 
 think so.' 
 
 7. The scrupulosity of the Kilmacolm people was 
 surely singular and remarkable even in that day of 
 tests and marks and scruples in the spiritual life. 
 The ministry may not have been wholly dead in and 
 around Kilmacolm, though it could not keep jiace 
 and patience with those so eager and so anxious souls 
 who would have Rutherford's mind on all possible 
 points of their complicated case. Six of their com- 
 plaints we have just seen, but their troubles ai*e not 
 yet all told. ' Surely,' they wrote, ' a Master like 
 our Lord, who gave such service when He was still 
 a servant Himself, — surely He will have hearty and 
 unfeigned service from us, or none at all. Will He 
 not spue the lukewarm servant out of His mouth ? ' 
 I grant you, wrote Rutherford, that our Master 
 must have honesty. The one thing He will unmask 
 and will not endure is hj'pocrisy. But if you mean 
 to insinuate that our hearts must always be entirely 
 given up to His service in all that we do, else He 
 will cast us away, for all I am worth in the world 
 I would not have that true of me. I would not 
 have that true, else where would my hope be ? 
 An English contemporary of Rutherford's puts it 
 
220 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 memorably : 'Our Master tries His servants not with 
 the balances of the sanctuary, but with the touch- 
 stone.' Take that, says Rutherford, for my reply to 
 your opinion that Christ must always have a perfect 
 service at our hands, or none at all. 
 
 8. Again, hold by the gi*ound-work when the out- 
 works and the superstructure are assailed. Fall back 
 the more nakedly upon your sure foundation. Keep 
 the ground of your standing and acceptance clear, and 
 take your stand on that ground at every time when 
 despair assaults you. For great faults and for small, 
 for formality in spiritual service, for cold-heartedness 
 and for half-heartedness, you have always open to 
 you your old and sure ground, the blood and the 
 righteousness of your Covenant-surety. 'Seek still 
 the blood of atonement for faults much and little. 
 Know the gate to the fountain, and lie about it. 
 Make much of assurance, for it keepeth the anchor 
 fixed.' 
 
 9. The last paragraph of Rutherford's letter to the 
 parishioners of Kilmacolm is taken up with the con- 
 solation that always comes to a Christian man's heart 
 after every deed of true self-mortification. That 
 is an experience that all Christian men must often 
 have, whether they take note sufficiently of it or no. 
 Let any man suffer for Christ's sake ; let any man 
 be evil-entreated and for Christ's sake take it 
 patiently; let him be reviled and persecuted in 
 public or in private for the truth ; let him deny 
 himself some indulgence — allowed, doubtful, or con- 
 demned — and all truly for the sake of Christ and 
 other men ; and immediately, and as a consequence 
 of that, a peace, a liberty, a light as of God's coun- 
 
THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM 221 
 
 tenance will infallibly visit his heart. After tempta- 
 tion resisted and overcome angels will always visit us. 
 * Temptations,' says Bunyan in the fine preface to 
 his Grace Ahoimding, ' when we meet them first are 
 as the lion that roared upon Samson ; but, if we 
 overcome them, the next time we see them we shall 
 find a nest of honey within them.' 'Blessed are 
 they that mourn,' says our Lord, ' for they shall be 
 comforted.' ' After my greatest mortifications,' said 
 Edwards, ' I always find my greatest comforts.' And 
 even Renan tells us of a Roman lady who had ' the 
 ineff'able joy of renouncing joy.' 'A Christ bought 
 with strokes,' says Rutherford in closing, 'is the 
 sweetest of all Christs.' 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 ON 
 
 Bttnyan Characters 
 
 ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
Fifteenth Thousand. Post %vo, antique laid paper^ cloth 
 extra. Price 2s. 6d, 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 Bunyan Characters 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGe's FREE CHURCH, 
 
 EDINBURGH: BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY I 
 
 II. EVANGELIST lO 
 
 III. OBSTINATE 22 
 
 IV. PLIABLE ........ 31 
 
 V. HELP 42 
 
 VI. MR. WORLDLY-WISEMAN S3 
 
 VII. GOODWILL 64 
 
 VIII. THE INTERPRETER 76 
 
 IX. PASSION 88 
 
 X. PATIENCE ICO 
 
 XI. SIMPLE, SLOTH, AND PRESUMPTION . . .112 
 
 XII. THE THREE SHINING ONES AT THE CROSS . . 122 
 
 XIII. FORMALIST AND HYPOCRISY .... I32 
 
 XIV. TIMOROUS AND MISTRUST .... I43 
 XV. PRUDENCE I51 
 
 XVI. CHARITY 160 
 
 XVII. SHAME 170 
 
 XVIII. TALKATIVE 180 
 
 XIX. JUDGE HATE-GOOD I9I 
 
 XX. FAITHFUL IN VANITY FAIR .... 201 
 
 XXI. BY-ENDS 214 
 
 XXII. GIANT DESPAIR 224 
 
 XXIII, KNOWLEDGE, A SHEPHERD .... 237 
 
 XXIV. EXPERIENCE, A SHEPHERD .... 248 
 XXV. WATCHFUL, A SHEPHERD 260 
 
 XXVI. SINCERE, A SHEPHERD 27 1 
 
 Edinburgh and London : 
 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 and all booksellers. 
 
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 ON THE FIRST SERIES 
 
 ' In the hands of some preachers or lecturers, Eunyan's 
 characters would have become caricatures ; but here they are 
 dehneated with a master-hand. The author does not treat 
 these characters as mythical ; to him they are living person- 
 alities, the representatives of many to-day whom we recog- 
 nise either as friends or foes. We feel perfectly safe in the 
 hands of an author who can quote most approvingly such 
 divines as Goodwin, Owen, and Rutherford, and whose soul 
 revels in Bunyan's Grace Abounding. All lovers of the im- 
 mortal allegory should get these Banyan Characters, especially 
 ministers, who would know men, and be soul-winners. 
 Having read this book from cover to cover, we can say as 
 Christian said when he left the gate of the Interpreter's house, 
 "Rare and profitable."' — Sword and Trowel. 
 
 * Dr. Whyte helps us to understand more vividly than 
 ■pefore what manner of men were Obstinate, Pliable, Talkative, 
 Faithful, Evangelist, and the like ; and the modern applications 
 of that old story of the soul's quest are indicated by many 
 subtle and suggestive comments which often touch to the quick 
 the greater as well as the lesser issues of faith and conduct. 
 There is both vigour and vivacity about the book, fancy and 
 feeling, yet the tenderness is as conspicuous as the courage.' 
 — Speaker. 
 
 ' The book is one of the most searching, fearless, and power- 
 ful treatises on personal religion we have ever read, and we 
 wish that it may find an entrance into all our homes, being 
 read alike by old and young, masters and servants, rich and 
 poor. The publishers have evidently felt that they were putting 
 forth a valuable work, and have taken great pains to give it a 
 worthy form. The paper, printing, and binding are excellent, 
 and the price is very low. We are not surprised to learn that 
 its sale is already large.' — Youth. 
 
 ' The handsomest and certainly the cheapest book which has 
 reached us for a very long time. It is a marvel how such a 
 volume can be expected to pay. At any rate, being grateful 
 for the mercies which we possess, we are rejoiced to have this 
 
4 SOME OPINIONS OF THE TRESS 
 
 handsome book. There is mellow Scottish wisdom stamped 
 upon every page. Nothing so sagely conscientious, so fear- 
 lessly searching, in many ways so genially witted has been 
 spoken or written amongst us for years. The book is of 
 matter all compact. A life's experience is written here.' — 
 Christian Leader, 
 
 'There is something in Dr. Whyte's special gifts which 
 eminently qualify him for dealing with Bunyan or Rutherford, 
 Dante or Law. 
 
 'He has drunk deep of the spirit of the nobler Puritan 
 theology, and has intense sympathy with it.' — Prhnitive 
 Methodist. 
 
 •The lectures are deeply interesting, full of devotional 
 feeling, and the fruits of a ripe and rich Christian experience. 
 They seem to come from a heart warm with human sympathy 
 and love, and to the pious mind will be found brimful of 
 stimulus, cheer and hope.' — People's Friend. 
 
 ' Dr. Wliyte is a genius as well as John Bunyan. He has 
 the skill to read the great tinker's heart as well as his books, 
 and he has added to that almost as surpassing a gift as the 
 tinker had of setting his story forth. "Peter examined Dante 
 in heaven on faith, James examined him on hope, and John 
 took him through his catechism on love, and the seer came out 
 of the tent with a laurel crown on his brow. I do not know 
 who the examiner on sin will be, but, speaking for myself on 
 the matter, I would rather take my degree in that subject than 
 in all the other subjects set for a sinner's examination on earth 
 or in heaven." That is Dr. Whyte. That might have been 
 John Bunyan, with a difference in the phraseology. ' — Expository 
 Times. 
 
 ' Dr. Wliyte is a devout student of Bunyan, and he is also a 
 keen and shrewd observer of men and character, admirably 
 qualified therefore to interpret the characters which form the 
 subjects of these twenty-five lectures. There is much pungent 
 criticism of men and women scattered throughout these lectures. 
 Dr. Whyte has a power of quiet but effective sarcasm, and he has 
 not even spared those of his own profession, perhaps because 
 he knows their frailties and deficiencies.' — Leeds Manny. 
 
 ' Of the lectures themselves we cannot speak too highly. 
 Bunyan was a poet, a philosopher, a writer excelled by none, 
 and a genius of the first order. Ilis commentator is his equal 
 in all these respects, while he far excels him as a scholar, and 
 in wide reading. 
 
 'Nothing to be compared with these lectures on the chief 
 work of the " immortal dreamer" has yet appeared, nor will 
 for many years to come.' — Bun fly Express. 
 
ON THE FIRST SERIES 5 
 
 ' The many-sidedness and depth of Bunyan's great allegory 
 receive a fresh anci remarkable illustration in the treasures of 
 moral truth which Dr. Whyte has gathered out of it here.'— 
 Church of Scotland Missionary Record. 
 
 ' That Dr. Whyte is most admirably adapted for such work 
 becomes our judgment before the close of the first lecture is 
 reached, and the subsequent lectures confirm us in this convic- 
 tion, lie wields a ready pen, whose carefully drawn lines set 
 before us many a living figure. With a most incisive style, 
 wnich goes to the very core, he lays open for inspection, 
 emulation, and warning the various characters, good and bad, 
 in a spirit so thoroughly evangelical, and in a way so true to 
 life, and that the life of to-day which is everj-where about us 
 and within us, that he awakens interest, arrests attention, 
 and commands admiration or detestation, according as the 
 character described is good or bad.'— Awx Co/Uze Monthly 
 (Toronto). 
 
 ' An admirable example of the way in which such a classic 
 as the Pilgrim's Progress can be turned to good account by 
 practical exposition.'— A<?r//5 British Daily Mail. 
 
 'The lectures are well conceived and full of interest.'— 
 Northern Whig. 
 
 ' These lectures are admirable— pointed, pungent, and emi- 
 nently readable.' — 7he Record. 
 
 *No one has ever studied the book he commends as he has 
 done, and to none will the Church now go so readily for infor- 
 mation about its teaching.' — Free Church Monthly. 
 
 ' Gives us no less than twenty-six of the " immortal dreamer's " 
 characters in Dr. Whyte's crisp and profound analysis and 
 depiction, and so provides a volume of rich and rare value and 
 charm._ A whole universe of reading, experience, and spiritual 
 savouriness is packed away in each lecture, and the book is 
 one of those choice issues only now and again permitted to 
 refresh a weary reviewer.' — Word ami Work. 
 
 * The exposition and filling out of these characters, as here 
 supplied, is the work of a mo,s\.(tt]xnn<i.'— Melbourne Presby- 
 terian Monthly. 
 
 'Characterised by eloquent language, fine thought, here and 
 there a little sarcasm, and occasional touches of quiet humour. 
 Dr. Whyte is a keen student of human nature, and very 
 cleverly does he adapt these Bttnvan Characters to modem 
 hfe. — Preston Guardian. 
 
 P 2 
 
6 SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 ' The studies have a freshness and power which come of 
 native strength, and a thorough conception of the types of the 
 character dealt with. 
 
 ' There are in this volume neither commonplace views nor 
 cheap comment. In their stead are sound good sense, and 
 lessons thoughtfully and vigorously enforced. ' — Rock. 
 
 ' His style is sometimes quaint, it is never tame, it is often 
 powerful, it is always practical. Here and there he adduces 
 illustrations which are as interesting as they are pertinent.' — 
 Indiaii Church Quarterly, 
 
 'A delightful book, sparkling with trenchant sentences, apt 
 illustrations, and forceful analogies. A picture gallery of living 
 men and women, we may each of us look therein, and find 
 ourselves somewhere portrayed.' — Illustrated Church News. 
 
 'Scholarly discourses, searching in their analysis, fearless 
 and true in their exposition, massive in their construction. 
 These lectures bring Bunyan up to date.' — Northern Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 ' He is a profoundly sympathetic interpreter of his author, 
 reading in every line which the great spiritual limner has 
 traced the features of his own heart and inward life.' — Christian 
 World. 
 
 • No more heart-searching, conscience-pricking, soul-strength- 
 ening, and sweetening book has been published since Bunyan 
 gave his rilgriin''s Progress to the Church. Dr. Whyte 
 revivifies and modernises the characters so graphically sketched 
 by Bunyan, and in presenting them to his hearers and readers 
 he exposes with an irresistible searchlight all the duplicities and 
 hypocrisies that abound in the present-day Christian life. But 
 while he seeks to make men and women professing the Christian 
 faith ashamed of their weaknesses and inconsistencies and sins, 
 he never fails to point out the more excellent way, and to stimu- 
 late and strengthen them in following it. His teaching is 
 always purifying and bracing.' — N. E. Gazette. 
 
 ' This is in our opinion one of the most valuable contributions 
 to evangelical literature that have been published for many 
 years. . . . The homely and forcible way in which Dr. Whyte 
 can analyse character is all his own, and in sentences short, 
 sagacious, searching, he plucks out the very heart of the reader's 
 mystery and shows how truly Bunyan understood the secret 
 springs of the human spirit.' — Kilmarnock Standard. 
 
 ' Read in these chapters slowly, seriously, and you will find that 
 a man is here dealing with the immortal characters of the great 
 allegory who has all the qualities necessary for his work, deep 
 
ON THE FIRST SERIES 1 
 
 insight into human nature, and delicate perception of the finer 
 shades and ditTerences amongst the motives and impulses, 
 temptations, and aspirations, which work together in a human 
 life. But you will find more. You will find yourself face to 
 face with a strong man who is speaking with untiring energy 
 and unrestrained passion to your own heart. He is a man who 
 feels for you amid all the doubts, all the interests, which the 
 men and women of to-day experience. He has read far more 
 than you ever will, and he has got the very heart out of the 
 books in philosophy, poetry, theology, devotion, which he has 
 read. He quotes them to you freely, and thus partly makes 
 you feel that he understands you and your doubts and your 
 interests.'— T'-itf Scottish Congregationalist. 
 
 ' There is a distinctive flavour in this book which we should 
 not know where to seek in any other living author. Here is a 
 mind imbued with the thought of Bunyan, of William Law, of 
 Bishop Andrewes, of Samuel Rutherford, and of all other de- 
 vout and mystical souls that have gone before, and yet quite 
 itself, not carried away by any, not drifted out of the 19th 
 century into the past, nor out of Edinburgh into the Desert. 
 . . . We envy the lot of these fortunate people of the North 
 who can listen to preaching of this order Sunday by Sunday.'— 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' In Dr. Alexander Whyte, the Immortal Dreamer has found 
 a brilliant interpreter. He brings out the inner meaning, and 
 applies these marvellous teachings in a way that makes the old 
 book more luminous than ever.' — Omranl {ToTonio). 
 
 •Tliey are full of fine analysis and observation of character, 
 and were written and delivered with a view to expound Bunyan 
 for present day needs.' — Bookman. 
 
 'We opened this compactly got-up little volume with some 
 feelings of distrust, our strong impression being that Bunyan 
 Characters did not want commenting or explanation. But 
 Dr. Whyte completely avoids the mistake of diluting the sound 
 and wiiolesome wine of Bunyan's text with deluges of watery 
 sermonizing. WHiile keeping us in the company of Bunyan, 
 making us feel that we have a freshly vivid apprehension of the 
 meaning of Bunyan, Dr. Whyte supplies us with a constant rnatter 
 of interest and instruction from the stores of his own experience, 
 and the findings of his own sagacity. His counsels convey to 
 us the idea of having been subjected to a searching process like 
 that applied to gold seven times refined.' — Literary I'Vorlil. 
 
Post 8vo, aiitiqut laid faper, cloth, extra. Price 2s. 6d, 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 Btmyan Characters 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH, 
 
 EDINBURGH : BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 IGNORANCE . 
 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 LITTLE-FAITH 
 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE FLATTERER . 
 
 
 XXX. 
 
 ATHEIST 
 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 HOPEFUL 
 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 TEMrORARY . 
 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 SECRET 
 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 MRS. TIMOROUS . 
 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 MERCY . 
 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 MR. BRISK . 
 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 MR. SKILL . 
 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD BOY 
 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 OLD HONEST 
 
 
 XL. 
 
 MR. FEARING 
 
 
 XLI. 
 
 FEEBLE-MIND 
 
 
 XLII. 
 
 GREAT-HEART 
 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 MR. READY-TO-HALT 
 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH 
 
 
 XLV. 
 
 STANDFAST . 
 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 MADAM BUBBLE . 
 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 GAIUS . 
 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN . 
 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 CHRISTIANA . 
 
 
 L. 
 
 THE ENCHANTED GPvOUND . 
 
 LI. 
 
 THE LAND OF BEULAH 
 
 LII. 
 
 THE SWELLING OF JORDAN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 24 
 
 34 
 45 
 57 
 68 
 80 
 92 
 103 
 
 113 
 124 
 
 137 
 149 
 163 
 176 
 189 
 201 
 214 
 227 
 238 
 248 
 
 259 
 270 
 282 
 295 
 
 Edinburgh and London: 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON and FERRIER 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 ON THE SECOND SERIES 
 
 ' He is brief, pithy, sententious, goes to the heart of each 
 character in the Bunyan picture gallery, recognises them all as 
 types of human nature in strcula saciilorum, tricks them out in 
 nineteenth century dress sometimes, and points them out as they 
 walk down Princes Street. And withal there is a deep spiritu- 
 ality of an antique flavour about these discourses.' — Methodist 
 Recorder, 
 
 ' Dr. Whyte has found a treasure-trove in John Bunyan, and 
 it is not too much to say that the grand old Allegorist has found 
 a treasure-trove in Dr. Whyte.' — Sunday School Magazine. 
 
 ' Marvellous expositions. Overflowing with evangelical 
 truth and lessons of practical godliness. Commonplace com- 
 mentaries on Bunyan's works are abundant. This is full of rare 
 genius, and keen insight into the very soul of the Bedford 
 prisoner.' — The Baptist. 
 
 ' The lines on which the religious life may be wisely and 
 effectually ordered are attractively set forth in a succession of 
 chapters, by which every class of reader may profit.' — The 
 Rock. 
 
 ' Never did a great author find a more intelligent and 
 sympathetic interpreter.' — Christian Conwionwealth. 
 
 ' One does not see why if the Bunyan Characters are ex- 
 hausted, we should not have another volume on the greatest 
 Bunyan Character of all, on John Bunyan himself! We have 
 been waiting for such a book for a very long time. Many have 
 tried to give it us, and have not done it. l3r. Whyte could do 
 it, if it can be done.' — The Expository Times. 
 
 ' These eloquent sketches of characters in the works of the 
 " glorious dreamer." ' — Leeds Mercury. 
 
 ' Probably no one has previously combined so much original 
 thinking, remarkable suggestiveness, and practical counsel as 
 we have in these character-studies.' — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 ' We have read them always with deep interest, often with 
 awe at the heights the author scales and the mysterious depths 
 he sounds. ' — Presbyterian Witness, 
 
lo SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 'Striking, thoughtful, and thoroughly sound.' — Northern 
 Whig. 
 
 'It is refreshing to read these inspiring and helpful pages.' — 
 Canadian Methodist Review. 
 
 ' One of the most interesting and suggestive religious works 
 of the year.' — Christian Guardian (Toronto). 
 
 ' There does not seem to be a shadow of a doubt that so long 
 as Bunyan is read, every one who wants to get below the sur- 
 face will read Dr. Whyte too.' — Methodist Times. 
 
 ' For strong, manly, reverent, and bracing exposition of 
 spiritual life and conflict, it would be hard to beat these 
 rambles through the Eunyan portrait gallery. These two 
 volumes will live and move along after the feckless namby- 
 pamby writing of the day is buried in oblivion.' — The Christian. 
 
 ' This completes the most beautiful and suggestive commen- 
 tary on the Pilgrim^ s Progress ever written, ' — British Weekly. 
 
 'We know of no writer who approaches Dr. Whyte as an 
 expounder of Bunyan. He is a modern Bunyan himself. We 
 shall be thankful if we can induce many to read these inimitable 
 lectures in an inimitable book.' — The News. 
 
 'The book will become a classic. It is good in every way.' 
 — Christian Weekly. 
 
 'No higher praise, perhaps, could be accorded them than to 
 say that they offer such a commentary on Bunyan's parables as 
 Bunyan himself would have delighted to read.' — Guardian. 
 
 ' Dr. Whyte's lectures are brief, but full of wholesome prac- 
 tical teaching, and not without a certain measure of quiet 
 humour. ' — Scottish Review, 
 
 ' Marked by ripe wisdom, quaint humour, devout feeling, 
 and shrewd common-sense. There is a delightful freshness in 
 the book, and sometimes almost a touch of genius in its search- 
 ing interpretation of the problems of life. ' — Speaker. 
 
 'Racy in style, varied in its contents, and pointed in its 
 applications of the great Dreamer's fancies to the church-goers 
 of our own day.' — Critical Revie~v. 
 
 'Full of good things.' — Christian World, 
 
 ' It is difficult to praise too much its depth of feeling and 
 literary gracefulness. ' — Presbyterian. 
 
ON THE SECOND SERIES n 
 
 ' His keen insight into the workings of the human heart, his 
 tender yet strong devotional feeling, his loving and enthusiastic 
 admiration of the great allegorist, and his distinguished analy- 
 tical power and attractive eloquence, combine to make this 
 book a rare acquisition to our devotional literature.' — Presby- 
 terian Monthly. 
 
 * In these two forcible and pungent series of lectures Dr. 
 Whyte certainly establishes his right to be regarded as the 
 commentator on Bunyan.' — Darkest England Gazette. 
 
 ' Like his Master, Dr. Whyte is not willing that any should 
 perish ; but while he seeks to make easy the way of grace, he 
 earnestly strives to make strong and true men and women out 
 of those who have had proof of the sweetness of the great 
 reconciliation.' — N. E. Gazette. 
 
 ' To all serious-minded men and women who believe in the 
 spiritual life and earnestly strive to develop it, this book will 
 be an immense help, and as such we cordially commend it.' — 
 Perthshire Advertiser. 
 
 ' An exhaustive treatise, which only the closest study of the 
 Puritan tinker could have produced.' — Morning Post. 
 
 ' There are twenty-six of these lectures, and the first impres- 
 sion derived from them is their brevity, terseness, vivacity. 
 We can see that they have not been easily written, in the sense 
 of lightly or carelessly, for they bear unmistakable traces of 
 care and pains, but their bright lucidity, their precision, their 
 point, and not less the boldness with which they range over 
 varied topics, render them easy and stimulating reading. Dr. 
 Whyte has a clever audacity in making allusions to any person 
 or thing that suits his purpose. He will bring in Mr. Glad- 
 stone, to illustrate some " truth that does not lie all at once on 
 the surface." He will call attention to Lord Rosebery's 
 appreciation of the pathetic beauty of Bunyan's death-bed 
 scenes. 
 
 'He asks his hearers "by the way" whether they are acquainted 
 with Mr. Louis Stevenson's "remarkable and delicious paper " 
 on Bagster's Bunyan, and expresses the opinion that Messrs. 
 Bagster ought to re-issue the book "with Mr. Stevenson's paper 
 for a preface and introduction." Dr. Whyte is not the man to 
 be fettered by pulpit technicalities. The book is vividly 
 practical and stirring from beginning to end.' — Literary World. 
 
Demy 8vo, Cloth Extra, with 14 Illustrations 
 and Facsimile of his Writing. 
 
 ^^ Letters of 
 Samtcel Rutherford^ 
 
 Price 5s. New Edition. 
 WITH A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 Notices of his Correspondents, Glossary, and 
 List of his Works. 
 
 By Rev. Andrew a. Bonar, D.D., 
 
 Author of ' ' Memoir and Remains of 
 Robert Murray M'Cheyne." 
 
 Dr. Marcus Dods in the British Weekly 
 says : — 
 
 "In its own department of devotional literature, Ruther- 
 ford's Letters stand supreme. For warmth of feeling they 
 are unmatched. . . . The present edition is, as they say on 
 school prizes, ' prasmium ac incitamentum, ' a tribute paid 
 by the publishers to its past popularity, and a powerful 
 incentive to its future fame. For in every respect this is a 
 perfect edition. Not only is it very beautiful in its typo- 
 graphy, but it is equipped with all an editor can do for it — 
 a life of the author, biographical and topographical notes, 
 elucidating the circumstances of his correspondents, and 
 explanations of difficult words and expressions. All lovers 
 of good men and good books should have it." 
 
 Mr. SpurGEON in Sword mid Trowel says : — 
 
 "What a wealth of spiritual nourishment we have 
 here. . . . Rutherford is beyond all praise of men. 
 Like a strong-winged eagle he soareth into the highest 
 heaven, and with unblenched eye he looketh into the 
 mystery of love divine. There is, to us, a something mystic, 
 awe-creating, and superhuman about Rutherford's Letters. 
 This is a noble volume, and we shall measure the soundness 
 of Scotch rehgion very mi'.ch by the sale of this work. . . . 
 When we are dead and gone, let the world know that 
 Spurgeon held Rutherford's Letters to be the nearest thing 
 to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere 
 men." 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 

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