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diff --git a/16892-h/16892-h.htm b/16892-h/16892-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..afa620e --- /dev/null +++ b/16892-h/16892-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5713 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Samuel Rutherford</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Samuel Rutherford, by Alexander Whyte</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Samuel Rutherford, by Alexander Whyte + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Samuel Rutherford + and some of his correspondents + + +Author: Alexander Whyte + + + +Release Date: October 17, 2005 [eBook #16892] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMUEL RUTHERFORD*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by +David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>SAMUEL RUTHERFORD<br /> +AND SOME OF<br /> +HIS CORRESPONDENTS</h1> +<p>LECTURES DELIVERED IN<br /> +ST. GEORGE’S FREE CHURCH<br /> +EDINBURGH: BY<br /> +ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.</p> +<p>AUTHOR OF ‘BUNYAN CHARACTERS’<br /> +ETC.</p> +<p>PUBLISHED BY<br /> +OLIPHANT ANDERSON AND FERRIER</p> +<p>30 ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH, AND<br /> +24 OLD BAILEY, LONDON<br /> +1894</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I. JOSHUA REDIVIVUS</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘He sent me as a spy to see the land and to try +the ford.’<br /> +<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Samuel Rutherford, the author of the seraphic <i>Letters</i>, was +born in the south of Scotland in the year of our Lord 1600. Thomas +Goodwin was born in England in the same year, Robert Leighton in 1611, +Richard Baxter in 1615, John Owen in 1616, John Bunyan in 1628, and +John Howe in 1630. 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 suffering for Christ and His cause. By a well-wisher +to the work and to the people of God. Printed in the year 1664.’ +That is all. It would not have been safe in 1664 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 +1664.</p> +<p><!-- page 2--><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>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.</p> +<p>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 controversialist, +a preacher and a very saint than Samuel Rutherford. He had been +settled at Anwoth on the Solway in 1627, and for the next nine years +he had lived such a noble life among his people as to make Anwoth famous +as long as Jesus Christ has a Church <!-- page 3--><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>in +Scotland. As we say Bunyan and Bedford, Baxter and Kidderminster, +Newton and Olney, Edwards and Northampton, Boston and Ettrick, M’Cheyne +and St. Peter’s, so we say Rutherford and Anwoth.</p> +<p>His talents, his industry, 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: +<i>The Trial and the Triumph of Faith</i>; <i>Christ Dying and Drawing +Sinners to Himself</i>; and such like. Rutherford was the ‘most +moving and the most affectionate of preachers,’ a preacher determined +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 <!-- page 4--><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>devotion +to his charge; he lived for his congregation, 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 +were alive had, now that they were dead, returned with new and intensified +devotion to his people and his parish.</p> +<blockquote><p>Fair Anwoth by the Solway,<br /> + To me thou still art dear,<br /> +E’en from the verge of heaven<br /> + I drop for thee a tear.</p> +<p>Oh! if one soul from Anwoth<br /> + Meet me at God’s right hand,<br /> +My heaven will be two heavens<br /> + In Immanuel’s Land.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +straitened and persecuted people at home.</p> +<p>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 was sentenced +to live in silence in the town 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 <i>Divine Comedy</i>, and Rutherford’s +<i>Letters</i>. Yes, banishment was banishment; exile was exile; +silent <!-- page 5--><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>Sabbaths were +silent Sabbaths; and a borrowed fireside 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.</p> +<p>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 nothing more bitter than borrowed bread in Aberdeen, and +climbed nothing steeper than a granite stair. ‘Paul had +need,’ Rutherford writes to Lady Kenmure, ‘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 every 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, “<i>Though +I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no ill, +for Thou art with me</i>.” Then he was glad, and that for +these reasons:—<!-- page 6--><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>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 guiltiness 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, woe is me, that men +should think there is anything in me. The house-devils that keep +me company and this sink of corruption 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 somebody in the books of my friends, +. . . but there are armies of thoughts within me, saying the <!-- page 7--><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>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 sanctification, 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 grasshoppers 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 correspondents 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 <!-- page 8--><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>extremes +in himself than Samuel Rutherford. Who weeps like Rutherford over +his banishment from Anwoth, 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; 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 somewhat too full of ecstasy for this fallen, +still unsanctified, and still so slippery world.</p> +<p>It took two men to carry back the cluster of grapes the spies cut +down at Eshcol, and there is sweetness 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 vineyards 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 published, never surely, +since the Epistles of Paul and the Gospel of John, had such clusters +of encouragement and such intoxicating cordials been laid to the lips +of the Church of Christ.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 9--><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>had conquered +and taken possession of that land of sunshine where such grapes so plentifully +grew. And how many hearts have been carried captive 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 +Samuel Rutherford’s Letters, the day of the Lord will alone declare.</p> +<blockquote><p>Oh! Christ He is the Fountain,<br /> + The deep sweet Well of love!<br /> +The streams on earth I’ve tasted,<br /> + More deep I’ll drink above.<br /> +There to an ocean fulness<br /> + His mercy doth expand,<br /> +And glory, glory dwelleth<br /> + In Immanuel’s Land.</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><!-- page 10--><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>II. SAMUEL +RUTHERFORD AND SOME OF HIS EXTREMES</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘I am made of extremes.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A 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 +<!-- page 11--><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>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 Rutherford’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.</p> +<p>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 written on Rutherford +is Mr. Taylor Innes’s lecture in the Evangelical Succession series. +And the intellectual 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 <i>Christ Dying</i>, unless +it is his still greater contemporary, Thomas Goodwin. And it is +with corresponding 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 <!-- page 12--><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>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 renowned 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 controversy 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 controversial 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 <!-- page 13--><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>tasted +since they knew what bitterness meant. Well might Rutherford say, +on another such occasion, ‘It is hard when saints rejoice in the +sufferings of saints, and when the redeemed hurt, and go nigh to hate +the redeemed.’ Watch and pray, my brethren, lest in controversy—ephemeral +and immaterial controversy—you also go near to hate and hurt one +another, as Rutherford did.</p> +<p>And then, what strength, combined with what tenderness, there is +in Rutherford! In all my acquaintance with literature I do not +know any author who has two books under his name so unlike one another, +two books that are such a contrast to one another, as <i>Lex Rex</i> +and the <i>Letters</i>. A more firmly built argument than <i>Lex +Rex</i>, 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 <i>Lex +Rex</i>. There is as much emotion in the multiplication table +as there is in <i>Lex Rex</i>; and then, on the other hand, the <i>Letters</i> +have no other fault but this, that they are overcharged with emotion. +The <i>Letters</i> 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 poet meet, as nowhere else that I know of, in the +author of <i>Lex Rex</i> and the <i>Letters</i>.</p> +<p>Then, again, what extremes of beauty and sweetness there are in Rutherford’s +style, too often intermingled with what carelessness and disorder. +What flashes of noblest thought, clothed in the most apt <!-- page 14--><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>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 <i>Letters</i> 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 <i>Polity</i>.</p> +<p>And then, 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 admirers 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 <!-- page 15--><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>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 166l—he +is still amazed that God has not brought his sin to the Market Cross, +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.</p> +<p>And then, experimentally also, what extremes met in our author! +Pascal in Paris and Rutherford in Anwoth and St. Andrews were 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 <i>Thoughts</i>: ‘The +Christian religion teaches the righteous man that it lifts him even +to a participation 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 grace of their Redeemer.’ And again, ‘Did +we not know ourselves full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery +and injustice, we <!-- page 16--><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>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 experience 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 with 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!</p> +<p><!-- page 17--><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>Once more, hear +him on the tides of feeling that continually rose and fell within his +heart. Writing from Aberdeen 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 cannot 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 broken in upon a poor prisoner’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 when 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 correspondents +than when they consult him about their ebb tides, and find that he himself +either has been, or still is, in the same experience.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 18--><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>Rutherford +was vexed and weakened with such intellectual contradictions and spiritual +extremes in his mind, in his heart and in his history, then may we not +hope that some such saintliness, if not some such service as his, may +be permitted to us also?</p> +<h2><!-- page 19--><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>III. MARION +M’NAUGHT</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘O woman beloved of God.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>‘The world knows nothing of its greatest men,’ says Sir +Henry Taylor in his <i>Philip Van Artevelde</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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 lifelong correspondence 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 exceptional +experiences in the divine life. But we can almost construct her +letters to Rutherford for <!-- page 20--><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>ourselves, +so pointedly and so elaborately and so affectionately does Rutherford +reply to them.</p> +<p>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 Kenmure, another of Rutherford’s chief correspondents. +Lord Kenmure 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 Kenmure 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. <i>The Last and Heavenly Speeches of Lord Kenmure</i> +was a classic memoir of those days, and in that little book we read +of his niece’s constant attendance at his bedside, as good a nurse +for his soul as she was for his body.</p> +<p>Samuel Rutherford’s favourite correspondent was, <!-- page 21--><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>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 day. 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 he 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 affairs. +But, above all, it is from the depth and the power of Rutherford’s +letters to herself on the inward life that we best gather the depth +and the power of this remarkable woman’s mind.</p> +<p>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 combination 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 personal, +the <!-- page 22--><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>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 heart 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.</p> +<p>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,’ Rutherford 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, +Rutherford asks his correspondent to procure that three or four hundred +noblemen, gentlemen, countrymen and citizens shall be got to subscribe +it—a telling tribute, surely, to her public spirit and her great +influence.</p> +<p><!-- page 23--><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>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, grudging, envying, 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 was 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. +Pray 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 +we see that, amid all these temptations 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 <!-- page 24--><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>no +nobler sphere for their exercise and increase than her own fireside; +and her public 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 was 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.</p> +<p>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 lifetime: ‘You are engaged so in God’s +work in Kirkcudbright that if you remove out of that town all will be +undone.’ 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 <!-- page 25--><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>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 obscure man or woman will find its way to a thousand +consciences, and will impress and overawe a whole town, as Marion M’Naught’s +rare godliness impressed and overawed all Kirkcudbright. Just +as, on the other hand, the ignorance, the censoriousness, the bitterness, +the intolerance, that too often accompany what would otherwise be true +godliness, work as widespread 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 power outbalancing all the dust and chaff of mere profession—the +profession whether of enlightened 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 godliness.’ 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.</p> +<p>It was all this, and nothing other and nothing <!-- page 26--><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>less +than all this, that made Marion M’Naught Rutherford’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 forenoons, when his text was Christ +Dying, in John xii. 32, or the Syro-Phœnician woman, in Matt. +xv. 28. And then the feasts on the fast-days at Kirkcudbright, +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 fact, 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 Rutherford +for liking to see Marion M’Naught coming into the church 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 <!-- page 27--><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>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 church 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 experience 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 wonder that the congregations +were few, and the correspondents who could make anything of a man of +such a ‘fanatic humour’ as that! But, then, <!-- page 28--><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>no +wonder, on the other hand, that, when two fanatics so full of that humour +as Samuel Rutherford and Marion M’Naught met, they corresponded +ever after with one another in their own enraptured language night and +day.</p> +<h2><!-- page 29--><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>IV. LADY +KENMURE</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Build your nest, Madam, upon no tree here, for +God hath sold this whole forest to death.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lady Kenmure was one of the Campbells of Argyll, a family distinguished +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 +members 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 marriage 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 care of her lifelong +friend and minister and correspondent, Samuel Rutherford. Lady +Jane Campbell had very remarkable gifts of mind. We would have +expected that from her distinguished pedigree; and we have abundant +proof of that in Rutherford’s sheaf of <!-- page 30--><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>letters +to her. His dedication of that most remarkable piece, <i>The Trial +and Triumph of Faith</i>, 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 <i>The Trial and +Triumph of Faith: Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself</i>—which, +to my mind, is by far the best of Rutherford’s works—<i>The +Covenant of Grace</i> and <i>The Influences of Grace</i>, 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 very thinnest books are almost +too thick, both with theology and with thought.</p> +<p>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 discovery 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 <!-- page 31--><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>John +Gordon for a husband? Think of having to nurse your humbug of +a husband through a shammed illness. 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 very +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 <i>Last Speeches</i> +how God made Lord Gordon’s sins to find him out, and with what +firmness 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.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Between the stirrup and the ground<br /> +Mercy I sought and mercy found.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We do not grudge Viscount Kenmure all the grace <!-- page 32--><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>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 sometimes 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. <i>The Last and Heavenly +Speeches</i> is a rare pamphlet that will well repay its price to him +who will seek it out and read it.</p> +<p>This was the correspondent, then, to whom Samuel Rutherford wrote +such counsels and encouragements as these: ‘Therefore, madam, +herein have comfort, 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 <!-- page 33--><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>within +you’ (<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">iii</span>.). 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 sight, 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’ +(<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">iv.</span>). ‘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”’ +(<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">xl</span>). ‘Madam, tire +not, weary 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 twelve manner +of fruits every month, you shall then say, “Four-and-twenty hours’ +abode in this place is worth threescore and ten years’ sorrow +upon earth”’ (<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">xix</span>.). +‘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 witnesses of your grief who cannot +be curers of it’ (<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">xx</span>.). +‘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’ (<i>Letter</i> +<span class="smcap">lxix</span>.). ‘I thought it had been +an easy thing <!-- page 34--><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>to be +a Christian, and that to seek God had been at the next door; but, oh, +the windings, the turnings, the ups and downs He hath led me through!’ +(<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">civ</span>.) ‘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’ (<i>Letter</i> +<span class="smcap">cvi</span>.). ‘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’ (<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">cvi</span>.). +‘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’ (<i>Letter</i> <span class="smcap">ccvi</span>.). +There are hundreds of passages as good as these scattered up and down +the forty-seven letters we have had preserved to us out of the large +and intimate correspondence that passed between Samuel Rutherford and +Lady Kenmure.</p> +<h2><!-- page 35--><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>V. LADY CARDONESS</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Think it not easy.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What a lasting interest Samuel Rutherford’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 correspondence, 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 36--><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>Rough old Cardoness +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 lifelong 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.</p> +<p>‘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 up out of his past continually <!-- page 37--><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>that +compelled him to remember it. But what Rutherford meant was that +his old parishioner should willingly, deliberately and repeatedly open +the stained and torn leaves of his past life and read it all over in +the 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 very 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 ordinary 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 38--><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>was +not silent in his letters. ‘You are now upon the very borders +of the other life. I told you, when I was with you, 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 1 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 tyrannical old landlord 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 conscience 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 letters. +Take a sentence or two out of it: ‘My soul longeth exceedingly +to hear whether there be any work of <!-- page 39--><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 40--><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>write +consolations and comforts and promises to Lady Cardoness 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 conscience of your +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.’</p> +<p>What 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 summons up Cardoness Castle, +and peoples the hoary old keep again with John Gordon and his wife and +children. 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 entangled he became. And then her ladyship, a <!-- page 41--><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>religious +woman; yes, really a religious woman, only, like so many religious women, +more religious than moral; more emotional than practically helpful in +everyday 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.</p> +<p>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 +salvation—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 we 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 <!-- page 42--><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>Salvation +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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 43--><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>VI. LADY +CULROSS</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Grace groweth best in winter.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 something 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.</p> +<p>Lady Culross’s name will always be held in tender honour in +the innermost circles of our best Scottish <!-- page 44--><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>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 +than to any other human being. True, John Livingstone preached +the Thanksgiving Sermon, but it was through Lady Culross’s influence +that he was got to preach it; and he preached 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 we 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 shutting +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!</p> +<p>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. +<!-- page 45--><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>And Lady Culross’s +first letter to John Livingstone is in every point 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; and 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 remember me and my bonds? As for me, I never found so great +impediment within. 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 <span class="smcap">C</span>., +<span class="smcap">E</span>. <span class="smcap">Melvil</span>.’</p> +<p>It was now winter with John Livingstone. The persecution had +overtaken him, and this is how her ladyship writes to him:—</p> +<p>‘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 <i>Leiving-ston</i> +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 <!-- page 46--><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>to +comfort others with those consolations wherewith 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.’</p> +<p>It was from his silent prison in Aberdeen that Samuel Rutherford +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 work 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 <!-- page 47--><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>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:—</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘Thou +shall leave each thing<br /> +Beloved most dearly: this is the first shaft<br /> +Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shall prove<br /> +How salt the savour is of other’s bread,<br /> +How hard the passage to descend and climb<br /> +By other’s stairs. But that shall gall thee most<br /> +Will be the worthless and vile company<br /> +With whom thou must be thrown into these straits.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 his remain-at-home correspondents are fain to tone +down.</p> +<p>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 proposing 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 <!-- page 48--><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 +growth 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 anything 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 presence +of sin in the soul but the true winter of the soul, amid which the grace +that is planted in an outbreak 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 sorrow, but to its +malignant roots that are twisted round and round and through and <!-- page 49--><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>through +his heart, and that man has thenceforth such a winter within him as +shall secure to him a lifelong growth in the most inward grace. +Once let a poor wretch awake to the unbroken winter of his own sinfulness, +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 +in 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 waiting 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 will his corruptions 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 discontent. +And then, ‘Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon +withdraw herself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and +the days of thy mourning shall be ended.’</p> +<h2><!-- page 50--><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>VII. LADY +BOYD</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Be sorry at corruption.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Out of various published and unpublished writings of her day we 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 with 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.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 51--><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>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 eminent +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 Evangelical 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 inward and spiritual Christianity.</p> +<p>I have spoken of Lady Boyd’s diary. ‘She used <!-- page 52--><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>every +night,’ says Livingstone, ‘to write what had been the state +of her soul all day, 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 +power 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, every 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 <!-- page 53--><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>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 hunt 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.</p> +<p>Till Lady Boyd’s lost diary 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 ladyship’s +own case.’ And then he addresses himself in his finest style +to console his correspondent, regarding some of the deepest and most +painful 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 unhappy 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 <!-- page 54--><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>and +power the sinfulness of their own hearts, as that sinfulness 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 wonder that she and her son never +referred to what she had written and he had read in his mother’s +lockfast book that never-to-be-forgotten night.</p> +<p>‘Be sorry at corruption, and be not secure.’ How +could she be secure when she saw and felt every 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 consoles him +in death with the assurance that it was of <!-- page 55--><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>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 sorrow +for ourselves because of the bottomless depth of corruption which lies +hidden in our heart—which sorrow, rightly felt and rightly exercised, +is a weighty basis of sanctification.’</p> +<p>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 <i>Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners +to Himself</i>.</p> +<p><!-- page 56--><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>What Rutherford +was bold 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 under 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 up to God than all our other crosses taken together. +We have no cross to be compared with our corruptions, 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 Gregory, Fraser 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 spiritually-minded <!-- page 57--><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>man, +but he 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 +pastoral 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 58--><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>will +carry 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 loathsome 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 prepared and kept, that inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, +and that fadeth not away. Take comfort, for they that be whole +need not a physician, but they that are sick.</p> +<h2><!-- page 59--><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>VIII. LADY +ROBERTLAND</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘That famous saint, the Lady Robertland, and the +rare outgates she so often got.’—Livingstone’s <i>Characteristics</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Lady Robertland ranks in the Rutherford sisterhood with Lady +Kenmure, Lady Culross, 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 +personal 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 +the people. Robert Fleming tells us that the profane rabble of +that time 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 Pentecostal +power on both sides of the Stewarton Water. <!-- page 60--><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>‘I +preached often to them in the time of the College vacation,’ says +Robert Blair, ‘residing at the house of that famous saint, the +Lady Robertland, and I had much conference with 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.’</p> +<p><i>Outgate</i> 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 <i>gate out</i>, a way +of redemption, deliverance and escape. And her <i>rare</i> 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 outgates 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 Lady Robertland so often came out at, needs a key, +needs many keys, and many <!-- page 61--><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>keys +of no common kind, and it needs a janitor also, or rather a redeemer +and a deliverer of a kind corresponding to the kind of gate and the +kind of confinement 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 into which to tell them, +she always pictured to her audience and to herself 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 +sermons, 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.</p> +<p>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. +<!-- page 62--><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>She was wont to say +to William Guthrie, who best understood her witty words and her wonderful +history, that the wicked fairies had handicapped her infant feet in +her very cradle. She could use a freedom 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 <i>conclamatum est</i> 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 <!-- page 63--><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>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 <i>Analecta</i> 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.</p> +<p>‘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 outgates +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 unregenerate youth. +Whatever trouble came on Rutherford all his days—the persecution +of the bishop, his banishment to Aberdeen, 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 strokes, how 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 <!-- page 64--><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>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 waled 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 who hath His fire in Zion!’</p> +<p>‘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 <!-- page 65--><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>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 will 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, with 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.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘He comes the prisoners to relieve<br /> + In Satan’s bondage held;<br /> +The gates of brass before Him burst,<br /> + The iron fetters yield.</p> +<p>. . . . . .</p> +<p>We may not know, we cannot tell<br /> + What pains He had to bear,<br /> +But we believe it was for us<br /> + He hung and suffered there.</p> +<p>There was no other good enough<br /> + To pay the price of sin;<br /> +He only could unlock the gate<br /> + Of heaven, and let us in.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>‘Myself am hell,’ cried out Satan, in his agony of pride +and rage and remorse.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Divines and dying men may talk of hell,<br /> +But in my heart her several torments dwell.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <!-- page 66--><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>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 girdle of Jesus Christ. Go to Him to-night, and +tell Him that you are in hell. Tell Him that, like David, and +very much, so far as you can understand, for David’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 very best of +them got.</p> +<p>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 delivered 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 full outgate, or that He has at all 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 +inclinations; and then, after that, He <!-- page 67--><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>will +only take up still more skilful and still more intricate keys wherewith +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! O truly famous saint, the Lady Robertland, who got so many +and so rare outgates from the Amen with the keys! 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 lies 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 misdemeanant, +as Samuel Rutherford also was in his prison-palace in Aberdeen, and +the Lady Robertland in Stewarton House; they had a liberty that was +not to be despised; they 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. They 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 Rutherford, +‘I think that if a poor, weak, dying sheep seeks for an old dyke, +and the lee-side of a hill in a <!-- page 68--><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>storm, +I surely may be allowed to long for heaven. I see little in this +life but sin, and the sour fruits 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.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘I would not live alway, thus fettered with sin,<br /> +Temptation without and corruption within;<br /> +In a moment of strength, if I sever the chain,<br /> +Scarce the victory is mine ere I’m captive again;<br /> +E’en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears,<br /> +And the cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears;<br /> +The festival trump calls for jubilant songs,<br /> +But my spirit her own <i>miserere</i> prolongs.</p> +<p>‘Who, who would live always away from his God!<br /> +Away from yon heaven, that blissful abode<br /> +Where the rivers of pleasures flow o’er the bright plains,<br /> +And the noon-tide of glory eternally reigns;<br /> +Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet,<br /> +Their Saviour and brethren transported to greet;<br /> +While the songs of salvation exultingly roll,<br /> +And the love of the Lord is the bliss of the soul.’</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><!-- page 69--><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>IX. JEAN +BROWN</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Sin poisons all our enjoyments.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Jean Brown was one of the selectest associates of the famous Rutherford +circle. We do not know so much of Jean Brown outside of the Rutherford +Letters as we would like to know, but her son, John Brown of Wamphray, +is very well known to every student of the theology and ecclesiastical +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 Brown’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 <!-- page 70--><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>of +Wamphray. This letter has a <i>bite</i> 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 pungent element in this letter, that +bite in it, that has led me to take this remarkable letter for my topic +to-night.</p> +<p>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 +spring 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 sometimes 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 household, 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 Rutherford’s +<!-- page 71--><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>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 +west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.’</p> +<p>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 conspicuously 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 forms 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, <!-- page 72--><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>what +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 reproduced and multiplied in their children. +How many fathers see, with a secret bitterness of spirit that never +can be told, their own 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 own soul. +And then our children, who were to be our staff and our crown, so early +take their own so wilful and so unfilial way in life. They betake +themselves, for no reason so much as just for intended 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 the +best things in life are so poisoned by sin, how bitter is that poison!</p> +<p>If an unpoisoned youth and an unembittered <!-- page 73--><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>family +life are some of the sweetest things 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 very 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 quarrelled +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 embittered 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 written +such things.’ ‘My wife and I,’ wrote dear John +Livingstone, ‘have had more bitterness together 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 74--><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>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 Resolutions 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 Newman, 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 dearest and +the truest friendship. Yes, let it be for once said, the viper-like +venom of <!-- page 75--><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>envy—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!’</p> +<p>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 corruptions 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. <!-- page 76--><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>When, +if those who so find fault had but the intelligence 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 delight which still exists for so many of the best of our people. +Charles Kingsley was no ascetic, and his famous <i>North British</i> +article, ‘Plays and Puritans,’ was but a popular admission +of what a free and religious-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 +<!-- page 77--><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>jubilee. For +all the pleasure we miss we shall abide, and for ever abide, in the +rapture of heaven.’</p> +<p>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 principalship 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 corrupt then that is corruption +indeed. And so Rutherford 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.</p> +<p>Those in this house who have followed all this with that intense +and intelligent sympathy that a somewhat similar experience alone will +give, will <!-- page 78--><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 79--><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>X. JOHN GORDON +OF CARDONESS, THE YOUNGER</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every day.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If that gaunt old tower of Cardoness Castle could speak, and would +tell us all that went on within its walls, what a treasure to us that +story would be! Even the sighs and the meanings 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 wisdom 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 <!-- page 80--><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>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 are far more fatal things +to a small estate than the fluctuations and depressions of the corn +and cattle markets. Gordon’s own 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 father, not knowing +what he did.</p> +<p>The shrinking income of the small estate could ill afford to support +two idle and expensive families, 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 <!-- page 81--><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>Sabbath-day +over to Kirkdale and worshipped in 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 without 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; drink 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.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 82--><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>singing +Glory. And among the thousands of children 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 was 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.’</p> +<p>We would gladly shut the book 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 children, 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 <!-- page 83--><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 84--><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>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 from Cardoness +Castle, but he had memory enough and imagination enough to see what +went on there as often as fresh provocation arose; and therefore he +writes 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.’</p> +<p>Rutherford was not writing religious commonplaces when he wrote to +Cardoness Castle; if he had, we would not have been reading his letters +here to-night. He wrote with his eye and his heart 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 <!-- page 85--><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>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.’</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 86--><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>XI. ALEXANDER +GORDON OF EARLSTON</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘A man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward +exercise.’ Livingstone’s <i>Characteristics</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The 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 generations 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 contraband +New Testament, and from 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 Wycliffe about with him wherever +he went, to kirk and to market; he would <!-- page 87--><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>as +soon have thought of leaving his purse or his dirk behind him as his +Wycliffe, his bosom friend. And many were the Sabbath-days that +the laird of Earlston read his New Testament in the woods 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 Wycliffe in his own hand, and yielding it +and his place at the family altar over to none.</p> +<p><!-- page 88--><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>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 priceless little etchings, ‘was +a man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise, and who +attained the most rare experiences of downcasting and uplifting.’ +And in Rutherford’s first letter to this Earlston, written from +Anwoth in 1636, 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 Bishop of Glasgow for refusing to admit a nominee of the +Bishop into the pulpit of a reclaiming parish. It would have gone +still worse with Earlston than it did had not Lord Lorne, 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 Dr. Robert Buchanan might with more correctness have entitled his +able book ‘The Two Hundred Years’ Conflict’ than ‘The +Ten,’ so early was the battle for Non-Intrusion begun in Galloway. +Alexander <!-- page 89--><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>Gordon was +a Free Churchman 200 years before the Disruption, and Lord Lorne 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 Lorne, and Earlston his factor, sitting +as elders beside one another in the Glasgow Assembly of 1638, and then +we find Earlston the member for Galloway in the Parliament of 1641.</p> +<p>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 knighthood by a sword +that was wet, and that would soon be still more wet, with the best blood +in Scotland. ‘No, your Majesty, no.’</p> +<p>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 +<i>Characteristics</i> 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.</p> +<p>‘A man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward <!-- page 90--><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>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 obstacles—all that is called bodily exercise, +and some part of that is absolutely necessary 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 through 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, his low esteem of himself and of all he did, his +miraculous power over himself in the forgiveness of enemies and in the +forgetfulness of injuries, his contentment amid losses and disappointments, +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 was 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 temper and +a proud heart. Alexander Gordon had, to begin with, a large heart. +A large heart was a family possession of <!-- page 91--><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>the +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 +unimpaired—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 heart all that happened to him, and to exercise his large and +deep heart yet more thoroughly with it. The affairs of the family, +the affairs of the estate, the affairs of the Church, his duties as +a landlord, a farmer, 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 unsanctified 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 inward sanctification that the ruck +and run of so-called Christians know nothing about, and are incapable +of knowing.</p> +<p>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 fulness 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 <!-- page 92--><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>Irvine, on 1 Sam. +ii., 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 grandfather 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?’</p> +<p>Earlston frightened into silence the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright +on one occasion also, when 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 <!-- page 93--><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>above +all things, and desperately wicked, and you do not know it. For +I had a deep, malicious, revengeful motive in my heart behind all my +fine and patriotic speeches in Parliament. I hated Montrose 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 with 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 things 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 be lifted up as few men on the earth have ever been lifted +up, or could bear to be. Yes; they were rare experiences both +of downcastings 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.</p> +<p>The last sight we see of Alexander Gordon in this world is after +his Master has given commandment <!-- page 94--><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>that +the last touch be put to His servant’s subdued and childlike humility. +The old saint is sitting in his grandfather’s chair and his wife +is feeding him like a weaned child. John Livingstone tells that +Mr. John Smith, a minister in Teviotdale, 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 dining 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘As child of mother weaned; my soul<br /> +Is like a weaned child;’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>till all the godly households in Galloway knew the 131st Psalm as +Alexander Gordon of Earlston’s grace before meat.</p> +<h2><!-- page 95--><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>XII. EARLSTON +THE YOUNGER</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘A renowned Gordon, a patriot, a good Christian, +a confessor, and, I may add, a martyr of Jesus Christ.’—Livingstone’s +<i>Characteristics</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Thomas Boston in his most interesting 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 history, 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 intelligence, the courage, and the true +piety of the Gordon house.</p> +<p><!-- page 96--><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>While still living +at home and assisting his father in his farms and factorships, young +Earlston was already one of Rutherford’s most intimate correspondents. +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 Rutherford +wrote to him. If we are to judge of the character and attainments +and intelligence of Rutherford’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 understanding +and the experience of divine things. One of the Aberdeen letters +especially, numbered 181 in Dr. Andrew Bonar’s edition, for intellectual +power, inwardness, and eloquence stands almost if not altogether at +the head of all the 365 letters we 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 16th of June 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 farm-houses, with horses and cattle, +but I think an examination paper 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 endowments; a man <!-- page 97--><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>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.</p> +<p>The first thing that strikes me in reading Rutherford’s letters +to young Earlston and to several other young men of that day is the +extraordinary frankness and self-forgetfulness of the writer. +He takes his young correspondents into his confidence in a remarkable +way. He opens up his whole heart to them. He goes back with +a startling boldness and unreserve and plainness of speech on his own +youth, and he lays himself alongside of his youthful correspondents +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 surprised 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 <!-- page 98--><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>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.</p> +<p>Rutherford told young Earlston how terribly he had ‘ravelled +his own 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 Edinburgh +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 handloom towns, +have the advantage of some of their fellow-worshippers to-night. +They do not need to turn to Dr. Bonar’s Glossary or to Jamieson’s +Scottish Dictionary to find out what a ravelled hesp is. They +well remember the stern 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 ravels it after he is Christ’s prisoner in Aberdeen.</p> +<p>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 web +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 the web of life, when a man’s life-hesp +is ravelled in the morning <!-- page 99--><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>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 +before he died, but his tangled life was past unravelling in this world, +and we wrapped his ragged hesp around him for a winding-sheet, and left +him with Christ, who so graciously 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 Rutherford 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.’</p> +<p>Rutherford’s Letters are all gleaming with illustrations, some +homely enough, like the ill-ravelled hesp, and some classically beautiful, +like the arrow that has gone beyond the bowman’s mastery. +Writing 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 +<!-- page 100--><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>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 correspondents half the advantages of an early +conversion. 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 +well strung and your arrow well winged, look well <!-- page 101--><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>before +you let go the string, for, once your arrow is shot, you cannot 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 yourself, 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 +flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth +fruit in old age, they shall be fat and flourishing.’</p> +<p>And then, like the true and sure guide to heaven that Rutherford +was, he led his young correspondents 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 +what 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. <!-- page 102--><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>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 +correspondents, is a very different thing from the civility of Edinburgh, +or Aberdeen, or St. Andrews. And so it is, else it would not be +worth both Christ and all Christian men both living and dying for it.</p> +<p>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 conversion, would not understand. For, writing to Robert +Stuart, the son of the Provost of Ayr, Rutherford says to him, ‘Labour +constantly for a sound and lively sense of sin,’ and to the Laird +of Cally, ‘Take pains with your salvation, 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, something of its fiendishness, +its malignity, its loathesomeness, its hell-deservingness, its hell-alreadyness. +‘All his religious illuminations, affections, and comforts,’ +says Jonathan Edwards of David Brainerd, ‘were attended with evangelical +humiliation, that is to say, with a deep sense of his own despicableness +<!-- page 103--><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>and odiousness, his +ignorance, pride, 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 wrote, labour in their own +hearts all their days for some sound and lively and piercing 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 when 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 William Gordon at the end. For as he was on his way to +join the Covenanters at Bothwell 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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 104--><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>XIII. ROBERT +GORDON OF KNOCKBREX</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘A single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed +in parliaments and public meetings after the year 1638.’—<i>Livingstone</i>.</p> +<p>‘Hall-binks are slippery.’—<i>Gordon to Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Robert Gordon of Knockbrex, in his religious character, was a combination +of Old Honest and Mr. Fearing in the <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>. +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 Scriptural insight and terseness of expression, Livingstone simply +says that Robert Gordon was the most ‘single-hearted and painful’ +of all the Christian men known to his widely-acquainted and clear-sighted +biographer.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 105--><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>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 understanding and the judgment that, +as our Lord said at another time, it fills a man’s whole 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 <i>Thesaurus</i>, +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 the word ‘single-hearted,’ he at +once told me that Knockbrex was an open, frank, natural, straightforward, +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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 106--><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>but +at the same time he was the 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 +was 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 pains, 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 with +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 +were their daily prayer; for these things they wrestled 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 was why they feared +neither king nor bishop, man nor devil, they feared God and sin and +death and hell so much. This was why, while all other men were +so full of torpid assurance, they still <!-- page 107--><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>carried, +to the annoyance and anger of all their serene-minded neighbours, such +a Slough of Despond in their 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 was 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 so on, till Rutherford admitted +that Robert Gordon’s warnings were neither impertinent nor untimeous. +The sin-stricken laird of Knockbrex was like Mr. 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 conversation that went on in the banquet-hall. +Gordon could not understand all Rutherford’s joy. He did +not altogether like it. He did not answer the ecstatic 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 reminding him after +one of his specially enraptured letters that ‘Hall-binks are slippery +seats.’ The <!-- page 108--><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>golden +mean lay somewhere between the hall-bink and the ash-pit; somewhere +between Rutherford’s ecstasy and Gordon’s depression. +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 country 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 hurrying 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 who +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 <!-- page 109--><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>tenant +Knockbrex with recollection, with understanding, and with sympathy even +for a season.</p> +<p>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 upbringing 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 wall 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 Parliament for the town of Kirkcudbright. 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.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 110--><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>much +seen on the platforms of public 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 <!-- page 111--><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>subjects +they are called to deal with, party, if not parliamentary government, +with all its vices and mischiefs, will have passed away, and the absolute +Monarchy of the Kingdom of Heaven will have come.</p> +<p>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 Committee: ‘The +same day there was delyverit to the said commissioners by Robert Gordoun +of Knockbrax sex silver spoones Scots worke, 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. Were 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 +Rutherford had now gone nearer that great region of <!-- page 112--><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>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 +Christ 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 thereafter interest and occupy you half +so much as just those questions that are 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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 113--><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>XIV. JOHN +GORDON OF RUSCO</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Remember these seven things.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There 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 everything 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 war 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 Rutherford expected of him in the making of Scotland +and in the salvation of her kirk.</p> +<p>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 +thereof. Even in Rutherford’s day that rugged old pile <!-- page 114--><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>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 Rutherford 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 church 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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- page 115--><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>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 own business, was our Lord’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 workshop 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 <i>Letters</i> 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.’ <!-- page 116--><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>‘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.’</p> +<p>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 thringing 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 would +you do?’ asked another minister who sat at his bedside. +‘I would preach to the people the difficulty of salvation,’ +said the dying man. ‘Remember,’ wrote Rutherford to +Rusco from the same city, ‘Remember that it is violent sweating +and striving that alone taketh heaven.’</p> +<p>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 communicants on our +session books of whom we well remember how we boasted about them when +they took the foot <!-- page 117--><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>of +the hill, but we never mention their 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 own or that of some one dear to +them—another; a disappointment in love or in business will sometimes +do it; a fall into 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 +in Rutherford’s day that the English Puritans called by the nickname +of the Temporaries; and it is to pluck Rusco from among them that Rutherford +writes to him 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 nicknamed him as yet.</p> +<p>‘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 he <!-- page 118--><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>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, ‘everywhere +represent the seeking, the striving, and the labour of a Christian as +being chiefly to be gone through <i>after</i> 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 agonising, 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 <i>before</i> they +are converted, and so having an easy time of it afterwards.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 119--><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>reprobate +silver. ‘One day,’ 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.’ Dr. Andrew Bonar is no doubt entirely right +when he 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.</p> +<p>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 very 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 contemporary of +Rutherford’s, ‘or in wanton thoughts, that will condemn +them, even though their corruptions do not break out in any scandalous +way. Such thoughts are quite sufficient evidence of a rotten heart. +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 +<!-- page 120--><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>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.’</p> +<p>6. ‘Remember, also, your shortening sand-glass.’ +On the day when John Gordon was born a sand-glass with his name written +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-time of his days, or till he had attained +to his threescore 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 Galloway; 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 every 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. <!-- page 121--><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>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, that 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 Anwoth 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 <!-- page 122--><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 down a freeholder in heaven.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Soon shall the cup of glory<br /> + Wash down earth’s bitterest woes,<br /> +Soon shall the desert briar<br /> + Break into Eden’s Rose:<br /> +I stand upon His merit,<br /> + I know no other stand,<br /> +Not e’en where glory dwelleth<br /> + In Immanuel’s land.’</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><!-- page 123--><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>XV. BAILIE +JOHN KENNEDY</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Die well.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Bailie John Kennedy, of Ayr, was the remarkable son of a remarkable +father. Old Hugh Kennedy’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 glory: 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, <!-- page 124--><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>and +of an adoring and heavenly mind, as Scotland possessed in the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries. The Wodrow volumes should be studied +throughout by every lover of his church and his country, and especially +by every student of divinity and church history.</p> +<p>But we need go no further than Samuel Rutherford’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 women had! +And how they gave up their whole mind and heart 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 write 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 masculine 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?</p> +<p>Rutherford was always on the outlook for opportunities 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 powerful, to +his multitudinous correspondents. Public events, domestic joys +and sorrows, personal matters, <!-- page 125--><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>special +providences,—to turn them all to a good result Rutherford was +always on the watch.</p> +<p>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 trying to touch his correspondent’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 Kennedy. +See how he lifts up Kennedy’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 +influence 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 were 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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 126--><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>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 circumstances. +Just when it is to happen; to-night, to-morrow, this year, next year, +perhaps not this dying century; 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 under 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 latchkey +of his own door; or, like Dr. Candlish, his successor, in his bed, and +repeating, now Shakespeare, 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 something +that was necessary for your journey, 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 <!-- page 127--><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>be +made that 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 try 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 otherwise. +But how are we to practise dying? Fore-fancy it, as Rutherford +says. Act it over beforehand; die speculatively, as Goodwin 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 him, and +what would he say to me? Make acquaintance with death, Rutherford +writes to Lady Kenmure also. Learn his ways, his manner of approach, +his language, and his look. Conjure him up, practise upon him, +have your part rehearsed and ready to be performed. Let not a +heathen be beforehand with <!-- page 128--><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>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 down 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.’</p> +<p>Writing to another old man, Rutherford points out to him the gracious +purpose of God in appointing 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 him up, and a drawer open on the bed, and +bundles of old letters and bills spread out before him. Old love +letters; old business letters; his mother’s letters to him when +he was a boy at Edinburgh College; letters in cipher that no human eye +<!-- page 129--><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>can read but those +old, bleared, 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 forgotten: debts he +had thought paid; petitions he had thought answered; promises he had +thought fulfilled; 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!</p> +<p>Now, speaking of taking ship, when we are preparing 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 Merivale. 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 wife. 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?</p> +<p><!-- page 130--><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>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 deathbed 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 careful 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 bedpost, +the bed-curtains, the bed-clothes, his wife’s hand, his son’s +arm, the very air sometimes. On what, on whom will you seize hold +in your last gasp and death-grip?</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,<br /> +Let me hide myself in Thee!’</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><!-- page 131--><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>XVI. JAMES +GUTHRIE</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘The short man who could not bow.’—<i>Cromwell</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>James Guthrie was the son of the laird of that ilk in the county +of Angus. St. Andrews was his <i>alma mater</i>, and under her +excellent nurture young Guthrie soon became a student of no common name. +His father had destined him for the Episcopal Church, and, what with +his descent from an ancient and influential family, his remarkable talents, +and his excellent scholarship, 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 <i>Analecta</i>, ‘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 <!-- page 132--><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>Lauder +had the pride of seeing its young minister take his life in his hand, +like 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 this day, but I cannot die in a better +cause.’</p> +<p>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 +grateful 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.</p> +<p>As we trace James Guthrie’s passionate footsteps for the years +to come through Principal Baillie’s sufficiently gossiping, but +not unshrewd, pages, we soon see that he is travelling fast and sure +toward <!-- page 133--><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>the Nether +Bow. We hear continually from our time-serving correspondent of +Guthrie’s ‘public invective,’ of his ‘passionate +debates,’ of his ‘venting 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 conspicuous justice of God in hanging +up the bones of Oliver Cromwell, the disgracing of the two Goodwins, +blind Milton, John Owen, and others of that maleficent crew,’ +all crowned with the naïve 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.</p> +<p>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 inspiriting 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 <i>Scots Worthies</i>. There is +a passage in our Scottish martyr’s last defence of himself that +has always reminded me of <!-- page 134--><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>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 what profit there is likely to be in my +blood. It is not the extinguishing of me, or of many more like +me, that will extinguish 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 <i>The Apology</i> +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 was 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-servant, 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 Edinburgh, +his body dismembered, and his head fixed on an iron spike in the West +Port of <!-- page 135--><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 ecclesiastical, who claims our +time and our attention. If they are right about sin, they are +all the more likely to be right about everything else; and if they are +either wrong or only shallow about sin, their teaching 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 +Rutherford’s; <!-- page 136--><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>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 +corresponded 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.</p> +<p>There is an excellent story 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 tenderness 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 Epistle to the <!-- page 137--><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>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.</p> +<p>On one occasion Guthrie and some of his fellow-ministers were comparing +experiences and confessing 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 <!-- page 138--><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>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.’</p> +<p>But in nothing was good James Guthrie’s tenderness 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.</p> +<p>We have only two, or at most three, of the many letters that must +have passed between Rutherford 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 <!-- page 139--><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>Chamber, +‘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 hospitable +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 channel. Shoals of black mud +ran out from 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 140--><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>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 martyrs +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 widespread 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.’</p> +<p>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 which 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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 141--><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>XVII. WILLIAM +GUTHRIE</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.’—<i>Solomon</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>William 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 was 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 wellhead 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 <!-- page 142--><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>sometimes +somewhat hilarious and boisterous. ‘If a man’s melancholy +temperament is sanctified,’ says Rutherford in his <i>Covenant +of Grace</i>, ‘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 alleviated 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 +sportsman 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 <i>Saving Interest</i> +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 merriment!’ 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 <!-- page 143--><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>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 principles in all he +did, and even in his relaxations.’ Poor Guthrie had a terrible +malady that preyed on his most vital part continually—a malady +that at last carried him off in the mid-time of his days, and, like +Solomon in the proverb, he took to a merry heart as an alleviating medicine.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Saving Interest</i>, he somehow heard of a poor countryman 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 <!-- page 144--><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>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 +conversation. 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 huntsman, +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 condition!’ ‘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 <!-- page 145--><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>unstring +my bow on the street that I may the better shoot with it when I am up +among my quarry.’ ‘Good,’ said the Evangelist, +‘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.</p> +<p>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 +under 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 <!-- page 146--><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>therewith, +in order that he might give himself up wholly to his preaching. +And his reward was 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 William 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 most 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 <!-- page 147--><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>sermon +at all. ‘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 very fact that he could +go all the way in those days from Fenwick to Haddington, 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 power in the pulpit. +His people felt that their minister knew them; he knew himself, and +therefore 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 +own heart, and who were passing under a searching 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 <i>Minor Prophets</i> +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. <!-- page 148--><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>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 preaching 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 hundredfold now in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.’</p> +<p>But further, besides being a great humorist and a great sportsman +and a great preacher, William Guthrie was a great writer. A great +writer 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 written 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 <i>Confessions</i>, so is the <i>Comedy</i>, +so is the <i>Imitation</i>, so are the <i>Pilgrim</i> and the <i>Grace +Abounding</i>, 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 <i>The Great Interest</i> +out of his pocket, ‘That author I take to <!-- page 149--><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>be +one of the greatest divines that ever wrote. His book is my <i>vade +mecum</i>. 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 <i>Saving Interest</i>; but do not believe what +he says about his own maligned folios till you have read twenty times +over his <i>Person and Glory of Christ</i>, his <i>Holy Spirit</i>, +his <i>Spiritual-mindedness</i>, and his <i>Mortification, Dominion, +and Indwelling of Sin</i>. Then hear Dr. Chalmers: ‘I am +on the eve of finishing Guthrie, which I think is the best book I ever +read.’ 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.</p> +<p>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 experimentally +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 <i>Saving Interest</i> he endeavoured +to inform himself of all the Christians in the country who had been +under great depths of exercise, or were still under such depths, <!-- page 150--><span class="pagenum">p. 150</span>and +endeavoured to converse with them.’ Guthrie is almost 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 attractive prose, +followed up with a text of Scripture to prove the plain and indisputable +prose. Then there is another sentence of the same prose, supported +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 Guthrie and his golden little book.</p> +<h2><!-- page 151--><span class="pagenum">p. 151</span>XVIII. +GEORGE GILLESPIE</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Our apprehensions are not canonical.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>George Gillespie was one of that remarkable band of statesmanlike +ministers that God gave to Scotland in the seventeenth century. +Gillespie died while yet a young 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 work 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 hands +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 <!-- page 152--><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>threw Rutherford +and Gillespie into the same near neighbourhood, and into intimate and +affectionate friendship. The mere scholarship of the two men would +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 think 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.</p> +<p>Gillespie was born in the parish manse of Kirkcaldy in 1613; he was +ordained to the charge of the neighbouring congregation of Wemyss in +1638, was translated thence to Edinburgh in 1642, and then became one +of the four famous deputies who were sent up from the Church of Scotland +to sit and represent her in the Westminster Assembly in 1643. +Gillespie’s great ability was well known, his wide learning and +his remarkable controversial powers <!-- page 153--><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>had +been already well proved, else such a young man would 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 <i>Characteristics</i>, +says that, being sent as a Commissioner from the Church of Scotland +to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, Gillespie, ‘promoted +much the work of reformation, and attained to a gift of clear, strong, +pressing, and calm debating above any man of his time.’</p> +<p>Many stories were told in Scotland of the debating powers 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 Constitutional and Evangelical party tried to reply to +Selden’s speech, but failed. ‘Rise, George, man,’ +said Rutherford to Gillespie, who was sitting with his pencil and note-book +beside him. ‘Rise, George, man, and defend the Church which +Christ hath purchased 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 young man has swept away the +learning and labour of ten years of my life.’ Gillespie’s +Scottish <!-- page 154--><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>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: <i>Da lucem</i>, <i>Domine</i>; Give light, O Lord. +Rutherford had foreseen 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 Committee 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 perplexity +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 unchangeable 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.</p> +<p>As her best tribute to the talents and services of her youngest Commissioner, +the Edinburgh Assembly of 1648 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 profound +in genius, mild in disposition, acute in argument, flowing in eloquence, +unconquered in mind. He drew <!-- page 155--><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>to +himself 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 intimate and confidential correspondents of Samuel Rutherford;—for +it was to him that Rutherford wrote the words now before us, ‘Our +apprehensions are not canonical.’</p> +<p>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 profession; each +several trade strikes out a language for itself. And so does divinity, +and, especially, experimental divinity, of which Rutherford’s +letters are full. We not only need a glossary for the obsolete +Scotch, but we need the most simple and everyday expressions of the +things of the soul explained to us till once we begin to speak and to +write 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 <!-- page 156--><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>apprehensions.’ +And Milton has it once in <i>Samson</i>, who says:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with deadly stings,<br /> +Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 157--><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>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.</p> +<p>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 interpretation; . . . if a man would 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.</p> +<p>Remembering his covenant with young Gillespie in the woods of Kenmure, +Rutherford wrote 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, <!-- page 158--><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>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 apprehensions +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 angry, 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 darkness, +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 gripping at Christ. +Let me go to hell, I will go to hell believing in and loving Christ.’ +Rutherford’s worst apprehensions, his best-grounded apprehensions, +could not survive an assault of faith like that. Imitate him, +and improve upon him, and say, that with a thousand times worse apprehensions +than ever Rutherford could have, yet, like him, you <!-- page 159--><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>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.</p> +<p>‘Challenges’ is another of Rutherford’s technical +terms that he constantly uses to his expert correspondents. ‘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 conscience 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 slippery,’ +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, <i>Christ Dying</i>, 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 salvation, or our possessions +and our right to them, is challenged. It is better, he says, to +hold your souls and your lands by prayer than by obedience, or conquest, +or industry. Have you wisdom, honour, learning, <!-- page 160--><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>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.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p>‘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.’</p> +<h2><!-- page 161--><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>XIX. JOHN +FERGUSHILL</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Ho, ye that have no money, come and buy in the +poor man’s market.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 own 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, <!-- page 162--><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>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 themselves! ‘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 account 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 us also selling +all and coming after you.’ The people of Anwoth and Ochiltree +were very well off in this respect also that their ministers did not +bid them do anything that they did not first do themselves. The +truest and best apostolical succession had come to those two parishes +in that their two pastors were able, with a good conscience before God +and before their people, to say with Paul to the Philippians: ‘Those +things, which ye have <!-- page 163--><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>both +learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me do; and the God of +peace shall be with you.’</p> +<p>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 +worlds, 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 every 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 <!-- page 164--><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>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 prayed 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 with 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.</p> +<p>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 purchasers, 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 negotiation here must be held immediately with +God. There are no middlemen here. They have their own place +in the markets 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 <!-- page 165--><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>directly to +Him; and then, with His own hand, He will write out your right and title +to your purchase. Let every poor man, then, be sure to draw near +to God, and to God alone. Draw 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!</p> +<p>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 principle that preachers are bidden to take to themselves +for their trouble what their proud people refuse, and partly because +Rutherford was out of all sight the poorest man in all Anwoth.</p> +<p>Now, what made Isaiah and Rutherford and Fergushill such poor men +themselves, was just this, that they came out of every money-making +enterprise 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 concern 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 <!-- page 166--><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>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 attainments and performances +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 service 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 only thing that <!-- page 167--><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>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.’</p> +<p>Look now at the prices that are demanded and paid in the poor man’s +market. And, paradoxical and past all understanding as are so +many of the things connected with this matter, the most paradoxical +and past all understanding 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 <!-- page 168--><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>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 down 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 promises.’</p> +<p>‘Faith cannot be so difficult, surely,’ says William +Guthrie in his <i>Saving Interest</i>, ‘when it consists of so +much in <i>desire</i>.’ 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 who comes to the poor man’s +<!-- page 169--><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>market; indeed, it +is the only currency 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 encouragements 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 reward 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 very 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.</p> +<p>Ho, then, he that hath no money, but only the <i>desire</i> 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 wretchedness,’ then come with +that. Come boldly with that. <!-- page 170--><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>Come +as if you had in and on you the complete opposite of that. The +opposite 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 ordinary 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 Rutherford’s +merchandise, 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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 171--><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span> XX. JAMES +BAUTIE, STUDENT OF DIVINITY</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘You crave my mind.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As 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 confessing 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 pulpit 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, whose +deepest difficulties hitherto have been mostly of the debating 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 <!-- page 172--><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>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. Meantime 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 infallible 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 <!-- page 173--><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>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 scholarship +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 portrait +as a divinity student in Rutherford’s 249th letter, and you will +find a complementary portrait of Beattie as a grey-haired pastor in +Dr. Stalker’s <i>Preacher and his Models</i>. ‘He +was a man of competent scholarship, and had the reputation of having +been in early life a powerful 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 affectionate 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 <!-- page 174--><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>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 qualification for the ministry is goodness.’</p> +<p>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 professors 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 Rutherford, 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 correspondent—<!-- page 175--><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>for +his correspondent was a well-read student—to a great sermon by +the greatest of English Churchmen—a sermon that a reader like +Rutherford must surely have had by heart, entitled, ‘A Learned +and Comfortable Sermon of the Certainty and Perpetuity 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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 176--><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>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. <i>Aliquid in Christo formosius Salvatore</i>, 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 +pure 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 there 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.</p> +<p>It was one of the great experimental problems much agitated among +the greater evangelical divines of that deep, clear-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 that. The only difficulty in our day +is why any man should <!-- page 177--><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>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 far as we. And as for the Antinomian, perfectionist, and +higher-life preachers of that day, they are all so dead and forgotten +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 which 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 peace 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 compelled 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 uncleanness 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 will be the filth of +sin in <!-- page 178--><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>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 profound laws of evangelical +sanctification as we never preach, and scarce dare to preach, those +things now. 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 heart what indeed true holiness is, will +insist on having its complementary truths 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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 179--><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>skilled +casuist in such matters as he is, as by themselves going forward in +a holy life and a holy ministry. ‘It is not God’s +design,’ says Jonathan Edwards, ‘that men should obtain +assurance in any other way than 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 assurance +of the goal than the strictness of his self-examination.’ +‘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 fall aswoon at His feet.’ +Pray, says Rutherford, and you will not long lack assurance. Work, +says Edwards, and assurance of God’s love will be an immediate +earnest of your full wages.</p> +<h2><!-- page 180--><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>XXI. JOHN +MEINE, JUNR., STUDENT OF DIVINITY</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘If you would be a deep divine I recommend you +to sanctification.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Old John Meine’s shop was a great 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 what 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 was 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 <!-- page 181--><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>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 would 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?’</p> +<p>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 public 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 Barbara, 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 +upstairs 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 Newcastle.</p> +<p>By the time that Rutherford was minister at Anwoth, and then prisoner +in Aberdeen, John <!-- page 182--><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>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 with 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 afternoon, that he was like Aaron and Hur holding up his father’s +praying and prevailing hands.</p> +<p>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, there 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 grudge to see his son’s letters +sent off to Samuel <!-- page 183--><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>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 written 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 own +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.</p> +<p>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 Scripture, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 184--><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>drawing +up the well-known definition, and, therefore, we may take it as not +far from the truth: ‘Sanctification 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?</p> +<p>‘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 <!-- page 185--><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>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 lifelong conflict that went on within him 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 were 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 Asaph 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, because practical judgment is +employed upon individual facts, and these are learned only by experience, +and a youth has not experience, for experience is gained only by a course +of years.’</p> +<p>‘A truly great divine,’ was Jonathan Edwards’ splendid +certificate to our own Thomas Boston. Now, when we read his <i>Memoirs</i>, +written by himself, we soon see what it was that made Boston such a +truly great and deep divine. It was not the number of his books, +for he tells us how he was pained when a brother minister opened his +book-press and <!-- page 186--><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>smiled +at its few shelves. ‘I may be a great bookman,’ 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 experimental 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.’</p> +<p>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 counsel you to +study sanctification,’ wrote Rutherford, the same year to the +Lady Cardoness. And if you think that Rutherford was a closet +mystic and an unpractical and head-carried enthusiast, too good for +this rough world, read his letter to Lady Cardoness, and confess your +ignorance of this great and good man. ‘Deal kindly with +your tenants,’ he writes, ‘and let your conscience be your +factor’; and again, ‘When your husband’s passion overcomes +him, my counsel to your ladyship 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 <!-- page 187--><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>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,—<span class="smcap">Samuel Rutherford</span>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 188--><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>XXII. ALEXANDER +BRODIE OF BRODIE</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Mr. Rutherford’s letter desiring me to deny +myself.’—Brodie’s <i>Diary</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Alexander Brodie was born at Brodie in the north country in the year +1617. That was the same year that saw Samuel Rutherford matriculate +in the College of Edinburgh. Of young Brodie’s early days +we know nothing; for, though he has left behind him a full and faithful +diary both of his personal and family life, yet, unfortunately, 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 father of one son and one daughter.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 189--><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>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 +<i>Diary</i>, 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 far 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 sleepless management of men, if not with +the blessing of God and the peace of a good conscience, Alexander <!-- page 190--><span class="pagenum">p. 190</span>Brodie +died in his own bed, in Brodie Castle, on the 17th of April, 1680.</p> +<p>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 reading 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 opposing 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 suspicion, <!-- page 191--><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>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, ambitious, 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 the 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 <!-- page 192--><span class="pagenum">p. 192</span>another +man what I excuse and even approve in myself: plunged 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 <i>The Confessions</i> 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 Brae and Halyburton, if not beside Shepard and +Edwards themselves.</p> +<p>In the religious upbringing also, and lifelong care of his orphaned +son and daughter, Brodie was all we could wish to see. In the +sanctification and <!-- page 193--><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>wise +occupation of 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 commencing 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 communion 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 gentleman’s household religion +might easily be collected out of Alexander Brodie’s domestic diary.</p> +<p>Another thing that greatly drew 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. ‘23<i>rd</i> +<i>July</i>, 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 my 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, +<!-- page 194--><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>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. +Who shall not fear Him? . . . <i>August</i> 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 solemnities, and desired to +be instructed by what I saw. The variety of the Lord’s creatures +on other parts of the earth was represented. In this I did acknowledge +Him. But all the glory of the city neither abides nor can make +its owner 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! <i>Nov</i>. +9—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.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Yet, all these fences, and their whole array,<br /> +One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now, there is no more cunning bosom sin in some men than the sin +of covetousness, and that sin in <!-- page 195--><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>Alexander +Brodie’s heart and life blew almost, if not altogether, away all +these and many more fences of his salvation. Well as David Laing +edits Alexander Brodie’s <i>Diary</i>, unfortunately for some +of his readers he leaves his index an index of names only, neglecting +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 my 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 Scriptural principle that</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The saints are lowered that the world may rise,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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. ‘<i>July</i> 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. What avails +prayer as long as these lusts remain? I scarcely allow meat and +fish and beer and victual to <!-- page 196--><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>my +family and to the poor. Lord, pity! 21 <i>Aug</i>.—Sin +and snare are inseparable from this haste to be rich. Lord, in +this Thou punishest one sin with another, with unrighteousness, oppression, +unevenness, uncharitableness, deceit, falsehood, rigour to tenants, +straitenedness to the poor. 24 <i>Sept</i>.—Read 1 Cor. +viii. 14, 15, which did reprove my straitenedness, my coldness, and +my parsimony. 19 <i>July</i>.—Was taken up inordinately +with trash and hagg. Let not the Lord impute it! 9 <i>Oct</i>.—My +heart challenged me that I could so freely lay out money on books, plenishing, +clothes to myself, 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 <i>Nov</i>.—Neil Campbell staid with me. I found my niggardly +nature still encroaching upon me, and made my supplication for escape. +<i>July</i> 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.’</p> +<p>And then, as to his fear of man, his time-serving, and vacillation +in the day of difficult duty, hear his <!-- page 197--><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>own +humiliating confessions: ‘<i>Jan</i>. 20, 1662.—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. <i>Oct</i>. 16.—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 despatched his sympathetic message to the honest men in the +South, he takes up his pen again to carry on his diary, which he carries +on in these actual terms. Believe me, I copy literally and scrupulously +from the humiliating book. ‘Die Dom.—I find great +averseness <!-- page 198--><span class="pagenum">p. 198</span>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 decline the cross and to ward off the wrath of the +Lords and the Magistrates. Shall I begin to hear Mr. William Falconer? +Shall I write to Seaforth and Argyll to ask them to clear and vindicate +me? Shall I forbear to hear that honest minister, James Urquhart, +for a time, seeing the storm is like to fall 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 passages. +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 run 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 overthrow +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 darkness has not +taken an end, nor my confusions.’</p> +<p>Alexander Brodie being long dead yet speaketh <!-- page 199--><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>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 landlords, 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 written and left open +among you in vain.</p> +<h2><!-- page 200--><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>XXIII. +JOHN FLEMING, BAILIE OF LEITH</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘I wish that I could satisfy your desire in drawing +up and framing for you a Christian Directory.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Samuel Rutherford and John Fleming, Bailie of Leith, were old and +fast friends. Away back in the happy 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 friendless +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.’</p> +<p><!-- page 201--><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>Robert M’Ward, +the first editor of Rutherford’s <i>Letters</i>, with all his +assiduity, was only able to recover four letters out of the heap of +correspondence 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 burdensome affairs +of this great seaport, and my own growing 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 <!-- page 202--><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>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.’</p> +<p>‘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 shipwrecks, and the rocks on +which I have foundered may thus, be made to carry a lantern to light +your ship safely past them.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and +write;</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 203--><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>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.</p> +<p>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 insatiable 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 mismanaged 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 <!-- page 204--><span class="pagenum">p. 204</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 205--><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>offending +tongues. What 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 Leith in John Fleming’s +day; and still in all these places in our own 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 Rutherford 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 <!-- page 206--><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>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 unaccountable 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 that 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 will 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 <!-- page 207--><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>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.’</p> +<p>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 who deals so searchingly with this great +subject as that prince 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 <i>Parable of the Ten Virgins</i>, +‘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 <!-- page 208--><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>in the same author’s +<i>Meditations and Spiritual Experiences</i>, 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 209--><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>4. Lastly, +in the closing sentences of this inexhaustible 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 honour. +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 everything 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 untamed +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 we are +to grow in grace. And how precious 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 grace in Leith has now become full-grown glory in Heaven, +how does he there bless God to-day that ever he met with Samuel Rutherford +in old John Maine’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 <!-- page 210--><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 211--><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>XXIV. THE +PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘For want of time I have put you all in one letter.’—<i>Rutherford</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is a well-known passage in <i>Lycidas</i> that exactly describes +the religious condition of the parish of Kilmacolm in the year 1639. +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 would 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 <i>Therapeutica</i> himself would have been put to it <!-- page 212--><span class="pagenum">p. 212</span>to +answer fully and satisfactorily those two so acute and so searching +letters. The Kilmacolm 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 widespread 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 consultation before the great spiritual casuist. +Everybody 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 286 +in Dr. Bonar’s edition.</p> +<p>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 church 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 <!-- page 213--><span class="pagenum">p. 213</span>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. +Which, 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 +understand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy precepts.’</p> +<p>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 continually +preaching in every utterance of his—the constant danger we all +lie under as long as we are in this life. Danger from sin, and, +in its own still subtler way, as much 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 <!-- page 214--><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>in a +state of security about himself he is surely the foolishest of all foolish +men. For,</p> +<blockquote><p>Thy close pursuers’ busy hands do plant<br /> +Snares in thy substance, snares attend thy want;<br /> +Snares in thy credit, snares in thy disgrace;<br /> +Snares in thy high estate, snares in thy base;<br /> +Snares tuck thy bed, and snares attend thy board;<br /> +Snares watch thy thoughts, and snares attack thy word;<br /> +Snares in thy quiet, snares in thy commotion;<br /> +Snares in thy diet, snares in thy devotion;<br /> +Snares lurk in thy resolves, snares in thy doubt;<br /> +Snares lurk within thy heart, and snares without;<br /> +Snares are above thy head, and snares beneath;<br /> +Snares in thy sickness, snares are in thy death.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 life as this! And what a noble field does this snare-filled +life supply for all a preacher’s boldest and best powers!</p> +<p>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 reply, ‘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 discover 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, <!-- page 215--><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>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.’</p> +<p>3. ‘You complain bitterly of a dead ministry in your +bounds. I have heard as much. But I will reply that a living +ministry 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.’</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 216--><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>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 +yourselves as well as the signs of secret sin. And when you have +found such and such an indubitable sign of grace, say so. Say +<i>this</i>, and <i>this</i>, and <i>this</i>, 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 acceptance, 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 <!-- page 217--><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>make +them liars.’ Rutherford thinks he has put his finger upon +some such saintly liars in the kirk-session of Kilmacolm.</p> +<p>5. ‘Fear your light, my lord,’ wrote Rutherford +to Lord Craighall from Aberdeen; ‘stand in awe of your light.’ +But the poor Kilmacolm people did not need that sharp rebuke, for they +had written to Rutherford at their own 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 every 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 with God in the evangelical 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 <!-- page 218--><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>it +turn out to him like taking shelter in a thunderstorm 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).’</p> +<p>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 altogether 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 enjoyment in the performance +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. +<!-- page 219--><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>While, again, a man’s +spirit may be all day 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.’</p> +<p>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 pace 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 complaints we have just seen, but their troubles are 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 hypocrisy. +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 <!-- page 220--><span class="pagenum">p. 220</span>memorably: +‘Our Master tries His servants not with the balances of the sanctuary, +but with the touchstone.’ 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.</p> +<p>8. Again, hold by the ground-work when the outworks 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.’</p> +<p>9. The last paragraph of Rutherford’s letter to the parishioners +of Kilmacolm is taken up with the consolation 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 condemned—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 countenance <!-- page 221--><span class="pagenum">p. 221</span>will +infallibly visit his heart. After temptation resisted and overcome +angels will always visit us. ‘Temptations,’ says Bunyan +in the fine preface to his <i>Grace Abounding</i>, ‘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 ineffable joy of renouncing joy.’ +‘A Christ bought with strokes,’ says Rutherford in closing, +‘is the sweetest of all Christs.’</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMUEL RUTHERFORD***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 16892-h.htm or 16892-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/8/9/16892 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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