PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Samuel Rutherford and Some of His Correspondents
Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 · 60,494 words · 76 reading sections
I. Joshua Redivivus
Transcribed from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk SAMUEL RUTHERFORD AND SOME OF HIS CORRESPONDENTS LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE'S FREE CHURCH EDINBURGH: BY ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. AUTHOR OF 'BUNYAN CHARACTERS' ETC. PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON AND FERRIE…
880 wordsSECTION 2I. Joshua Redivivus
Fair Anwoth by the Solway, To me thou still art dear, E'en from the verge of heaven I drop for thee a tear. Oh! if one soul from Anwoth Meet me at God's right hand, My heaven will be two heavens In Immanuel's Land. This then was the spy chosen by Jesus Christ to go out first of all the ministers of Scotland int…
1,213 wordsSECTION 3I. Joshua Redivivus
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…
306 wordsSECTION 4Ii. Samuel Rutherford And Some Of His Extremes
'I am made of extremes.'--_Rutherford_. 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, …
819 wordsSECTION 5Ii. Samuel Rutherford And Some Of His Extremes
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 _Lex Rex_ and the _Letters_. A more firmly built argument than _Le…
1,106 wordsSECTION 6Ii. Samuel Rutherford And Some Of His Extremes
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 s…
359 wordsSECTION 7Iii. Marion M'Naught
'O woman beloved of God.'--_Rutherford_. 'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,' says Sir Henry Taylor in his _Philip Van Artevelde_; 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, …
673 wordsSECTION 8Iii. Marion M'Naught
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…
764 wordsSECTION 9Iii. Marion M'Naught
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.' …
1,108 wordsSECTION 10Iv. Lady Kenmure
'Build your nest, Madam, upon no tree here, for God hath sold this whole forest to death.'--_Rutherford_. 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-gift…
764 wordsSECTION 11Iv. Lady Kenmure
'Between the stirrup and the ground Mercy I sought and mercy found.' We do not grudge Viscount Kenmure all the grace 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 wha…
831 wordsSECTION 12V. Lady Cardoness
'Think it not easy.'--_Rutherford_. 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 crumb…
685 wordsSECTION 13V. Lady Cardoness
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 d…
830 wordsSECTION 14V. Lady Cardoness
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…
491 wordsSECTION 15Vi. Lady Culross
'Grace groweth best in winter.'--_Rutherford_. Elizabeth Melville was one of the ladies of the Covenant. It was a remarkable feature of a remarkable time in Scotland that so many ladies of birth, intellect and influence were found on the side of the persecuted Covenanters. I do not remember any other period in the his…
688 wordsSECTION 16Vi. Lady Culross
It was now winter with John Livingstone. The persecution had overtaken him, and this is how her ladyship writes to him:-- 'My very worthy and dear brother: Courage, dear brother: it is all in love, all works together for the best. You must be hewn and hammered and drest and prepared before you can be a _Leiving-ston_ …
810 wordsSECTION 17Vi. Lady Culross
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 af…
556 wordsSECTION 18Vii. Lady Boyd
'Be sorry at corruption.'--_Rutherford_. 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 …
903 wordsSECTION 19Vii. Lady Boyd
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…
774 wordsSECTION 20Vii. Lady Boyd
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 spea…
751 wordsSECTION 21Viii. Lady Robertland
'That famous saint, the Lady Robertland, and the rare outgates she so often got.'--Livingstone's _Characteristics_. 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 t…
720 wordsSECTION 22Viii. Lady Robertland
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, entan…
865 wordsSECTION 23Viii. Lady Robertland
'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, …
1,071 wordsSECTION 24Ix. Jean Brown
'I would not live alway, thus fettered with sin, Temptation without and corruption within; In a moment of strength, if I sever the chain, Scarce the victory is mine ere I'm captive again; E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears, And the cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears; The festival trump calls fo…
826 wordsSECTION 25Ix. Jean Brown
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 sweetes…
670 wordsSECTION 26Ix. Jean Brown
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 …
874 wordsSECTION 27Ix. Jean Brown
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 thou…
550 wordsSECTION 28X. John Gordon Of Cardoness, The Younger
'Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every day.'--_Rutherford_. If that gaunt old tower of Cardoness Castle could speak, and would tell us all that 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 sh…
798 wordsSECTION 29X. John Gordon Of Cardoness, The Younger
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 singing Glory. And among the thousands of children that sang around the throne he told young Cardoness that he saw and hea…
843 wordsSECTION 30X. John Gordon Of Cardoness, The Younger
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 Cardone…
398 wordsSECTION 31Xi. Alexander Gordon Of Earlston
'A man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise.' Livingstone's _Characteristics_. 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. …
873 wordsSECTION 32Xi. Alexander Gordon Of Earlston
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 everlastin…
700 wordsSECTION 33Xi. Alexander Gordon Of Earlston
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 p…
783 wordsSECTION 34Xii. Earlston The Younger
'As child of mother weaned; my soul Is like a weaned child;' till all the godly households in Galloway knew the 131st Psalm as Alexander Gordon of Earlston's grace before meat. 'A renowned Gordon, a patriot, a good Christian, a confessor, and, I may add, a martyr of Jesus Christ.'--Livingstone's _Characteristics_. …
847 wordsSECTION 35Xii. Earlston The Younger
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 mo…
1,007 wordsSECTION 36Xii. Earlston The Younger
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 …
694 wordsSECTION 37Xiii. Robert Gordon Of Knockbrex
'A single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed in parliaments and public meetings after the year 1638.'--_Livingstone_. 'Hall-binks are slippery.'--_Gordon to Rutherford_. Robert Gordon of Knockbrex, in his religious character, was a combination of Old Honest and Mr. Fearing in the _Pilgrim's Progress_. He w…
1,378 wordsSECTION 38Xiii. Robert Gordon Of Knockbrex
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 n…
1,110 wordsSECTION 39Xiv. John Gordon Of Rusco
'Remember these seven things.'--_Rutherford_. 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 …
900 wordsSECTION 40Xiv. John Gordon Of Rusco
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. 'Ther…
777 wordsSECTION 41Xiv. John Gordon Of Rusco
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 wer…
1,026 wordsSECTION 42Xv. Bailie John Kennedy
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 he…
784 wordsSECTION 43Xv. Bailie John Kennedy
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, think it throug…
857 wordsSECTION 44Xv. Bailie John Kennedy
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 h…
700 wordsSECTION 45Xvi. James Guthrie
'Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee!' 'The short man who could not bow.'--_Cromwell_. James Guthrie was the son of the laird of that ilk in the county of Angus. St. Andrews was his _alma mater_, and under her excellent nurture young Guthrie soon became a student of no common name. His father had …
666 wordsSECTION 46Xvi. James Guthrie
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, mistake…
790 wordsSECTION 47Xvi. James Guthrie
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 la…
749 wordsSECTION 48Xvi. James Guthrie
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 …
646 wordsSECTION 49Xvii. William Guthrie
'A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.'--_Solomon_. 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 …
1,315 wordsSECTION 50Xvii. William Guthrie
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 tempta…
739 wordsSECTION 51Xvii. William Guthrie
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 l…
740 wordsSECTION 52Xviii. George Gillespie
'Our apprehensions are not canonical.'--_Rutherford_. 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 Mas…
939 wordsSECTION 53Xviii. George Gillespie
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 so…
749 wordsSECTION 54Xviii. George Gillespie
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.' No…
855 wordsSECTION 55Xix. John Fergushill
And, then, when George Gillespie was lying on his deathbed in Edinburgh, with his pillow filled with stinging apprehensions, as is often the case with God's best servants and ripest saints, hear how his old friend, now professor of divinity in St. Andrews, writes to him:-- 'My reverend and dear brother, look to the ea…
683 wordsSECTION 56Xix. John Fergushill
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 v…
741 wordsSECTION 57Xix. John Fergushill
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 shipwr…
914 wordsSECTION 58Xix. John Fergushill
'Faith cannot be so difficult, surely,' says William Guthrie in his _Saving Interest_, 'when it consists of so much in _desire_.' Now, both its exceeding difficulty and its exceeding ease also just consist in that. Nothing is so easy to a healthy man as the desire for food; but, then, nothing is so impossible to a dead…
581 wordsSECTION 59Xx. James Bautie, Student Of Divinity
'You crave my mind.'--_Rutherford_. 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 t…
851 wordsSECTION 60Xx. James Bautie, Student Of Divinity
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 th…
760 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.