PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Samuel Rutherford and Some of His Correspondents
Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 · 60,494 words · 76 reading sections
Xx. James Bautie, Student Of Divinity
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 i…
860 wordsSECTION 62Xxi. John Meine, Junr., Student Of Divinity
'If you would be a deep divine I recommend you to sanctification.'--_Rutherford_. 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…
936 wordsSECTION 63Xxi. John Meine, Junr., Student Of Divinity
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 the…
867 wordsSECTION 64Xxii. Alexander Brodie Of Brodie
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 mys…
692 wordsSECTION 65Xxii. Alexander Brodie Of Brodie
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…
870 wordsSECTION 66Xxii. Alexander Brodie Of Brodie
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 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 t…
723 wordsSECTION 67Xxii. Alexander Brodie Of Brodie
'The saints are lowered that the world may rise,' I shall say a single word on each of Brodie's two so besetting sins. And, doing in the matter of Brodie's vices as I have just done in the matter of his virtues, I shall let the singularly honest Diarist speak for himself. I certainly would not dare, on any evidence, t…
1,075 wordsSECTION 68Xxiii. John Fleming, Bailie Of Leith
Alexander Brodie being long dead yet speaketh 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 an…
814 wordsSECTION 69Xxiii. John Fleming, Bailie Of Leith
'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 Di…
681 wordsSECTION 70Xxiii. John Fleming, Bailie Of Leith
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…
748 wordsSECTION 71Xxiii. John Fleming, Bailie Of Leith
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 th…
911 wordsSECTION 72Xxiv. The Parishioners Of Kilmacolm
'For want of time I have put you all in one letter.'--_Rutherford_. There is a well-known passage in _Lycidas_ 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…
782 wordsSECTION 73Xxiv. The Parishioners Of Kilmacolm
Thy close pursuers' busy hands do plant Snares in thy substance, snares attend thy want; Snares in thy credit, snares in thy disgrace; Snares in thy high estate, snares in thy base; Snares tuck thy bed, and snares attend thy board; Snares watch thy thoughts, and snares attack thy word; Snares in thy quiet, snares…
919 wordsSECTION 74Xxiv. The Parishioners Of Kilmacolm
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 t…
666 wordsSECTION 75Xxiv. The Parishioners Of Kilmacolm
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 Ru…
606 wordsSECTION 76*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook Samuel Rutherford And Some Of His Correspondents ***
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.