It is mentioned in "Lamont's Diary," 27th Sept. 1653, that at the Provincial Synod of Fyfe, which met at St. Andrews, Mr. Samuel Rutherford presented a paper to the Moderator, relating to the sins of the ministry, which was not accepted. Upon the refusal of it, some words passed between Rutherford and Mr. Robert Blair, the Moderator, anent the public business. At the close of that meeting, two English officers entered; upon which they were asked, "If they had come to sit and voice with them?" They said, "No; only to see that they ruled nothing in prejudice to the Commonwealth." The days were evil, and Rutherford was longing now for such quiet service. He sometimes refers to this desire; he wishes for a harbour in his latter days; only (adds he), "failing is serving"—and he did delight in serving his Lord to the last.[51] His friend M'Ward, in an advertisement prefixed to the earlier editions of the Letters, bitterly laments the loss of a Commentary on Isaiah, on which "this true Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God,"[52] employed his leisure time during the closing years of his life.[53] "His heart travailed more," says he, "in birth of this piece than ever I knew him of any; neither was there ever anything he put his hand to that would have so powerfully persuaded this panter after the enjoyment of his Master's company, to have had his heaven and the immediate fruition of God suspended for a season, as the eager desire he had to finish this work before he finished his course." But all these papers were carried off, and never recovered. So true is it, that of the seed we sow, we "know not whether shall prosper, either this or that" (Eccles. xi. 6).
When Charles II. was fully restored, and had begun to adopt arbitrary measures, Rutherford's work, "Lex Rex," was taken notice of by the Government; for, reasonable as are its principles in defence of the liberty of subjects, its spirit of freedom was intolerable to rulers, who were, step by step, advancing to acts of cruelty and death. Indeed, it was so hateful to them, that they burnt it, in 1661, first at Edinburgh, by the hands of the hangman; and then, some days after, by the hands of the infamous Sharpe, under the windows of its author's College in St. Andrews. He was next deposed from all his offices; and, last of all, was summoned to answer at next Parliament a charge of high treason. But the citation came too late. He was already on his deathbed, and on hearing of it, calmly remarked, that he had got another summons before a superior Judge and judicatory, and sent the message, "I behove to answer my first summons; and, ere your day arrive, I will be where few kings and great folks come."
We have no account of the nature of his last sickness, except that it was a lingering disease. He had a daughter who died a few weeks before himself. All that is told us of his deathbed is characteristic of the man. At one time he spoke much of "the white stone" and "the new name." When he was on the threshold of glory, ready to receive the immortal crown, he said, "Now my tabernacle is weak, and I would think it a more glorious way of going home to lay down my life for the cause, at the Cross of Edinburgh or St. Andrews; but I submit to my Master's will." Some days before his death, after a fainting fit, he said, "Now I feel, I believe, I enjoy, I rejoice." And turning to Mr. Blair, "I feed on manna: I have angels' food. My eyes shall see my Redeemer. I know that He shall stand on earth at the latter day, and I shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Him in the air."[54] When asked, "What think ye now of Christ?" he replied, "I shall live and adore Him. Glory, glory to my Creator and Redeemer for ever. Glory shineth in Immanuel's land." The same afternoon he said, "I shall sleep in Christ; and when I awake, I shall be satisfied with His likeness. O for arms to embrace Him!" Then he cried aloud, "O for a well-tuned harp!" This last expression he used more than once, as if already stretching out his hand to get his golden harp, and join the redeemed in their new song. He also said on another occasion, "I hear Him saying to me, 'Come up hither.'" His little daughter Agnes (the only survivor of six children), eleven years of age, stood by his bedside; he looked on her, and said, "I have left her upon the Lord." Well might the man say so, who could so fully testify of his portion in the Lord, as a goodly heritage. To four of his brethren, who came to see him, he said, "My Lord and Master is chief of ten thousands of thousands. None is comparable to Him, in heaven or in earth. Dear brethren, do all for Him. Pray for Christ. Preach for Christ. Do all for Christ; beware of men-pleasing. The Chief Shepherd will shortly appear." He often called Christ "His Kingly King." While he spoke even rapturously, "I shall shine! I shall see Him as He is! I shall see Him reign, and all His fair company with Him, and I shall have my large share"—he at the same time would protest, "I renounce all that ever He made me will or do as defiled or imperfect as coming from myself. I betake myself to Christ for sanctification as well as justification." Repeating 1 Cor. i. 30, he said, "I close with it! Let Him be so. He is my all and all." "If He should slay me ten thousand times I will trust." He spoke as if he knew the hour of his departure; not perhaps as Paul (2 Tim. iv. 6) or Peter (2 Peter i. 14), yet still in a manner that seems to indicate that the Lord draws very near His servants in that hour, and gives glimpses of what He is doing. On the last day of his life, in the afternoon, he said, "This night will close the door, and fasten my anchor within the veil, and I shall go away in a sleep by five o'clock in the morning." And so it was. He entered Immanuel's land at that very hour, and is now (as himself would have said) "sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty," till the Lord come.
We may add his latest words. "There is nothing now between me and the Resurrection but 'This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.'" He interrupted one speaking in praise of his painfulness in the ministry, "I disclaim all. The port I would be in at is redemption and forgiveness of sin through His blood." Two of his biographers record that his last words were, "Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land!" as if he had caught a glimpse of its mountain-tops.
It was at St. Andrews he died, on 30th March 1661, and there he was buried. "Lamont's Diary," p. 133, says: "He was interred on the 30th of March, in the ordinary burial place." Had he lived a few weeks his might have been the cruel death endured by his friend James Guthrie, whom he had encouraged, by his letters, in stedfastness to the end. The sentence which the Parliament passed, when told that he was dying, did him no dishonour. When they had voted that he should not die in the College, Lord Burleigh rose and said, "Ye cannot vote him out of heaven."
His death was lamented throughout the land; and to this day few names are so well known and honoured. So great was the reverence which some of the godly had for this man of God, that they requested to be buried where his body was laid. This was Thomas Halyburton's dying request.[55] An old man in the parish of Crailing (in which Nisbet, his birthplace, is situated) remembers the veneration entertained for him by the great-grandfather of the present Marquis of Lothian. This good Marquis used to lift his hat, as often as he passed the spot where stood the cottage in which Samuel Rutherford was born. He was twice married. His widow survived him fourteen years.
If ever there was any portrait of him, it is not now known. The portraits sometimes given of him are all imaginary. We are most familiar with the likeness of his soul. There is one expressive line in the epitaph on his tombstone, in the churchyard at the boundary wall opposite the door of St Regulus' Tower—
A monument to his memory was erected in 1842, by subscription, on the Boreland Hill, in the parish of Anwoth. It is sixty feet in height, and thus, seen all around, it seems to remind the inhabitants of that region how God once visited His people there.
His letters have long been famous among the godly. The present edition of them has several things to recommend it. 1. The Letters are chronologically arranged. 2. They have biographical notices prefixed to a large number of them. Most of these are from the pen of the Rev. James Anderson. The present editor has added, here and there, topographical notes that seemed to have some interest, most of them gleaned on the spot. The explanatory notes in the edition by the Rev. C. Thomson, 1836, have often been consulted with much advantage. 3. There are contents prefixed to each Letter, describing generally what are the main subjects of each. 4. There are some new letters inserted in this collection; and there is a facsimile of an unpublished letter directed to the Provost of Edinburgh, at the time when there was an attempt made to call Rutherford to that city. The letter, which is preserved in the Records of the Edinburgh Town Council, entreats them to drop the matter. It is written in a very small hand, as was usual with him, and the seal on it has the armorial bearing of the Rutherford family.
If it be asked how it came about that these letters should have been at first printed in an order entirely unchronological, the explanation is simple: The first edition appeared in 1664, and in it there were only two hundred and eighty-four of his letters gathered and published; but many being edified thereby, an edition soon appeared with sixty-eight more letters appended. All these seem to have been printed very much in the order in which they came to hand, and the additional sixty-eight, more especially, disturbed all arrangement. The collector was Mr. M'Ward,[56] who, as a student, being much beloved by Rutherford, went to the Westminster Assembly with him as his amanuensis or secretary. He was afterwards successor to Andrew Gray in Glasgow, and finally minister in Rotterdam. He gave them to the public with an enthusiastic recommendation, under the title, "Joshua Redivivus;[57] published for the use of all the people of God, but more particularly for those who are now, or afterwards may be, put to suffering for Christ and His cause; by a well-wisher to the work and people of God. John xvi. 2; 2 Thessal. i. 6." The edition was in duodecimo, and was printed at Rotterdam. Not only were the Letters first published in Holland, but also, in 1674, there appeared a Dutch translation of them at Flushing.
It will be noticed, in reading the Letters as they stand chronologically, that at times the pen of the ready writer ran on with amazing rapidity. He has written many in one day when his heart was overflowing. It was easy to write when the Lord was pouring on him the unction that teacheth all things. He would have written still more, but he had heard that people looked up to him and overpraised his Letters. During his confinement at Aberdeen, he wrote about two hundred and twenty of these letters.
There are a few distasteful expressions in these epistolary effusions, the sparks of a fancy that sought to appropriate everything to spiritual purposes; but as to extravagance in the thoughts conveyed, there is none. An old Memoir of Richard Cameron, the martyr, mentions at the close that it had become a fashion among "profane preachers and expectants" to say of these Letters, "They are fit only for old wives." Dr. Love, on the other hand, protests, "The haughty contempt of that book which is in the heart of many will be ground for condemnation when the Lord cometh to make inquisition after such things" (Letter xiv.). The extravagance in sentiment alleged against them by some is just that of Paul, when he spoke of knowing "the height and depth, length and breadth," of the love of Christ; or that of Solomon, when the Holy Ghost inspired him to write "The Song of Songs." Rather would we say of these Letters, what Livingstone in a letter says of John Welsh's dying words, "O for a sweet fill of this fanatic humour!" In modern days, Richard Cecil has said of Rutherford, "He is one of my classics; he is a real original;" and, in older times, Richard Baxter, some of whose theological leanings might have prejudiced him, if anything could, said of his Letters, "Hold off the Bible, such a book the world never saw." They were long ago translated into Dutch, and of late years they have been translated into German. Both in these, and in his other writings, we see sufficient proof that had he cultivated literature as a pursuit, he might have stood high in the admiration of men.[58]
His correspondents were chiefly persons residing either in Galloway, where Anwoth was, or in Ayrshire; for these two counties at that time were rich in godly men of some standing.
His pen suggests often, by a few strokes, very much that is profound and impressive. There is something not easily forgotten in the words used to express the Church's indestructibleness when he says, "The bush has been burning these five thousand years, and no man yet saw the ashes of that fire" (Letter cccxvii.). How much truth is conveyed in that saying, "Losses for Christ are but goods given out in bank in Christ's hand." There is an ingenious use of Scripture that often delights the reader; as when he speaks of "The corn on the house-tops that never got the husbandman's prayer," or of "Him that counteth the basons and knives of His house (Ezra i. 9, 10), and bringeth them back safe to His second temple" (Letter cccxxxiii.).
It is a curious fact that only in Letter cccxxv., does he speak of the Holy Spirit, though elsewhere (see "Life of Grace") very full are his statements of the Spirit's work. The truth is, a man full of the Holy Ghost is full of Christ and testifies to Him.
These letters will ever be precious to—
1. All who are sensible of their own, and the Church's decay and corruptions.—The wound and the cure are therein so fully opened out: self is exposed, specially spiritual self. He will tell you, "There is as much need to watch over grace, as to watch over sin." He will show you God in Christ, to fill up the place usurped by self. The subtleties of sin, idols, snares, temptations, self-deceptions, are dragged into view from time to time. And what is better still, the cords of Christ are twined round the roots of these bitter plants, that they may be plucked up.
Nor is it otherwise in regard to corruption in public, and in the Church. We do not mean merely the open corruption of error, but also the secret "grey hairs" of decay. Hear him cry, "There is universal deadness on all that fear God. O where are the sometime quickening breathings and influences from heaven that have refreshed His hidden ones!" And then he laments, in the name of the saints, "We are half satisfied with our witheredness; nor have we as much of his strain who doth eight times breathe out that suit (Psalm cxix.), Quicken me!" "We live far from the well, and complain but dryly of our dryness."
2. All who delight in the Surety's imputed righteousness.—If thoroughly aware of the body of sin in ourselves we cannot but feel that we need a person in our stead—the person of the God-man in the room of our guilty person. "To us a Son is given;" not salvation only, but a Saviour. "He gave Himself for us."
These letters are ever leading us to the Surety and His righteousness. The eye never gets time to rest long on anything apart from Him and His righteousness. We are shown the deluge-waters undried up, in order to lead us into the ark again: "I had fainted, had not want and penury chased me to the storehouse of all."
3. All who rejoice in the Gospel of free grace.—Lord Kenmure having said to him, "Sin causeth me to be jealous of His love to such a man as I have been," he replied, "Be jealous of yourself, my Lord, but not of Jesus Christ." In his "Trial and Triumph of Faith" he remarks, "As holy walking is a duty coming from us, it is no ground of true peace. Believers often seek in themselves what they should seek in Christ." It is to the like effect he says in one of his letters, "Your heart is not the compass that Christ saileth by,"—turning away his friend from looking inward, to look upon the heart of Jesus. And this is his meaning, when he thus lays the whole burden of salvation on the Lord, and leaves nothing for us but acceptance, "Take ease to thyself, and let Him bear all."[59] Then, pointing us to the risen Saviour as our pledge of complete redemption, "Faith may dance, because Christ singeth;"[60] "Faith apprehendeth pardon, but never payeth a penny for it."[61] On his death-bed he said to his friends, "I disclaim all that ever God made me will or do, and I look upon it as defiled and imperfect." And so in his Letters he will admit of no addition, or intermixture of other things, "The Gospel is like a small hair that hath no breadth, and will not cleave in two."[62] He exhorts to Assurance as being the way to be humbled very low before God: "Complaining is but a humble backbiting and traducing of Christ's new work in the soul." "Make meikle of assurance, for it keepeth your anchor fixed."[63] He warns us, in his "Trial and Triumph of Faith," "not to be too desirous of keen awakenings to chase us to Christ. Let Christ tutor me as he thinketh good. He has seven eyes: I have but one, and that too dim." In a similar strain he writes:—"The law shall never be my doomster, by Christ's grace; I shall find a sure enough doom in the Gospel to humble and cast me down. There cannot be a more humble soul than a believer. It is no pride in a drowning man to catch hold of a rock."[64] How much truth there is here! Naaman never was humble in any degree, until he felt himself completely healed of his scaly leprosy; but truly he was humbled and humble then. And what one word is there that suggests so many humbling thoughts as that word "grace"?
4. All who seek to grow in holiness.—The Holy Ghost delights to show us the glorious Godhead, in the face of Jesus. And this is a very frequent theme in these Letters. "Take Christ for sanctification, as well as justification," is often his theme. And in him we see a man who seems to have fought for holiness as unceasingly and as eagerly as other men seek for pardon and peace. In him "Holiness to the Lord" seems written on every affection of the heart, and on every fresh-springing thought.
Fellowship with the living God is a distinguishing feature in the holiness given by the Holy Ghost; we get "access by one Spirit to the Father through Him."[65] Rutherford could sometimes say, "I have been so near Him that I have said, 'I take instruments that this is the Lord.'"[66] And he could from experience declare, "I dare avouch, the saints know not the length and largeness of the sweet Earnest, and of the sweet green sheaves before the harvest, that might be had on this side of the water, if we should take more pains."[67] "I am every way in your case, as hard-hearted and dead as any man, but yet I speak to Christ through my sleep."[68] All this is from the pen of a man who was a metaphysician, a controversialist, a leader in the church, and learned in ancient and scholastic lore. Why are there not such gracious, as well as great men now?
5. All afflicted persons.—Here he had the very "tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season to him that was weary." And with what tender sympathy does he speak, leading the mourner so gently to the heart of Jesus! He knew the heart of a stranger, for he had been a stranger. "Let no man after me slander Christ for His cross."[69] Yes, says he, His most loved are often His most tried: "The lintel-stone and pillars of His New Jerusalem suffer more knocks of God's hammer and tools than the common side-wall stones."[70] Even as to reproach and calumny, he declares, "I love Christ's worst reproaches."
It was to Hugh M'Kail, uncle of the youthful martyr, that he penned the words, "Some have written me that I am possibly too joyful of the cross; but my joy overleapeth the cross—it is bounded and terminated on Christ."[71] And there it was he found a well of comfort never dry.
6. All who love the Person of Christ.—We have too often been satisfied with speculative truth and abstract doctrine. On the one hand, the orthodox have too often rested in the statements of our Catechisms and Confessions; and, on the other, the "Election-doubters" (as Bunyan would have called them) have pressed their favourite dogma, that Christ died for all men, as if mere assent to a proposition could save the soul. Rutherford places the truth before us in a more accurate, and also more savoury way, full of life and warmth. The Person of Him who gave Himself for His church is held up in all its attractiveness. With him, it is ever the Person as much as the work done; or rather, never the one apart from the other. Like Paul, he would fain know Him, as well as the power of His resurrection.[72]
Once, when Lord Kenmure asked him, "What will Christ be like when He cometh?" his reply was, "All lovely." And this is everywhere the favourite theme with him. At times he tells of His love. "His love surroundeth and surchargeth me."[73] "If His love was not in heaven, I should be unwilling to go thither."[74] Often he checks his pen to tell of Christ Himself, "Welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ;"—then correcting his language, "Welcome, fair, lovely, royal King, with Thine own cross."[75] "O if I could doat as much upon Himself as I do upon His love."[76] "I fear I make more of His love than of Himself."[77] How startling yet how true, is this remark, "I see that in communion with Christ we may make more gods than one,"[78]—meaning that we may be tempted to make the enjoyment itself our god. It was his habitual aim to pass through privileges, joys, even fellowship, to God Himself: "I have casten this work upon Christ, to get me Himself."[79] "I would be farther in upon Christ than at His joys; in, where love and mercy lodgeth; beside His heart."[80] "He who sitteth on the throne is His lone a sufficient heaven."[81] "Sure I am He is the far best half of heaven."[82]
In a word, such was his soul's view of the living Person, that he writes, "Holiness is not Christ, nor the blossoms and flowers of the tree of life, nor the tree itself."[83] He had found out the true fountain-head, and would direct all Zion's travellers thither. And let a man try this; let the Holy Spirit lead a man to this Person;—and surely his experience will be, "None ever came up dry from David's well."
7. All who love that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God our Saviour.—The more we love the Person of Christ, the more ought we to love His appearing; and the more we cherish both feelings, the holier shall we become. Rutherford abounds in aspirations for that day; he is one who "looks for and hastens unto the coming of the day of God!" While in exile at Aberdeen in 1637, he writes, "O when will we meet! O how long is it to the dawning of the marriage day! O sweet Jesus, take wide steps! O my Lord, come over mountains at one stride! O my Beloved, flee as a roe or young hart upon the fountains of separation." Now and then he utters the expression of an intense desire for the restoration of Israel to their Lord, and the fulness of the Gentiles; but far oftener his desires go forth to his Lord Himself. "O fairest among the sons of men, why stayest Thou so long away? O heavens, move fast! O time, run, run, and hasten the marriage day!" To Lady Kenmure his words are, "The Lord hath told you what you should be doing till He come. 'Wait and hasten,' saith Peter, 'for the coming of the Lord.' Sigh and long for the dawning of that morning, and the breaking of that day, of the coming of the Son of Man, when the shadows shall flee away. Wait with the wearied night-watch for the breaking of the eastern sky." Those saints who feel most keenly the world's enmity, and the Church's imperfection, are those who will most fervently love their Lord's appearing. It was thus with Daniel on the banks of Ulai, and with John in Patmos; and Samuel Rutherford's most intense aspirations for that day are breathed out in Aberdeen.
His description of himself on one occasion is, "A man often borne down and hungry, and waiting for the marriage supper of the Lamb."[84] He is now gone to the "mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense;" and there he no doubt still wonders at the unopened, unsearchable treasures of Christ. But O for his insatiable desires Christward! O for ten such men in Scotland to stand in the gap!—men who all day long find nothing but Christ to rest in, whose very sleep is a pursuing after Christ in dreams, and who intensely desire to "awake with His likeness."
LIST OF HIS WORKS.
1. Exercitationes Apologeticæ pro Divina Gratia. Amstelodami, 12mo, 1636. Franekeræ, 1651.
2. A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland. London, 4to, 1642.
3. A Sermon before the House of Commons, on Daniel vi. 26. London, 4to, 1644.
4. A Sermon before the House of Lords, on Luke vii. 22; Mark iv. 38; Matt. viii. 26. London, 4to, 1645.
5. "Lex Rex:" The Law and the Prince. London, 4to, 1644. In Fullarton's Scottish Nation, 1862, mention is made of another work which is in reality the same as this; on Civil Polity. London, 4to, 1657. It is not, however, a separate work, but merely one of the editions of the well-known Lex Rex—the edition of 1657, which has the following title:—Lex Rex; a Treatise of Civil Polity; being a Resolution of Forty-three Questions concerning Prerogative, Right, and Privilege, in reference to the Supreme Prince and People. The change in the title was a device of the printer, in order to elude the Government, who sought to suppress the book.
6. The Due Right of Presbyteries. London, 4to, 1644.
7. The Trial and Triumph of Faith. London, 4to, 1645.
8. The Divine Right of Church Government and Excommunication. London, 4to, 1646. Appended to this is A Dispute touching Scandal and Christian Liberty.
9. Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself. London, 4to, 1647.
10. A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist. London, 1648. To which is appended, A Modest Survey of the Secrets of Antinomianism.
11. A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience. London, 4to, 1649.
12. The Last and Heavenly Speeches of John Gordon, Viscount Kenmure. Edinburgh, 4to, 1649.
13. Disputatio Scholastica de Divina Providentia. Edinburgh, 4to, 1651.
14. The Covenant of Life Opened. Edinburgh, 4to, 1655.
15. A Survey of Mr. Hooker's Church Discipline; or, A Survey of the Survey of that Summe of Discipline penned by Mr. Thomas Hooker. London, 4to, 1658.
16. Influences of the Life of Grace. The last work published in his lifetime. London, 4to, 1659. The original title page adds:—"A Practical Treatise concerning the way, manner, and means of having and improving spiritual dispositions and quickening influences from Christ, the Resurrection and the Life."
POSTHUMOUS.
17. Joshua Redivivus; or, Mr. Rutherford's Letters. First Edition, 12mo, 1664. No printer's name and no place mentioned.
18. Examen Arminianismi. Ultrajecti (Utrecht), 12mo, 1668.
19. A Testimony left by Mr. S. Rutherford to the Work of Reformation in Great Britain and Ireland before his death. Date uncertain.
20. Twelve Communion Sermons. Glasgow, 1876. This collection includes Christ's Napkin; and Song ii. 14-17, Christ and the Dove's Heavenly Salutation. These have internal evidence in their favour, viz. the language and general strain of thought. Add to these The Lamb's Marriage, Rev. xix. 7; and another on Song ii. 1-8 appended to a second edition, 1877, with the title, "Fourteen Communion Sermons," 1877.
21. The Cruel Watchmen. The Door of Salvation Opened. Edinburgh, 1735. Song v. 7, 8, 9, 10. These two are doubtful; at all events, very imperfect, as usually printed. The old edition of The Cruel Watchmen is good.
22. There is a Treatise on Prayer; The Power and Prevalency of Truth and Prayer evidenced, in a Practical Discourse upon Matt. ix. 27-31. Printed in the year 1713. It is a small duodecimo of 111 pp., and has this note appended: "The rest of this Discourse cannot be found, it being above fifty years since the author died."
An old Catalogue of the most Vendible Books, in 1658, gives as one of his works, A Rationale on the Book of Common Prayer, 8vo. But this is a mistake; Antony Sparrow wrote the book entitled, The Rationale, or Practical Exposition of the Book of Common Prayer.
The Diaries of Brodie of Brodie (Spalding Club—Preface p. xix.), refer to "Shorthand Notes of two Sermons by S. Rutherford." Brodie used to correspond with him, for we find, August 6, 1655: "Mr. Rutherford exhorted me in his letter that my right hand might not know what my left hand did; and he says that he knows not but that the Lord may divorce the mother, but be a sanctuary to the little ones." We find further that S. R. wrote urging Brodie "to present Mr. Thomas Ross to Ila."23. Quaint Sermons (eighteen in number), by S. R., never before published, with a prefatory note by Rev. And. A. Bonar. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1885.
LETTERS.
I.—For Marion M'Naught, on the return home of her daughter.
[In the early editions the date stands "1624," by a mistake for "1627;" for Rutherford was not settled in Anwoth in 1624.
For a full notice of Marion M'Naught, see what is prefixed to Letter VI.]
(CHILDREN TO BE DEDICATED TO GOD.)
"W ELL-BELOVED AND DEAR SISTER,—My love in Christ remembered. I have sent to you your daughter Grizel with Robert Gordon, who came to fetch her. I am in good hopes that the seed of God is in her, as in one born of God; and God's seed will come to God's harvest. I have her promise she shall be Christ's. For I have told her she may promise much in His worthy name; for He becomes caution to His Father for all such as resolve and promise to serve Him. I will remember her to God. I trust you will acquaint her with good company, and be diligent to know with whom she loveth to haunt. Remember Zion, and our necessities. I bless your daughter from our Lord, and pray the Lord to give you joy and comfort of her. Remember my love to your husband, to William and Samuel your sons. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Yours at all power in the Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Anwoth, June 6, 1627.
II.—To a Christian Gentlewoman on the death of her daughter.
(CHRIST'S SYMPATHY WITH, AND PROPERTY IN US—REASONS FOR RESIGNATION.)
M ISTRESS,—My love in Christ remembered to you. I was indeed sorrowful at my departure from you, especially since ye were in such heaviness after your daughter's death. Yet I do persuade myself, ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour; for Isaiah saith, "In all your afflictions He is afflicted" (Isa lxiii. 9). O blessed Second who suffereth with you! and glad may your soul be even to walk in the fiery furnace with one like unto the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God. Courage! up your heart! When ye do tire, He will bear both you and your burden (Ps. lv. 22). Yet a little while and ye shall see the salvation of God. Remember of what age your daughter was, and that just so long was your lease of her. If she was eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, I know not; but sure I am, seeing her term was come, and your lease run out, ye can no more justly quarrel your great Superior for taking His own at His just term day, than a poor farmer can complain that his master taketh a portion of his own land to himself when his lease is expired. Good mistress, if ye would not be content that Christ would hold from you the heavenly inheritance which is made yours by His death, shall not that same Christ think hardly of you if ye refuse to give Him your daughter willingly, who is a part of His inheritance and conquest? I pray the Lord to give you all your own, and to grace you with patience to give God His also. He is an ill debtor who payeth that which he hath borrowed with a grudge. Indeed, that long loan of such a good daughter, an heir of grace, a member of Christ (as I believe), deserveth more thanks at your Creditor's hands, than that ye should gloom and murmur when He craveth but His own. I believe you would judge them to be but thankless neighbours who would pay you a sum of money after this manner. But what? Do you think her lost, when she is but sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty? Think her not absent who is in such a friend's house. Is she lost to you who is found to Christ? If she were with a dear friend, although you should never see her again, your care for her would be but small. Oh, now, is she not with a dear Friend? and gone higher, upon a certain hope that ye shall, in the Resurrection, see her again, when (be ye sure) she shall neither be hectic nor consumed in body? You would be sorry either to be, or to be esteemed, an atheist; and yet, not I, but the Apostle, thinketh those to be hopeless atheists who mourn excessively for the dead (Thess. iv. 13). But this is not a challenge on my part. I do speak this only fearing your weakness; for your daughter was a part of yourself; and, therefore, nature in you, being as it were cut and halved, will indeed be grieved. But ye have to rejoice, that when a part of you is on earth, a great part of you is glorified in heaven. Follow her, but envy her not; for indeed it is self-love in us that maketh us mourn for them that die in the Lord. Why? Because for them we cannot mourn, since they are never happy till they be dead; therefore we mourn for our own private respect. Take heed, then, that in showing your affection in mourning for your daughter, ye be not, out of self-affection, mourning for yourself. Consider what the Lord is doing in it. Your daughter is plucked out of the fire, and she resteth from her labours; and your Lord, in that, is trying you, and casting you in the fire. Go through all fires to your rest; and now remember that the eye of God is upon the bush burning and not consumed; and He is gladly content that such a weak woman as you should send Satan away, frustrate of his design. Now honour God, and shame the strong roaring lion, when ye seem weakest. Should such an one as ye faint in the day of adversity? Call to mind the days of old. The Lord yet liveth. Trust in Him, although He should slay you. Faith is exceeding charitable, and believeth no evil of God.[85] Now is the Lord laying, in the one scale of the balance, your making conscience of submission to His gracious will, and in the other, your affection and love to your daughter. Which of the two will ye then choose to satisfy? Be wise, then; and as I trust ye love Christ better than a sinful woman, pass by your daughter, and kiss the Lord's rod. Men do lop the branches off their trees round about, to the end they may grow up high and tall. The Lord hath this way lopped your branch in taking from you many children, to the end you should grow upward, like one of the Lord's cedars, setting your heart above, where Christ is, at the right hand of the Father. What is next, but that your Lord cut down the stock after He hath cut the branches? Prepare yourself; you are nearer your daughter this day than you were yesterday. While ye prodigally spend time in mourning for her, ye are speedily posting after her. Run your race with patience. Let God have His own; and ask of Him, instead of your daughter which He hath taken from you, the daughter of faith, which is patience; and in patience possess your soul. Lift up your head: ye do not know how near your redemption doth draw, Thus recommending you to the Lord, who is able to establish you, I rest, your loving and affectionate friend in the Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Anwoth, April 23, 1628.
III.—To the Viscountess of Kenmure, on occasion of illness and spiritual depression.
[Lady Jane Campbell, Viscountess of Kenmure, was the third daughter of Archibald Campbell, seventh Earl of Argyle, and sister to the Marquis of Argyle who was beheaded in 1661. She was a woman distinguished, in her day, for the depth of her piety, and her warm attachment to the Presbyterian interest in Scotland. Nor was she less distinguished for generosity and munificence, than for piety. Her bounty was in a particular manner extended to those whom suffering for conscience' sake had reduced to poverty or exile. In the year 1628 she was married to Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, afterwards Viscount Kenmure and Lord Gordon of Lochinvar, which is not far from Carsphairn. This union did not last many years. In 1634 she became a widow, his Lordship having died at Kenmure Castle, on the 12th of September that year, in the 35th year of his age. But her sorrow on this occasion was alleviated by the Christian resignation and faith which he was enabled to exercise under his last illness. To this noble man she had two daughters, who died in infancy, one about the beginning of the year 1629, and the other in 1634, as may be gathered from allusions to these bereavements, contained in two consolatory letters written to her by Rutherford in these years. She had also, by the same marriage, a son, John, second Viscount of Kenmure, who, however, died under age and unmarried, in August 1649. This event forms the subject of a letter written to her by Rutherford the 1st of October that year. She married a second husband, on the 21st of September 1640, the Hon. Sir Henry Montgomery of Giffen, second son of Alexander, fifth Earl of Eglinton; but this marriage was without issue. Sir Henry's religious views were congenial to her own; and he is described as an "active and faithful friend of the Lord's kirk." She was soon left a widow a second time, in which state she lived till a very venerable age, having survived the Restoration a number of years, as appears from the fact that Livingstone, at the time of his death (which took place at Rotterdam in 1672), speaks of her as the oldest acquaintance he then had alive in Scotland. She was a regular correspondent of Rutherford, the last of whose letters to her is dated July the 24th, 1661, after the execution of her brother above mentioned. Nor after Mr. Rutherford's death was she unmindful of his widow. "Madam," says Mr. M'Ward, in a letter to her, "Mrs. Rutherford gives me often an account of the singular testimony which she met with of your Ladyship's affection to her and her daughter."
Kenmure Castle is well seen from the road that leads along the banks of the Ken. The loch, the river, the old baronial house, combine to attract notice. It is built on an insulated knoll, well wooded all around. It is four miles from Dalry, and the approach is through an avenue of lime-trees. The old garden has a hedge of very lofty beech trees, and a curious dial with a Latin inscription, dated "1623. Joannes Bonar fecit"—the name of the person who (it is said) brought it from the Continent.]