Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Samuel Rutherford, by Alexander
Whyte
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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***

Transcribed from the 1894 Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier edition by
David Price, email [email protected]

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 FERRIER
30 ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH, AND 24 OLD BAILEY,
LONDON 1894

I. JOSHUA REDIVIVUS
'He sent me as a spy to see the land and to try the ford.' Rutherford.
Samuel Rutherford, the author of the seraphic Letters, 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.
Joshua Redivivus: That is to say, Moses' spy and pioneer, Moses'
successor and the captain of the Lord's covenanted host come back
again. A second Joshua sent to Scotland to go before God's people in
that land and in that day; a spy who would both by his experience and
by his testimony cheer and encourage the suffering people of God. For
all this Samuel Rutherford truly was. As he said of himself in one of his

letters to Hugh Mackail, he was indeed a spy sent out to make
experiment upon the life of silence and separation, banishment and
martyrdom, and to bring back a report of that life for the vindication of
Christ and for the support and encouragement of His people. It was a
happy thought of Rutherford's first editor, Robert M'Ward, his old
Westminster Assembly secretary, to put at the top of his title-page,
Joshua risen again from the dead, or, Mr. Rutherford's Letters written
from his place of banishment in Aberdeen.
In selecting his twelve spies, Moses went on the principle of choosing
the best and the ablest men he could lay hold of in all Israel. And in
selecting Samuel Rutherford to be the first sufferer for His covenanted
people in Scotland, our Lord took a man who was already famous for
his character and his services. For no man of his age in broad Scotland
stood higher as a scholar, a theologian, a 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 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.
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