the books we still have from those great
Sabbaths: _The Trial and the Triumph of Faith_; _Christ Dying and
Drawing Sinners to Himself_; 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 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.
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 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.
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 Divine Comedy, and Rutherford's Letters. Yes,
banishment was banishment; exile was exile; silent 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.
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, "_Though I walk through the
Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no ill, for Thou art with
me_." Then he was glad, and that for these reasons:--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
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