Samuel Rutherford | Page 3

hath sadly mistaken me: no man knoweth what
guiltiness is in me.' And to Lady Boyd, speaking of some great lessons
he had learnt in the school of adversity, he says, 'In the third place, I
have seen here my abominable vileness, and it is such that if I were
well known no one in all the kingdom would ask me how I do. . . . I am
a deeper hypocrite and a shallower professor than any one could

believe. Madam, pity me, the chief of sinners.' And, again, to the Laird
of Carlton: 'Woe, woe is me, that men should think there is anything in
me. The house-devils that keep me company and this sink of corruption
make me to carry low sails. . . . But, howbeit I am a wretched captive of
sin, yet my Lord can hew heaven out of worse timber than I am, if
worse there be.' And to Lady Kenmure: 'I am somebody in the books of
my friends, . . . but there are armies of thoughts within me, saying the
contrary, and laughing at the mistakes of my many friends. Oh! if my
inner side were only seen!' Ah no, my brethren, no land is so fearful to
them that are sent to search it out as their own heart. 'The land,' said the
ten spies, 'is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; the cities are
walled up to heaven, and very great, and the children of Anak dwell in
them. We were in their sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in our
own sight.' Ah, no! no stair is so steep as the stair of sanctification, no
bread is so salt as that which is baked for a man of God out of the wild
oats of his past sin and his present sinfulness. Even Joshua and Caleb,
who brought back a good report of the land, did not deny that the
children of Anak were there, or that their walls went up to heaven, or
that they, the spies, were as grasshoppers before their foes: Caleb and
Joshua only said that, in spite of all that, if the Lord delighted in His
people, He both could and would give them a land flowing with milk
and honey. And be it recorded and remembered to his credit and his
praise that, with all his self-discoveries and self- accusings, Rutherford
did not utter one single word of doubt or despair; so far from that was
he, that in one of his letters to Hugh M'Kail he tells us that some of his
correspondents have written to him that he is possibly too joyful under
the cross. Blunt old Knockbrex, for one, wrote to his old minister to
restrain somewhat his ecstasy. So true was it, what Rutherford said of
himself to David Dickson, that he was 'made up of extremes.' So he
was, for I know no man among all my masters in personal religion who
unites greater extremes in himself than Samuel Rutherford. Who weeps
like Rutherford over his banishment from Anwoth, while all the time
who is so feasted in Christ's palace in Aberdeen? Who loathes himself
like Rutherford? Not Bunyan, not Brea, not Boston; and, at the same
time, who is so transported and lost to himself in the beauty and
sweetness of Christ? As we read his raptures we almost say with
cautious old Knockbrex, that possibly Rutherford is somewhat too full

of ecstasy for this fallen, still unsanctified, and still so slippery world.
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 Moses to the twelve spies. And, whether
the land was fat or lean, Moses and all Israel could judge for
themselves when the spies laid down their load of grapes at Moses' feet.
'I can report nothing but good of the land,' said Joshua Redivivus, as he
sent back such clusters of its vineyards and such pots of its honey to
Hugh Mackail, to Marion M'Naught, and to Lady Kenmure. And then,
when all his letters were collected and published, never surely, since
the Epistles of Paul and the Gospel of John, had such clusters of
encouragement and such intoxicating cordials been laid to the lips of
the Church of Christ.
Our old authors tell us that after the northern tribes had tasted the
warmth and the sweetness of the wines of Italy they could take no rest
till they had conquered and taken possession of that land