Miss Rutherford

“ What a world of injury and of all kinds of iniquity has the tongue always and everywhere been! In Jerusalem in David’s day; and still in Jerusalem in James’s day; in Anwoth and Aberdeen and St. Andrews in Rutherford’s day; and in Leith in John Fleming’s day; and still in all these places in our own day. The tongue can no man tame, and no wonder, for it is set on fire of hell. ‘I shall show you,’ says Rutherford, ‘what I would fain be at myself, howbeit I always come short of my purpose.’ Rutherford made many enemies both as a preacher and as a doctrinal and an ecclesiastical controversialist. ”

“ I spare to do it, lest I be deemed to seek myself; but His breath hath smelled of the powders of the merchant, and of the King's spikenard. I think that I conceive new thoughts of heaven, because the card and the map of heaven which He letteth me now see is so fair and so sweet. I am sure that we are niggards, and sparing bodies in seeking. I verily judge that we know not how much may be had in this life; there is yet something beyond all that we see, that seeking would light upon. Oh that my love-sickness would put me to a business, when all the world are found sleeping, to cry and knock! ”

“ Rutherford’s very thinnest books are almost too thick, both with theology and with thought.
How ever a woman like Jane Campbell came to marry a man like John Gordon will remain a mystery. It was not that he was a man of no mind; he was a man of no worth or interest of any kind. He was a rake and a lick-spittle, the very last man in Scotland for Jane Campbell to throw herself away upon. And she was too clever and too good a woman not to make a speedy and a heart-breaking discovery of the fatal mistake she had committed. ”

“ I intend, after the council-day, to go on to Aberdeen. The Lord is with me: I care not what man can do. I burden no man, and I want nothing. No king is better provided than I am. Sweet, sweet, and easy is the cross of my Lord. All men I look in the face (of whatsoever denomination, nobles and poor, acquaintance and strangers) are friendly to me. My Well-beloved is some kinder and more warmly than ordinary, and cometh and visiteth my soul. ”

“ It is a comely thing even for a saint to be well-clothed about with humility, and the deepest valley is safer and seemlier walking for a lame man than the mountain-top; and so on, till Rutherford admitted that Robert Gordon’s warnings were neither impertinent nor untimeous. The sin-stricken laird of Knockbrex was like Mr. Fearing at the House Beautiful. ”

“ And when Rutherford was in exile in Aberdeen, and in deep anxiety about his people at Anwoth, he wrote beseeching Marion M’Naught to go to Anwoth and give his people her counsel about their congregational and personal affairs. But, above all, it is from the depth and the power of Rutherford’s letters to herself on the inward life that we best gather the depth and the power of this remarkable woman’s mind.
There is no other subject of thought that gives such scope for the greatest gifts of the human mind as does the life of God in the soul. ”

“ Time will cut you from this world's glory; look what will do you good, when your glass shall be run out. And let Christ's love bear most court in your soul, and that court will bear down the love of other things. Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand. Who hath more cause to encourage others to own Christ than I have? for He hath made me sick of love, and left me in pain to wrestle with His love. And love is like to fall aswoon through His absence. I mean not that He deserteth me, or that I am ebb of comforts ”

“ Now, Madam, for your Ladyship's case. I rejoice exceedingly that the Father of lights hath made you see that there is a nick in Christianity, which ye contend to be at; and that is, to quit the right eye, and the right hand, and to keep the Son of God. I hope your desire is to make Him your garland, and that your eye looketh up the mount, which certainly is nothing but the new creature. Fear not, Christ will not cast water upon your smoking coal; and then who else dare do it if He say nay? Be sorry at corruption, and be not secure. ”

“ I sometimes wished that he had never inherited any love whatever for what is usually considered to be the Best, and that he had been endowed with an organisation coarse and commonplace, like that of his colleagues. If he went into company which suited him, or read anything which interested him, it seemed as if the ten hours of the gallery in Fleet Street had been made thereby only the more insupportable, and his habitual mood was one of despondency, so that his fellow clerks who knew his tastes not unnaturally asked what was the use of them if they only made him wretched ”

“ Dear brother, neither you nor I are parties worthy of His love or knowledge. Ah! how hath sin bemisted and blinded us, that we cannot see Him. But for my poor self; I am pained and like to burst, because He will not take down the wall, and fetch His uncreated beauty, and bring His matchless, white, and ruddy face out of heaven once-errand, that I may have heaven meeting [609] me, ere I go to it, in such a wonderful sight. Ye know that majesty and love do humble; because homely love to sinners dwelleth in Him with majesty. Ye should give Him all His own court-styles, His high and heaven-names. ”

“ Many a whole soul is in heaven which was sickerer than ye are. He is content that ye lay broken arms and legs on His knee, that He may spelk them. Secondly, hiding of His face is wise love. His love is not fond, doting, and reasonless, to give your head no other pillow whill ye be in at heaven's gates, but to lie between His breasts, and lean upon His bosom. Nay, His bairns must often have the frosty cold side of the hill, and set down both their bare feet among thorns. His love hath eyes, and, in the meantime, is looking on. Our pride must have winter weather to rot it. ”

“ The loving labours, the strong hand, and the wise counsels of her boy, now a man, would be sorely missed, yet she dried her tears, and asked the God in whom she had trusted to support her in this new trial, and, above all, to be with the lad. If God was with her son, she knew that all would be well, and that he would come unscathed from the world and its temptations. ”

“ It is like that the Lord will take a severe course with us, to cause the children of the family to agree together. I conceive that Christ hath a great design of free grace to these lands; but His wheels must move over mountains and rocks. He never yet wooed a bride on earth, but in blood, in fire, and in the wilderness. A cross of our own choosing, honeyed and sugared with consolations, we cannot have. I think not much of a cross when all the children of the house weep with me and for me; and to suffer when we enjoy the communion of the saints is not much ”

“ Now you, Miss Rutherford, first."
"My name is Gloria Rutherford and I can't do anything but play tennis, drink gin and drive a car."
The rest of the replies followed: "F. W. Stevens, Wall Street," "Theodore Roberts, lawyer," "Archibald Tholfsen, chess-player," "H. M. Dangerfield, editor," "Francis X. O'Hara, trucking business," (this was the loud-voiced man who had cut the Gordian knot of the argument about organization) . "Are you a mechanic, too?" asked Ben. ”

“ And it becometh Him full well to take the place and the board-head in your soul before all the world. I knew and saw Him with you in the furnace of affliction; for there he wooed you to Himself, and chose you to be His; and now He craveth no other hire of you but your love, and that He get no cause to be jealous of you. And, therefore, dear and worthy lady, be like to the fresh river, that keepeth its own fresh taste in the salt sea. This world is not worthy of your soul. Give it not a good-day when Christ cometh in competition with it. Be like one of another country. ”

“ Sure we sin, in putting the book in His hand, as if we could teach the Almighty knowledge. We make haste; we believe not. Let the only wise God alone; He steereth well. He draweth straight lines, though we think and say they are crooked. It is right that some should die and their breasts full of milk; and yet we are angry that God dealeth so with them. Oh, if I could adore Him in His hidden ways, when there is darkness under His feet and darkness in His pavilion, and clouds are about His throne! Madam, hoping, believing, patient praying, is our life. ”

“ No matter how little ye be engaged to the world, since ye have such experience of cross-dealing in it. Had ye been a child of the house, the world would have dealt more warmly with its own. There is less of you out of heaven, in that the child is there and the husband is there; but much more that your Head, Kinsman, and Redeemer doth fetch home such as are in danger to be lost. And from this time forward, fetch not your comforts from such broken cisterns and dry wells. If the Lord pull at the rest, ye must not be the creature that will hold when He draweth. ”

“ Aytoun fell, and for whom Mr. Rutherford has suffered, is lately dead.—Without a moment’s delay, after his death, his sister immediately brought his confession to the proper quarter, so that now there remains nothing but to give to the world this most honorable vindication of Norman Rutherford, of Redheugh. In the consciousness of an act of singular goodness, bravely done, and in the universal applause of all good men, our heroic countryman, on his return to his own land, will, we doubt not, find himself abundantly rewarded. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But sin, again, that dreadful, and, to Rutherford, omnipresent evil, poisoned all his preaching also and made it one of the heaviest burdens of his conscience and his heart and his life. There is a proverb to the effect that when the best things become corrupt then that is corruption indeed. And so Rutherford discovered it to be in the matter of his preaching. Do what he would, Rutherford, like Shepard, could not keep the thought of what men would think out of his weak and evil mind, both before, and during, but more especially after his preaching. ”

“ Our Lord knows best what is good for an old kirk that has fallen from her first love, and hath forgotten her Husband days without number. A trial is like to come on; but I am sure our Husbandman Christ shall lose chaff, but no corn at all. Yet there is a dry wind coming, but neither to fan nor to purge. Happy are they who are not blown away with the chaff, for we will but suffer temptation for ten days; but those who are faithful to the death shall receive the crown of life. I hear daily what hath been spoken of myself, most unjustly and falsely ”

“ I would be sometimes too hot, and too joyful, if the heart-breaks at the remembrance of sin, and fair, fair feast-days with King Jesus, did not cool me, and sour my sweet joys. Oh, how sweet is the love of Christ! and how wise is that love! But let faith frist and trust a while; it is no reason sons should offend, that the father giveth them not twice a-year hire, as he doth to hired servants. Better that God's heirs live upon hope, than upon hire.
Madam, your Ladyship knoweth what Christ hath done to have all your love ”

“ The presence of Rutherford acted as a tonic, and restored the desired equilibrium.
“Mr. Houston already knows my aversion to a lamp, and if you do not object, Mr. Rutherford, we will sit for a while in the moonlight.”
“By all means,” said Rutherford. “I myself dislike the glare of a bright light for genuine, friendly intercourse. A soft, subdued light is much more conducive to mutual confidence and interchange of thought and feeling.” ”

“ Let us all try Samuel Rutherford’s piecemeal way of reformation with our own anger; let us put a bridle on our mouths part of every day. Let us do this if we can as yet go no further; let us bridle our mouths on certain subjects, and about certain people, and in certain companies. If you have some one you dislike, some one who has injured or offended you, some rival or some enemy, whom to meet, to see, to read or to hear the name of, always brings hell’s dunnest gloom into your heart—well, put off this piece of your sin concerning him ”

“ Rutherford's heart as she thought of that light, airy temperament which had been her son's most delightful gift, the gay insouciance, the joyous outlook that had made him everybody's favourite. He the jester, the trifler, for whom life was always play-time, he to be shut within those frozen walls, immured in a living grave! ”

“ L OVING AND DEAR SISTER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I received your letter. I know that the favour of Christ in you (whom the virgins love to follow) cannot be blown away with winds, either from hell, or the evil-smelled air of this defiled world. Sit far aback from the walls of this pesthouse, even the pollutions of this defiling world. Keep your taste, your love, and hope in heaven; it is not good that your love and your Lord should be in two sundry countries. Up, up after your lover, that ye and He may be together. ”