000.4. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD
SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD
"WHEREVER the palm-tree is, there is water," says the Eastern proverb; and so, wherever the godly flourish, there, we are sure, must the Word of God be found. In the history of the Reformation we read of Brother Martin, a poor monk at Basle, whose hope of salvation rested solely on the Lord Jesus, long before Luther sounded the silver trumpet that summoned sin-convinced souls to the One Sacrifice. Having written out his confession of faith, his statement of reliance on the righteousness of Christ alone, the monk placed the parchment in a wooden box, and shut up the wooden box in a hole of the wall of his cell. It was not till last century that this box, with its interesting contents, was discovered: it was brought to light only when the old wall of the monastery was taken down. The palm-tree speaks of the existence of water at its root; the pure Word of God taught this man his simple faith. And herein we learn how it was that Basle so early became a peculiar centre of light in that region; the prayer and the faith of that hidden one, and others like-minded, and the Word on which they fed, may explain it all.
There is a fact not unlike the above in the history of the district where Samuel Rutherford laboured so lovingly. The people of that shire tell that there was found, some generations ago, in the wall of the old castle of Earlston, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, a copy of "Wickliffe’s Bible." It was deposited in that receptacle in order to be hid from the view of enemies; but from time to time it was the lamp of light to a few souls, who, perhaps in the silence of night, found opportunity to draw it out of its ark, and peruse its pages. It seems that the Lollards of Kyle (the adjoining district) had brought it to Earlston. We know that there were friends and members of the family of Earlston who embraced the Gospel even in those days. In the sixteenth century, some of the ancestors of Viscount Kenmure are found holding the doctrines of Wickliffe, which had been handed down to them. May we not believe that the Gordons of Earlston, in after days, were not a little indebted to the faith and prayers of these ancient witnesses who hid the sacred treasure in the castle wall? As in the case of the monk of Basle, their faith and patience were acknowledged in after days by the blessing sent down on that quarter, when the Lord, in remembrance of His hidden ones, both raised up the Gordons of Earlston, with many others of a like spirit, and also sent thither His servant Samuel Rutherford, to sound forth the Word of Life, and make the lamp of truth blaze, like a torch, over all that region.
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD was born about the year 1600. His father is understood to have been a respectable farmer. He had two brothers, James and George. But the place of his birth was not near the scene of his after labours. It is almost certain that Nisbet, a village of Roxburghshire close to the Teviot, in the parish of Crailing, was his birthplace; the name Rutherford frequently occurs in the churchyard. Not long ago, there were some old people in that parish who remembered the gable-end of the house in which it was said that he was born, and which, from respect to his memory, was permitted to stand as long as it could keep together. And there was there a village well where, when very young, Samuel nearly lost his life. He had been amusing himself with some companions, when he fell in, and was left there till they ran and procured assistance; but on returning to the spot they found him seated on a knoll, cold and dripping, yet uninjured. He told them that "A bonnie white man came and drew him out of the well!" Whether or not he really fancied that an angel had delivered him, we cannot tell; but it is plain that, at all events, his boyish thoughts were already wandering in the region of the sky.
He owed little to his native place. There was not so much of Christ known in that parish then as there is now; for in after days he writes, "My soul’s desire is, that the place to which I owe my first birth—in which, I fear, Christ was scarcely named, as touching any reality of the power of godliness—may blossom as the rose" (Letter cccxxxiv.). We have no account of his revisiting these scenes of his early life, though he thus wrote to his friend, Mr Scott, minister of the adjoining parish of Oxnam. Like Donald Cargill, born in Perthshire yet never known to preach there even once, Rutherford had his labours in other parts of the land, distant from his native place. In this arrangement we see the Master’s sovereignty. The sphere is evidently one of God’s choosing for the man, instead of being the result of the man’s gratifying his natural predilections. It accords, too, with the example of the Master, who never returned to Bethlehem, where He was born, to do any of His works.
Jedburgh is a town three or four miles distant from Nisbet, and thither Samuel went for his education; either walking to it, and returning home at evening,—as a school-boy would scarcely grudge to do,—or residing in the town for a season. The school at that time met in a part of the ancient Abbey, called, from this circumstance, the Latiners’ Alley. In the year 1617 we find him farther from home,—removed to Edinburgh, which, forty years before, had become the seat of a College, though not as yet a University. There he obtained, in 1621, the degree of Master of Arts. A single specimen (not elegant, however) of his Latin verse remains in the lines he prefixed to an edition of Row’s "Hebrew Grammar," published at Glasgow, 1644—
Verba Sionææ gentis, submersa tenebris Cimmeriis, mendax Kimchius ore crepat.
Quæ vos Rabbini sinuosa ænigmata vultis, Nunc facilem linguam dicite quæso sacram.
Falleris, Hippocrates; male parcæ stamina vitæ
Curta vocas, artem vociferare μακραν;
Sit cita mors, rapido sit et hora fugacior Euro, Bellerophontœis vita volato rotis:
Rouæi Hebracis sit mors male grata Camoenis.
Haec relege, ast artem dixeris esse brevem.
Soon after, he was appointed Regent, or Professor, of Humanity, though there were three other competitors; for his talents had attracted the notice of many. But, on occasion of a rumour that charged him with some irregularity—whether with or without foundation, it is now difficult to ascertain—he demitted his office in 1625, and led a private life, attending prelections on theology, and devoting himself to that study. That there could not have been anything very serious in the rumour, may be inferred from the fact that no church court took any notice of the matter, though these were days when the reins of discipline were not held with a slack hand. But it is not unlikely that this may have been the time of which he says in a letter, "I knew a man who wondered to see any in this life laugh or sport." It may have been then that he was led by the Spirit to know the things that are freely given us of God.2 We have no proof that he was converted at an earlier period, but rather the opposite. He writes, "Like a fool as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before ever I took the gate by the end." And again, "I had stood sure, if in my youth I had borrowed Christ for my bottom."4 The clouds returned after the rain; family trials, and other similar dealings of Providence, combined to form his character as a man of God and as a pastor. In 1627 he was settled at Anwoth, a parish situated in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on the River Fleet, near the Solway. The church stood in a wide hollow, or valley, at the foot of the Boreland Hill. Embosomed in wood, with neither the smoke nor the noise of a village near, it must always have been a romantic spot—the very ideal of a country church, set down to cherish rural godliness. Though at this period Episcopacy had been obtruded upon Scotland, and many faithful ministers were suffering on account of their resistance to its ceremonies and services, yet he appears to have been allowed to enter on his charge without any compliance being demanded, and "without giving any engagement to the bishop." He began his ministry with the text, John 9:39. The same Lord that would not let Paul and Timothy preach in Asia, nor in Bithynia, and yet sent to the one region the beloved John , 7 and to the other the scarcely less beloved Peter, in this instance prevented John Livingstone going to Anwoth, which the patron had designed, and sent Rutherford instead. This was the more remarkable, because Livingstone was sent to Ancrum, the parish that borders on Nisbet, while he who was by birth related to that place was despatched to another spot. This is the Lord’s doing. Ministers must not choose according to the flesh.
During the first years of his labours here, the sore illness of his wife was a bitter grief to him. Her distress was very severe. He writes of it: "She is sore tormented night and day.—My life is bitter unto me.—She sleeps none, and cries as a woman travailing in birth; my life was never so wearisome." She continued in this state for no less than a year and a month, ere she died. Besides all this, his two children had been taken from him. Such was the discipline by which he was trained for the duties of a pastor, and by which a shepherd’s heart of true sympathy was imparted to him. The parish of Anwoth had no large village near the church. The people were scattered over a hilly district, and were quite a rural flock. But their shepherd knew that the Chief Shepherd counted them worth caring for; he was not one who thought that his learning and talents would be ill spent if laid out in seeking to save souls, obscure and unknown. See him setting out to visit! He has just laid aside one of his learned folios, to go forth among his flock. See him passing along yonder field, and climbing that hill on his way to some cottage, his "quick eyes" occasionally glancing on the objects around, but his "face upward" for the most part, as if he were gazing into heaven. He has time to visit, for he rises at three in the morning, and at that early hour meets his God in prayer and meditation, and has space for study besides. He takes occasional days for catechising. He never fails to be found at the sick-beds of his people. Men said of him, "He is always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing and studying." He was known to fall asleep at night talking of Christ, and even to speak of Him during his sleep. Indeed, himself speaks of his dreams being of Christ. His preaching could not but arrest attention. Though his elocution was not good, and his voice rather shrill, he was, nevertheless, "one of the most moving and affectionate preachers in his time, or perhaps in any age of the church." "In the pulpit (says one of his friends), he had a strange utterance—a kind of skreigh, that I never heard the like. Many times I thought he would have flown out of the pulpit when he came to speak of Jesus Christ." An English merchant said of him, even in days when controversy had sorely vexed him and distracted his spirit, "I came to Irvine, and heard a well-favoured, proper old man (David Dickson), with a long beard, and that man showed me all my heart. Then I went to St. Andrews, where I heard a sweet, majestic-looking man (R. Blair), and he showed me the majesty of God. After him I heard a little, fair man (Rutherford), and he showed me the loveliness of Christ."
Anwoth was dear to him rather as the sphere appointed him by his Master, than because of the fruit he saw of his labours. Two years after being settled there, he writes, "I see exceedingly small fruit of my ministry. I would be glad of one soul, to be a crown of joy and rejoicing in the day of Christ." His people were "like hot iron, which cooleth when out of the fire." In a sermon on Song of Solomon 2:8, he complains of it being spiritually winter in Anwoth. "The very repairing of God’s house, in our own parish church, is a proof. Ye need not go any farther. The timber of the house of God rots, and we cannot move a whole parish to spend twenty or thirty pounds Scots upon the house of God, to keep it dry." Still he laboured in hope, and laboured often almost beyond his strength. Once he says, "I have a grieved heart daily in my calling." He speaks of his pained breast, at another time, on the evening of the Lord’s day, when his work was done. But he had seasons of refreshing to his own soul at least; especially when the Lord’s Supper was dispensed. Of these seasons he frequently speaks. He asks his friend, Marion M’Naught, to help with her prayers on such an occasion, "that being one of the days wherein Christ was wont to make merry with His friends."3 It was then that with special earnestness he besought the Father to distribute "the great Loaf, Christ, to the children of His family."
Another church was filled, but not altogether by parishioners. Many came from great distances; among others, several that were converted, seventeen years before, under John Welsh, at Ayr. These all helped him by their prayers, as did also a goodly number of godly people in the parish itself, who were the fruit of the ministry of his predecessor. Yet over the unsaved he yearned most tenderly. At one time we hear him say, "I would lay my dearest joys in the gap between you and eternal destruction." At another, "My witness is in heaven, your heaven, would be two heavens to me, and your salvation two salvations." He could appeal to his people, "My day-thoughts and my night-thoughts are of you;" and he could appeal to God, "O my Lord, judge if my ministry be not dear to me; but not so dear by many degrees as Christ my Lord."2
All classes of people of Anwoth were objects of his care. He maintained a friendly intercourse with people of high rank, and very many of his Letters are addressed to such persons. He seems to have been remarkably blessed to the gentry in the neighbourhood—more far than to the common people. There was at that time some friend of Christ to be found in almost every gentleman’s seat many miles around Anwoth.
OLD CHURCH OF ANWOTH. But the herd boys were not beneath his special attention. He writes of them when at Aberdeen, and exclaims, "O if I might but speak to thee, or your herd boys, of my worthy Master." He had a heart for the young of all classes, so that he would say of two children of one of his friends, "I pray for them by name;" and could thus take time to notice one, "Your daughter desires a Bible and a gown. I hope she shall use the Bible well, which, if she do, the gown is the better bestowed." He lamented over the few that cry "Hosanna" in their youth. "Christ is an unknown Christ to young ones; and therefore they seek Him not, because they know Him not."
He dealt with individual parishioners so closely and so personally as to be able to appeal to them regarding his faithfulness in this matter. He addresses one of them, Jean M’Millan: "I did what I could to put you within grips of Christ; I told you Christ’s testament and latter-will plainly." He so carried them on his heart (like the priest with the twelve tribes on his breastplate), that he could declare to Gordon of Cardoness, "Thoughts of your soul depart not from me in my sleep."2 "My soul was taken up when others were sleeping, how to have Christ betrothed with a bride in that part of the land," viz. Anwoth. He so prayed over them and for them, that he fears not to say, "There I wrestled with the angel and prevailed. Woods, trees, meadows, and hills, are my witnesses that I drew on a fair match betwixt Christ and Anwoth." It is related that, on first coming to the parish, there was a piece of ground on Mossrobin farm, in the hollow of a hill, where on Sabbath afternoon the people used to play at foot-ball. On one occasion he repaired to that spot, and pointed out their sin, solemnly calling on the objects round to be witnesses against them, especially three large stones5 close at hand on the slope of the hill, two of which still remain, and are called "Rutherford’s Witnesses." The third was wantonly dislodged some years ago; and it is said that the other two were removed to the other side of the stone dyke, where they are now, for the sake of security. This is the spot which is especially taken notice of by Dr. Chalmers, in recording a visit to Anwoth and its neighbourhood (Life, vol. iii. 130):—
"Wednesday, August 23, 1826.—Started at five o’clock; ordered the gig forward on the public road to meet us after a scramble of about two miles among the hills, in the line of ’Rutherford’s Memorials.’ Went first to his church; the identical fabric he preached in, and which is still preached in. The floor is a causeway. There are dates of 1628 and 1633 on some old carved seats. The pulpit is the same, and I sat in it. It is smaller than Kilmany, and very rude and simple. The church bell is said to have been given him by Lady Kenmure, one of his correspondents in his Letters. It is singularly small for a church, having been the Kenmure house bell. We then passed to the new church that is building; but I am happy to say the old fabric and Rutherford’s pulpit are to be spared. It is a cruel circumstance that they pulled down (and that only three weeks ago) his dwelling-house, his old manse; which has not been used as a manse for a long time, but was recently occupied. It should have been spared. Some of the masons who were ordered to pull it down refused it, as they would an act of sacrilege, and have been dismissed from their employment. We went and mourned over the rubbish of the foundation. Then ascended a bank, still known by the name of Rutherford’s Walk. Then went further among the hills, to Rutherford’s Witnesses,—so many stones which he called to witness against some of his parishioners who were amusing themselves at the place with some game on the Sunday, and whom he meant to reprove. The whole scene of our morning’s walk was wild, and primitive, and interesting."
Once, while in Anwoth, his labours were interrupted (Letter xii.) by a tertian fever which laid him aside for thirteen weeks. Even when well recovered he could for a long time only preach on the Sabbath: visiting and catechising were at a stand. This was just before his wife’s death in 1630, and he writes in the midst of it, "Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it." "An afflicted life looks very like the way that leads to the kingdom." And some years thereafter, when his mother (who came from Nisbet and resided with him six years after his first wife’s death) was in a dangerous illness, he touchingly informs one of his correspondents, to whom he writes from Anwoth, "My mother is weak, and I think shall leave me alone; but I am not alone, because Christ’s Father is with me." And what was his recreation? The manse of Anwoth had many visits of kind friends, who, in Rutherford’s fellowship, felt that saying verified, "They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn." The righteous compassed him about, because the Lord had dealt bountifully with him. His Letters would be enough of themselves to show that his friendship and counsel were sought by the godly on all sides. One of his visitors was his own brother, George, at Kirkcudbright. This good man was a teacher in that town, who often repaired to Anwoth to take sweet counsel with Samuel; and then, together, they talked of and prayed for their only other brother James, an officer in the Dutch service, who had sympathy with their views, and, in after days, conveyed to Samuel the invitation to become Professor at Utrecht. Visits of those friends who resided near were not unfrequent—such as the Gordons, Viscount Kenmure and his lady, and Marion M’Naught. But at times Anwoth manse was lighted up by the glad visit of unexpected guests. There is a tradition that Archbishop Usher, passing through Galloway, turned aside on a Saturday to enjoy the congenial society of Rutherford. He came, however, in disguise; and being welcomed as a guest, took his place with the rest of the family when they were catechised, as was usual, that evening. The stranger was asked, "How many commandments are there?" His reply was "Eleven." The pastor corrected him; but the stranger maintained his position, quoting our Lord’s words, "A NEW COMMANDMENT I give unto you, that ye love one another." They retired to rest, all interested in the stranger. Sabbath morning dawned. Rutherford arose and repaired, as was his custom, for meditation to a walk that bordered on a thicket, but was startled by hearing the voice of prayer—prayer too from the heart, and in behalf of the souls of the people that day to assemble. It was no other than the holy Archbishop Usher; and soon they came to an explanation, for Rutherford had begun to suspect he had "entertained angels unawares." With great mutual love they conversed together; and at the request of Rutherford, the Archbishop went up to the pulpit, conducted the usual service of the Presbyterian pastor, and preached on "the New Commandment."
BUSH O’ BEILD—RUTHERFORD’S HOUSE.
Scarcely less interesting is the record of another unlooked-for meeting. Rutherford had one day left home to go to the neighbouring town of Kirkcudbright, the next day being a day of humiliation in that place. Having no doubt spent some time with his like-minded brother, he turned his steps to the house of another friend, Provost Fullerton, whose wife was Marion M’Naught. While sitting with them in friendly converse a knock at the door was heard, and then a step on the threshold. It was worthy Mr. Blair, who, on his way from London to Portpatrick, had sought out some of his godly friends, that with them he might be refreshed ere he returned to Ireland. He told them, when seated, that "he had a desire to visit both Mr. Rutherford at Anwoth, and Marion M’Naught at Kircudbright; but not knowing how to accomplish both, had prayed for direction at the parting of the road, and laid the bridle on the horse’s neck. The horse took the way to Kirkcudbright, and there he found both the friends he so longed to see." It was a joyful and refreshing meeting on all sides. Wodrow tells another incident that, in part, bears some resemblance to this. Rutherford had been reasoning at Stirling with the Marquis of Argyle, and had set out homeward. But his horse was very troublesome, and he was feeling in his mind that he should have been more urgent and plain! He returned, and dealt freely this time. And now his horse went on pleasantly all the way. In 1634 he attended the remarkable deathbed of Lord Kenmure, a narrative of which he published fifteen years after, in "The Last and Heavenly Speeches and Glorious Departure of John Viscount Kenmure." The inroads of Episcopacy were at this time threatening to disquiet Anwoth. His own domestic afflictions were still affecting him; for he writes that same year, in referring to his wife’s death many years before, "which wound is not yet fully healed and cured." About that time, too, there was a proposal (never carried into effect) to call him to Cramond near Edinburgh, and another to get him settled at Kirkcudbright.
Meanwhile he persevered in study as well as in labours, and with no common success. He had a metaphysical turn, as well as great readiness in using the accumulated learning of other days. It might be instructive to inquire why it is that wherever godliness is healthy and progressive, we almost invariably find learning in the Church of Christ attendant on it: while on the other hand, neglect of study is attended sooner or later by decay of vital godliness. Not that all are learned in such times; but there is always an element of the kind in the circle of those whom the Lord is using. The energy called forth by the knowledge of God in the soul leads on to the study of whatever is likely to be useful in the defence or propagation of the truth; whereas, on the other hand, when decay is at work and lifelessness prevailing, sloth and ease creep in, and theological learning is slighted as uninteresting and dry. With Samuel Rutherford and his contemporaries we find learning side by side with vital, and singularly deep, godliness. Gillespie, Henderson, Blair, Dickson, and others, are well-known examples. Nor less distinguished was Rutherford, who was led by circumstances in 1636 to publish his elaborate defence of grace against the Arminians, in Latin. Its title is, "Exercitationes de Gratia." So highly was it esteemed at Amsterdam, where it was published, that a second edition was printed that very year; and repeated invitations were addressed soon after to the author to come to Holland, and occupy one or other of their Divinity chairs. Soon after, the contest for Christ’s kingly office became increasingly earnest and keen. To Rutherford it appeared no small matter. "I could wish many pounds added to my cross to know that by my suffering Christ was set forward in His kingly office in this land." July 27, 1636, was a day that put his principles to the test. He was called before the High Commission Court, because of nonconformity to the acts of Episcopacy, and because of His work against the Arminians. The Court was presided over by Sydserff, Bishop of Galloway, and was held at Wigton, about ten miles from Anwoth, accross the Bay. He appeared in person there, and defended himself. The issue could not be doubtful, though Lord Lorn made every exertion in his behalf. He was deprived of his ministerial office, which he had exercised at Anwoth for a period of nine years, and banished to Aberdeen. The next day (writing at evening on the subject), he tells of his sentence, and calls it, "The honour that I have prayed for these sixteen years." He made up his mind to leave Anwoth at once, observing, with a submissiveness which we might wonder at in the author of "Lex Rex," "I propose to obey the king, who has power over my body." His only alarm was lest this separation from his flock might be a chastisement on him from the Lord, "because I have not been so faithful in the end as I was in the two first years of my ministry, when sleep departed from mine eyes through care for Christ’s lambs." On leaving Anwoth he directed his steps by Irvine, spending a night there with his beloved friend David Dickson. What a night that must have been! To hear these two in solemn converse! The one could not perhaps handle the harp so well as the other; for David Dickson could express his soul’s weary longings and its consoling hopes in such strains as that which has made his name familiar in Scotland, "O mother dear Jerusalem;" but Rutherford, nevertheless, had so much of poetry and sublime enthusiasm in his soul, that any poet could sympathise with him to the full. Many of his letters "from Christ’s palace in Aberdeen" are really strains of true poetry. What else is such an effusion as this, when, rising on eagles’ wings, he exclaims, "A land that has more than four summers in the year! What a singing life is there! There is not a dumb bird in all that large field, but all sing and breathe out heaven, joy, glory, dominion, to the High Prince of that newfound land. And verily the land is sweeter that He is the glory of that land." "O how sweet to be wholly Christ’s, and wholly in Christ; to dwell in Immanuel’s high and blessed land, and live in that sweetest air, where no wind bloweth but the breathings of the Holy Ghost, no sea nor floods flow but the pure water of life that floweth from under the throne and from the Lamb, no planting, but the tree of life that yieldeth twelve manner of fruits every month! What do we here but sin and suffer? O when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of the long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn? The Spirit and the bride say, ’Come!’ O when shall the Lamb’s wife be ready, and the Bridegroom say, ’Come?’ "3 Whoever compares such breathings with David Dickson’s hymn will see how congenial were their feelings and their hopes, and even their mode of expressing what they felt and hoped, though the one used prose and the other tried more memorable verse.
We follow Rutherford to Aberdeen, the capital of the North, whither he was accompanied by a deputation of his affectionate parishioners from Anwoth, in whose company he would forget the length and tediousness of the way. He arrived here in September 1636. This town was at that time the stronghold of Episcopacy and Arminianism, and in it the state of religion was very low. "It consisted of Papists, and men of Gallio’s naughty faith." The clergy and doctors took the opportunity of Rutherford’s arrival to commence a series of attacks on the special doctrines of grace which he held. But in disputation he foiled them; and when many began to feel drawn to him in consequence of his earnest dealings and private exhortations, there was a proposal made to remove him from the town. "So cold," writes he, "is northern love! But (added he) "Christ and I will bear it;" deeply feeling his union to Him who said to Saul, "Why persecutest thou Me?" Often, on the streets, he was pointed as "the banished minister;" and hearing of this, he remarked, "I am not ashamed of my garland." He had visitors from Orkney, and from Caithness, to the great annoyance of his persecutors. Some blamed him for not being "prudent enough," as we have seen men ready to do in similar cases in our own day; but he replies, "It is ordinary that that should be part of the cross of those who suffer for Him." Still he enjoyed, in his solitude, occasional intercourse with some of the godly ones, among whom were Lady Pitsligo, Lady Burnet of Largs, Andrew Cant, and James Martin. His deepest affliction was separation from his flock at Anwoth. Nothing can exceed his tender sorrow over this flock.
MARKET CROSS, ABERDEEN.
It was a saying of his own, "Gold may be gold, and bear the King’s stamp upon it, when it is trampled upon by men." And this was true of himself. But he came out of his trial not only unscorched, but, as his many letters from Aberdeen show, greatly advanced in every grace. The Latin lines prefixed to the early editions of these Letters scarcely exaggerate when they sing—
"Quod Chebar et Patmos divinis vatibus olim;
Huic fuerant sancto claustra Abredæa viro." But we err if we suppose that it was only while there that he experienced that almost ecstatic enjoyment of his Lord. He carried it away with him; for is not this the same strain as pervades his Letters, when, preaching in 1644, before the House of Commons in London, he exclaims, "O for eternity’s leisure, to look on Him, to feast upon a sight of His face! O for the long summer day of endless ages to stand beside Him and enjoy Him! O time, O sin, be removed out of the way! O day! O fairest of days, dawn!"
He was, during part of two years, closely confined to that town, though not in prison; but in 1638 public events had taken another turn. The Lord had stirred up the spirit of the people of Scotland, and the covenant was again triumphant in the land. Rutherford hastened back to Anwoth. During his absence, "For six quarters of a year," say his parishioners, "no sound of the Word of God was heard in our kirk." The swallows had made their nests there undisturbed for two summers. His Letters do not refer to the proceedings of the Glasgow Assembly of 1638. It is well known, however, that he was no mere indifferent spectator to what then took place, but was present, and was member of several committees which at that time sat on the affairs of the church. Presbytery being fully restored by that Assembly, it was thought right that one so gifted should be removed to a more important sphere. He was sent by the church to several districts to promote the cause of Reformation and the Covenant; and at length, in spite of his reluctance, arising chiefly from love to his flock—his rural flock at Anwoth—he was constrained to yield to the united opinion of his brethren, and be removed to the Professor’s Chair in St. Andrews in 1639, and become Principal of the New College. He bargained to be allowed to preach regularly every Sabbath in his new sphere; for he could not endure silence when he might speak a word for his Lord. He seems to have preached also, as occasion offered, in the parishes around, especially at Scoonie, in which the village of Leven stands. His hands were necessarily filled with work in his new sphere; yet still he relaxed nothing of his diligence in study. Nor did he lack anything of former blessing. It was here the English merchant heard him preach so affectingly on the loveliness of Christ; while such was his success as a Professor that "the University became a Lebanon out of which were taken cedars for building the house of God throughout the land." In the year 1640, he married his second wife, Jean M’Math, "a woman," says one, "of such worth, that I never knew any among men exceed him, nor any among women exceed her. He who heard either of them pray or speak, might have learnt to bemoan his own ignorance. Oh how many times I have been convinced, by observing them, of the evil of unseriousness unto God, and unsavouriness in discourse." They had seven children; but only one survived the father, a little daughter, Agnes, who does not seem to have been a comfort to her godly mother. In July 1643, the Westminster Assembly began their sittings; and to it he was sent up as one of the Commissioners from the Church of Scotland. A sketch of a "Shorter Catechism" exists in MS., in the library of the Edinburgh University, in Rutherford’s handwriting, very much resembling the Catechism as it now stands, from which it has been inferred that he had the principal hand in drawing it up for the Assembly. He continued four years attending the sittings of this famous synod, and was of much use in their deliberations. So prominent a part did he take, that the great Milton has singled him out for attack in his lines, "On the new forcers of conscience, under the Long Parliament." Milton knew him only as an opponent of his sectarian and independent principles, and so could scorn measures proposed by "Mere A. S. and Rutherford." But had he known the soul of the man, would not even Milton have found a sublimity of thought and feeling in his adversary, that at times approached his own lofty poesy? How interesting, in any point of view, to find the devoted pastor of Anwoth, on the streets of London, crossing the path of England’s greatest poet.
During his residence in London he was tried with many afflictions. Several of his family died; and his own health began to give way, so that he and his brother minister, Mr. G. Gillespie, visited Epsom to drink the waters. Yet such was the amazing spirit of the man, under a sense of duty, that amid the trials and bustle of that time he wrote, "The Due Right of Presbyteries," "Lex Rex," i.e. "The Law, The King," and "Trial and Triumph of Faith." Nor was he soured by controversy. In the preface to one of his controversial works, he discovers his large-hearted charity and manly impartiality in regard to what he saw in these parts. He writes: "I judge that in England the Lord hath many names, and a fair company, that shall stand at the side of Christ when He shall render up the kingdom to the Father; and that in that renowned nation there be men of all ranks, wise, valorous, generous, noble, heroic, faithful, religious, gracious learned."
Returning home to St. Andrews, he resumed his labours both in the college and in the pulpit with all his former zeal. In 1644, it appears from the old minutes of Lanark Presbytery, a vacancy having occurred, Rutherford was unanimously called to Lanark. He was inclined to go, but the Presbytery of St. Andrews refused to loose him. He had often preached at Lanark. He declined two invitations to the professorship in Holland; one from Harderwyck in 1648, the other from Utrecht in 1651; though the former offered the chair both of Divinity and of Hebrew. He joined the Protestors in determinedly opposing the proceedings of the Commission of Assembly, who had censured such as protested against the admission to power of persons in the class of malignants. His friend David Dickson keenly opposed him, and Mr. Blair also, though less violently. It was this controversy that made John Livingstone say, in a letter to Blair, "Your and Mr. D. Dickson’s accession to these resolutions is the saddest thing I have seen in my time. My wife and I have had more bitterness in this respect, these several months, than ever we had since we knew what bitterness meant." Rutherford wrote too violently on this matter.2 Some say he was naturally hot and fiery; but at this time all parties were greatly excited. Still he did not lose his brotherly love—the same brotherly love that led him so fervently to embrace Archbishop Usher as a fellow-believer. We may get a lesson for our times from his remarks on occasion of these bitter controversies. "It is hard when saints rejoice in the sufferings of saints, and redeemed ones hurt, and go nigh to hate, redeemed ones. For contempt of the communion of saints, we have need of new-born crosses, scarce ever heard of before.—Our star-light hideth us from ourselves, and hideth us from one another, and Christ from us all." And then he subjoins (and is he not borne out by the words of the Lord in John 17:22?): "A doubt it is if we shall have fully one heart till we shall enjoy one heaven." The state of things lay heavy on his mind: "I am broken and wasted by the wrath that is upon this land."
It was in 1651 that he published his work "De Divinâ Providentiâ," a work in which he assailed Jesuits, Socinians, and Arminians. Richard Baxter (tinged as he was with the Arminian theology), in referring to this treatise, remarked (says Wodrow), that "His Letters were the best piece, and this work the worst, he had ever read." Of course, this was the language of controversy, for the book is one of great ability. It was this work, indeed, that drew forth several invitations from foreign Universities. The ten years that followed were times of much distraction, being the times of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, as well as of the Protesters and Resolutioners. In 1651 the Scottish nation resolved to crown Charles II., as lawful king, at Scone; and when the young king was at St. Andrews, in prospect of that event, he visited the colleges. It fell to Rutherford to deliver, on that occasion, an oration in Latin before His Majesty, on a subject which he could handle well, both as a patriot and a Christian, "The Duty of Kings."
Milton sings—
"God doth not need Either man’s work, or His own gifts; His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
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. 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,"2 employed his leisure time during the closing years of his life. "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" (Ecclesiastes 11:6). 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." 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 Corinthians 1:30, 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 Timothy 4:6) or Peter (2 Peter 1:14), 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. 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.
RUINS OF ST. ANDREWS CATHEDRAL.
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—
"What tongue, what pen, or skill of men, Can famous Rutherford commend! His learning justly raised his fame, True godliness adorn’d his name.
He did converse with things above, Acquainted with Immanuel’s love." 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.
RUTHERFORD’S MONUMENT ON BORELAND HILL. 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, 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; 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 16:2; John 2 Thessal. 1:6." 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. 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 1:9-10), and bringeth them back safe to His second temple" (Letter cccxxiii.).
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 (Psalms 119), 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." Then, pointing us to the risen Saviour as our pledge of complete redemption, "Faith may dance, because Christ singeth;"2 "Faith apprehendeth pardon, but never payeth a penny for it." 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."4 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." 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." 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." Rutherford could sometimes say, "I have been so near Him that I have said, ’I take instruments that this is the Lord.’ " 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." "I am every way in your case, as hard-hearted and dead as any man, but yet I speak to Christ through my sleep."3 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." 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."5 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." 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.
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." "If His love was not in heaven, I should be unwilling to go thither."2 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." "O if I could doat as much upon Himself as I do upon His love." "I fear I make more of His love than of Himself." How startling yet how true, is this remark, "I see that in communion with Christ we may make more gods than one,"6—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." "I would be farther in upon Christ than at His joys; in, where love and mercy lodgeth, beside His heart."8 "He who sitteth on the throne is His lone a sufficient heaven." "Sure I am He is the far best half of heaven."10 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." 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 mountains 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." 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 Apologeticœ 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."
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.