and deny all that, in a way that all his admirers only
too well know. But still it stands true.
A friend of mine once told me that it was to him
often the most delightful and profitable of Sabbath
evening exercises just to take down Newman’s
sermons and read their titles over again. And
this mere title, I feel sure, has encouraged and comforted
many: ‘Saintliness not forfeited by the
Penitent.’ And Samuel Rutherford’s
is just another great name to be added to the noble
roll of saintly penitents we all have in our minds
taken out of Scripture and Church History. Neither
great Saintliness nor great service was forfeited by
this penitent; and he is constantly telling us how
the extreme of demerit and the extreme of gracious
treatment met in him; how he had at one time destroyed
himself, and how God had helped him; how, where sin
had abounded, grace had abounded much more.
In one of the very last letters he ever wrote—his
letter to James Guthrie in 166l—he is still
amazed that God has not brought his sin to the Market
Cross, to use his own word. But all through
his letters this same note of admiration and wonder
runs—that he has been taken from among the
pots and his wings covered with silver and gold.
Truly, in his case the most seraphic Saintliness
was not forfeited, and we who read his books may well
bless God it was so.
And then, experimentally also, what extremes met in
our author! Pascal in Paris and Rutherford in
Anwoth and St. Andrews were at the very opposite poles
ecclesiastically from one another. I do not like
to think what Rutherford would have said of Pascal,
but I cannot embody what I have to say of Rutherford’s
experimental extremes better than just by this passage
taken from the Thoughts: ’The Christian
religion teaches the righteous man that it lifts him
even to a participation in the divine nature; but
that, in this exalted state, he still bears within
him the fountain of all corruption, which renders
him during his whole life subject to error and misery,
to sin and death, while at the same time it proclaims
to the most wicked that they can still receive the
grace of their Redeemer.’ And again, ’Did
we not know ourselves full of pride, ambition, lust,
weakness, misery and injustice, we were indeed blind.
. . . What then can we feel but a great esteem for
a religion that is so well acquainted with the defects
of man, and a great desire for the truth of a religion
that promises remedies so precious.’ And
yet again, what others thought of him, and how they
treated him, compared with what he knew himself to
be, caused Rutherford many a bitter reflection.
Every letter he got consulting him and appealing
to him as if he had been God’s living oracle
made him lie down in the very dust with shame and
self-abhorrence. Writing on one occasion to Robert
Blair he told him that his letter consulting him about
some matter of Christian experience had been like
a blow in the face to him; it affects me much, said
Print
Word
PDF
