Spirit with him, and the light of God’s countenance, whereas all the time it has only been an outpouring on his deceived heart of his own lying spirit of self-seeking, self-pleasing, and self-exalting.  While, again, a man’s spirit may be all day as dry as the heath in the wilderness, and all other men’s spirits around him and toward him the same, yet a very rich score may be set down beside that unindulged servant’s name against the day of the ‘well-dones.’  ’I believe that many think that obedience is lifeless and formal unless the wind be in the west, and all their sails are filled with the joys of sense.  But I am not of their mind who think so.’

7.  The scrupulosity of the Kilmacolm people was surely singular and remarkable even in that day of tests and marks and scruples in the spiritual life.  The ministry may not have been wholly dead in and around Kilmacolm, though it could not keep pace and patience with those so eager and so anxious souls who would have Rutherford’s mind on all possible points of their complicated case.  Six of their complaints we have just seen, but their troubles are not yet all told.  ‘Surely,’ they wrote, ’a Master like our Lord, who gave such service when He was still a servant Himself,—­surely He will have hearty and unfeigned service from us, or none at all.  Will He not spue the lukewarm servant out of His mouth?’ I grant you, wrote Rutherford, that our Master must have honesty.  The one thing He will unmask and will not endure is hypocrisy.  But if you mean to insinuate that our hearts must always be entirely given up to His service in all that we do, else He will cast us away, for all I am worth in the world I would not have that true of me.  I would not have that true, else where would my hope be?  An English contemporary of Rutherford’s puts it memorably:  ’Our Master tries His servants not with the balances of the sanctuary, but with the touchstone.’  Take that, says Rutherford, for my reply to your opinion that Christ must always have a perfect service at our hands, or none at all.

8.  Again, hold by the ground-work when the outworks and the superstructure are assailed.  Fall back the more nakedly upon your sure foundation.  Keep the ground of your standing and acceptance clear, and take your stand on that ground at every time when despair assaults you.  For great faults and for small, for formality in spiritual service, for cold-heartedness and for half-heartedness, you have always open to you your old and sure ground, the blood and the righteousness of your Covenant-surety.  ’Seek still the blood of atonement for faults much and little.  Know the gate to the fountain, and lie about it.  Make much of assurance, for it keepeth the anchor fixed.’