down on the scaffold, or leaped off the ladder, in full possession at the
last moment of all their senses and all their graces. 'Give me a direct
answer, sir,' demanded Dr. Johnson of his physician when on his deathbed.
. . . 'Then I will take no more opiates, for I have prayed that I may be
able to render up my soul to God unclouded.' And when pressed by his
attendants to take some generous nourishment, he replied almost with his
last breath, 'I will take anything but inebriating sustenance.'

But in nothing was good James Guthrie's tenderness to sin better seen
than in the endless debates and dissensions of which that day was so
full. So sensitive was he to the pride and the anger and the ill-will
that all controversy kindles in our hearts that, as soon as he felt any
unholy heat in his own heart, or saw it in the hearts of the men he
debated with, he at once cut short the controversy with some such words
as these: 'We have said too much on this matter already; let us leave it
till we love one another more.' If hot-blooded Samuel Rutherford had sat
more at James Guthrie's feet in the matter of managing a controversy, his
name would have been almost too high and too spotless for this present
life. Samuel Rutherford's one vice, temper, was one of James Guthrie's
chief virtues.

We have only two, or at most three, of the many letters that must have
passed between Rutherford and Guthrie preserved to us. And, as is usual
with Rutherford when he writes to any member of his innermost circle, he
writes to Guthrie so as still more completely to win his heart. And in
nothing does dear Rutherford win all our hearts more than in his deep
humility, and quick, keen sense of his own inability and utter
unworthiness. 'I am at a low ebb,' he writes to Guthrie from the
Jerusalem Chamber, 'yea, as low as any gracious soul can possibly be.
Shall I ever see even the borders of the good land above?' I read that