fine letter again last Sabbath afternoon in my room at hospitable
Helenslee, overlooking the lower reaches of the Clyde, and as I read this
passage, I recollected the opportune sea-view commanded by my window. I
had only to rise and look out to see an excellent illustration of my much-
exercised author; for the forenoon tide had just retreated to the sea,
and the broad bed of the river was left by the retreated tide less a
river than a shallow, clammy channel. Shoals of black mud ran out from
our shore, meeting and mingling with shoals of black mud from the
opposite shore. There was scarce clean water enough to float the
multitude of buoys that dipped and dragged in their bed of mire. That
any ship, to call a ship, could ever work its way up that sweltering
sewer seemed an utter impossibility. There was Rutherford's low ebb,
then, under my very eyes. There was low water indeed. And the low water
seemed to laugh the waiting seamen's hopes to scorn. But next morning my
heart rose high as I looked out at my window and saw all the richly-laden
vessels lighting their fires and spreading their sails, and setting their
faces to the replenished river. And I thought of Samuel Rutherford's
ship, far past all her ebbing tides now, and for ever anchored in her
haven above.

On the wall of my room in the same beautiful house there was a powerful
cartoon of Peter's crucifixion, head downwards, for his Master's sake.
The masterpiece of Filippino Lippi I felt to be an excellent illustration
also of Rutherford's letter to James Guthrie and the rest of the
ministers and elders who were imprisoned in the Castle of Edinburgh for
daring to remind Charles Stuart of the contents of the Covenant to which
both he and the whole nation had solemnly sworn. 'If Christ doth own
me,' Rutherford wrote to the martyrs in the Castle, 'let me be laid in my
grave in a bloody winding-sheet; let me go from the scaffold to the
spikes in four quarters--grave or no grave, as He pleases, if only He but