Rutherford's first letter to Marion M'Naught was written from the manse
of Anwoth on the 6th of June 1627, and out of a close and lifelong
correspondence we are happy in having had preserved to us some forty-five
of Rutherford's letters to his first correspondent. But, most
unfortunately, we have none of her letters back again to Anwoth or
Aberdeen or London or St. Andrews. It is much to be wished we had, for
Marion M'Naught was a woman greatly gifted in mind, as well as of quite
exceptional experience even for that day of exceptional experiences in
the divine life. But we can almost construct her letters to Rutherford
for ourselves, so pointedly and so elaborately and so affectionately does
Rutherford reply to them.

Marion M'Naught is already a married woman, and the mother of three well-
grown children, when we make her acquaintance in Rutherford's Letters.
She had sprung of an ancient and honourable house in the south of
Scotland, and she was now the wife of a well-known man in that day,
William Fullarton, the Provost of Kirkcudbright. It is interesting to
know that Marion M'Naught was closely connected with Lady Kenmure,
another of Rutherford's chief correspondents. Lord Kenmure was her
mother's brother. Kenmure had lived a profligate and popularity-hunting
life till he was laid down on his death-bed, when he underwent one of the
most remarkable conversions anywhere to be read of--a conversion that, as
it would appear, his niece Marion M'Naught had no little to do with. As
long as Kenmure was young and well, as long as he was haunting the
purlieus of the Court, and selling his church and his soul for a smile
from the King, the Provost of Kirkcudbright and his saintly wife were
despised and forgotten; but when he was suddenly brought face to face
with death and judgment, when his ribbons and his titles were now like
the coals of hell in his conscience, nothing would satisfy him but that
his niece must leave her husband and her children and take up her abode