are to a bird or its sails to a ship' (_Letter_ LXIX.). 'I thought it
had been an easy thing to be a Christian, and that to seek God had been
at the next door; but, oh, the windings, the turnings, the ups and downs
He hath led me through!' (_Letter_ CIV.) 'I may be a book-man and yet be
an idiot and a stark fool in Christ's way! The Bible beguiled the
Pharisees, and so may I be misled' (_Letter_ CVI.). 'I find you
complaining of yourself, and it becometh a sinner so to do. I am not
against you in that. The more sense the more life. The more sense of
sin the less sin' (_Letter_ CVI.). 'Seeing my sins and the sins of my
youth deserved strokes, how am I obliged to my Lord who hath given me a
waled and chosen cross! Since I must have chains, He would put golden
chains on me, watered over with many consolations. Seeing I must have
sorrow (for I have sinned, O Preserver of men!), He hath waled out for me
joyful sorrow--honest, spiritual, glorious sorrow' (_Letter_ CCVI.).
There are hundreds of passages as good as these scattered up and down the
forty-seven letters we have had preserved to us out of the large and
intimate correspondence that passed between Samuel Rutherford and Lady
Kenmure.




V. LADY CARDONESS


'Think it not easy.'--_Rutherford_.

What a lasting interest Samuel Rutherford's pastoral pen has given to the
hoary old castle of Cardoness! Those nine so heart-winning letters that
Rutherford wrote from Aberdeen to Cardoness Castle will still keep the