memory of that old tower green long after its last stone has crumbled
into dust. Readers of Rutherford's letters will long visit Cardoness
Castle, and will musingly recall old John Gordon and Lady Cardoness, his
wife, who both worked out each their own salvation in that old fortress,
and found it a task far from easy. For nine faithful years Rutherford
had been the anxious pastor of Cardoness Castle, and then, after he was
banished from his pulpit and his parish, he only ministered to the Castle
the more powerfully and prevailingly with his pen. After reading the
Cardoness correspondence, we do not wonder to find the stout old
chieftain heading the hard-fought battles which the people of Anwoth made
both against Edinburgh and St. Andrews, when those cities and colleges
attempted to take away their minister.

Rough old Cardoness had a warm place in his heart for Samuel Rutherford.
The tough old pagan did not know how much he loved the little fair man
with the high-set voice and the unearthly smile till he had lost him; and
if force of arms could have kept Rutherford in Anwoth, Cardoness would
soon have buckled on his sword. He was ashamed to be seen reading the
letters that came to the Castle from Aberdeen; he denied having read them
even after he had them all by heart. The wild old laird was nearer the
Kingdom of Heaven than any one knew; even his Christian lady did not know
all that Rutherford knew, and it was a frank sentence of Rutherford's in
an Aberdeen letter that took lifelong hold of the old laird, and did more
for his conversion and all that followed it than all Rutherford's sermons
and all his other letters. 'I find true religion to be a hard task; I
find heaven hard to be won,' wrote Rutherford to the old man; and that
did more for his hard and late salvation than all the sermons he had ever
heard. 'A hard task, a hard task!' the serving-men and the serving-women
often overheard their old master muttering, as he alighted from the hunt
and as he came home from his monthly visit to Edinburgh. 'A hard task!'