me is but the beginning of another: but guiltiness in me and in mine is
my greatest cross.' And after midnight one Sabbath she writes again to
Livingstone: 'You cannot but say that the Lord was with you to-day;
therefore, not only be content, but bless His name who put His word in
your heart and in your mouth, and has overcome you with mercy when you
deserved nothing but wrath, and has not only forgiven your many sins, but
has saved you from breaking out, as it may be better men have done; but
He has covered you and restrained you; has loved you freely and has made
His saints to love you; who will guide you also with His counsel, and
afterwards receive you to His glory.'

It was from his silent prison in Aberdeen that Samuel Rutherford wrote to
Lady Culross the letter in which this sentence stands: 'I see that grace
groweth best in winter.' Rutherford had had but a short and unsettled
summer among the birds at Anwoth. His wife and his two children had been
taken from him there, and now that which he loved more than wife or child
had been taken from him too--his pulpit and pastoral work for Jesus
Christ. He felt his banishment all the more keenly that he was the first
of the evangelical ministers of Scotland to be so silenced. He will have
plenty of companions in tribulation soon, if that will be any comfort to
him; but, as it is, he confesses to Lady Culross that it was a peculiar
pang to him to be 'the first in the kingdom put to utter silence.' The
bitterness of banishment has been sung in immortal strains by Dante,
whose grace under banishment also grew to a fruitfulness we still partake
of to this day:--

'Thou shall leave each thing
Beloved most dearly: this is the first shaft
Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shall prove
How salt the savour is of other's bread,