How hard the passage to descend and climb
By other's stairs. But that shall gall thee most
Will be the worthless and vile company
With whom thou must be thrown into these straits.'

But all this, to use a figure familiar among the Puritans of that day,
only made Rutherford's true life return, like sap in winter, into its
proper root, till we read in his later Aberdeen letters a rapture and a
richness that his remain-at-home correspondents are fain to tone down.

Not only does true grace grow best in winter, but winter is the best
season for planting grace. 'I was to be married, and she died,' was a
young man's explanation to me the other day for proposing to sit down at
the Lord's Table. The winter cold that carried off his future wife saw
planted in his ploughed-up heart the seeds of divine grace; and, no
doubt, all down the coming winters, with such short interludes of summers
as may be before him in this cold climate, the grace that was planted in
winter will grow. It is not a speculation, it is a personal experience
that hundreds here can testify to, that the Bible, the Sabbath, the
Supper, all became so many means of grace to them after some great
affliction greatly sanctified. The death of a bride, the death of a
wife, the death of a child; some blow from bride or wife or child worse
than death; a lost hope quenched for ever--these, and things like these,
are needful, as it would seem, to be suffered by most men before they
will wholly open their hearts to the grace of God. 'Before I was
afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy word.'

At the same time, good and necessary as all such wintry experiences are,
their good results on us do not last for ever. In too many cases they do
not last long. It is rather a start in grace we take at such seasons