light cross, let him read the psalms and prophecies of Babylon, the
_Divine Comedy_, and Rutherford's _Letters_. Yes, banishment was
banishment; exile was exile; silent Sabbaths were silent Sabbaths; and a
borrowed fireside with all its willing heat was still a borrowed
fireside; and, spite of all that the best people of Aberdeen could do for
Samuel Rutherford, he felt the friendliest stairs of that city to be very
steep to his feet, and its best bread to be very salt in his mouth.

But, with all that, Samuel Rutherford would have been but a blind and
unprofitable spy for the best people of God in Scotland, for Marion
M'Naught, and Lady Kenmure, and Lady Culross, for the Cardonesses,
father, and mother, and son, and for Hugh Mackail, and such like, if he
had tasted nothing more bitter than borrowed bread in Aberdeen, and
climbed nothing steeper than a granite stair. 'Paul had need,'
Rutherford writes to Lady Kenmure, 'of the devil's service to buffet him,
and far more, you and me.' I am downright afraid to go on to tell you
how Satan was sent to buffet Samuel Rutherford in his banishment, and how
he was sifted as wheat is sifted in his exile. I would not expose such a
saint of God to every eye, but I look for fellow-worshippers here on
these Rutherford Sabbath evenings, who know something of the plague of
their own hearts, and who are comforted in their banishment and battle by
nothing more than when they are assured that they are not alone in the
deep darkness. 'When Christian had travelled in this disconsolate
condition for some time he thought he heard the voice of a man as going
before him and saying, "_Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow
of Death I will fear no ill, for Thou art with me_." Then he was glad,
and that for these reasons:--Firstly, because he gathered from thence
that some one who feared God was in this valley as well as himself.
Secondly, for that he perceived that God was with them though in that
dark and dismal state; and why not, thought he, with me? Thirdly, for