that he hoped, could he overtake them, to have company by and by.' And,
in like manner, I am certain that it will encourage and save from despair
some who now hear me if I just report to them some of the discoveries and
experiences of himself that Samuel Rutherford made among the siftings and
buffetings of his Aberdeen exile. Writing to Lady Culross, he says:--'O
my guiltiness, the follies of my youth and the neglects of my calling,
they all do stare me in the face here; . . . the world hath sadly
mistaken me: no man knoweth what guiltiness is in me.' And to Lady Boyd,
speaking of some great lessons he had learnt in the school of adversity,
he says, 'In the third place, I have seen here my abominable vileness,
and it is such that if I were well known no one in all the kingdom would
ask me how I do. . . . I am a deeper hypocrite and a shallower professor
than any one could believe. Madam, pity me, the chief of sinners.' And,
again, to the Laird of Carlton: 'Woe, woe is me, that men should think
there is anything in me. The house-devils that keep me company and this
sink of corruption make me to carry low sails. . . . But, howbeit I am a
wretched captive of sin, yet my Lord can hew heaven out of worse timber
than I am, if worse there be.' And to Lady Kenmure: 'I am somebody in
the books of my friends, . . . but there are armies of thoughts within
me, saying the contrary, and laughing at the mistakes of my many friends.
Oh! if my inner side were only seen!' Ah no, my brethren, no land is so
fearful to them that are sent to search it out as their own heart. 'The
land,' said the ten spies, 'is a land that eateth up the inhabitants
thereof; the cities are walled up to heaven, and very great, and the
children of Anak dwell in them. We were in their sight as grasshoppers,
and so we were in our own sight.' Ah, no! no stair is so steep as the
stair of sanctification, no bread is so salt as that which is baked for a
man of God out of the wild oats of his past sin and his present
sinfulness. Even Joshua and Caleb, who brought back a good report of the
land, did not deny that the children of Anak were there, or that their