a stronger, deeper, or more eloquent letter from Samuel Rutherford than
did young William Gordon of Airds and Earlston. William Gordon was but a
young country laird, taken up twelve hours every day and six days every
week with fences and farm-houses, with horses and cattle, but I think an
examination paper on personal religion could be set out of Rutherford's
letters to him that would stagger the candidates and the doctors of
divinity for this year of grace 1891. 'William Gordon was a gentlemen,'
says John Howie, 'of good parts and endowments; a man devoted to religion
and godliness.' Unfortunately we do not possess any of the letters young
Earlston wrote to Rutherford. I wish we did. I would have liked to have
seen that letter of Gordon's that so 'refreshed' Rutherford's soul; and
that other letter of which Rutherford says that Gordon will be sure to
'come speed' with Christ if he writes to heaven as well about his
troubles as he had written to Rutherford in Aberdeen. What a detestable
time that was in Scotland when such a man as William Gordon was fined,
and fined, and fined; hunted out of his house and banished, till at last
he was shot by the soldiers of the Crown and thrown into a ditch as if he
had been a highwayman.

The first thing that strikes me in reading Rutherford's letters to young
Earlston and to several other young men of that day is the extraordinary
frankness and self-forgetfulness of the writer. He takes his young
correspondents into his confidence in a remarkable way. He opens up his
whole heart to them. He goes back with a startling boldness and
unreserve and plainness of speech on his own youth, and he lays himself
alongside of his youthful correspondents in a way that only a strong man
and a humble could afford to do. Let young men read Rutherford's letters
to young William Gordon of Earlston, and to young John Gordon of
Cardoness, and to young Lord Boyd, and such like, and they will be
surprised to find that even Samuel Rutherford was once a young man