the changes for good that would immediately take place in you with an
early, immediate, and complete conversion. Perhaps the very first thing
some of you would do would be to get a new minister and to join a new
church. Then on the week-day some of you would at once leave your
present business, and seek a new means of livelihood in which you could
at least keep your hands and your conscience clean. Then you would
choose a new friend and a new lover, or else you would get God to do for
them what He has been so good as to do for you, give them a new heart
with which to weave their hesp and shoot their arrow. You would read new
books and new journals, or, else, you would read the old books and the
old journals in a new way. The Sabbath-day would become a new day to
you, the Bible a new book, and your whole future a new outlook to
you;--but why particularise and specify, when all old things would pass
away, and all things would become new? Oh dear young men of Edinburgh,
and young men come up to Edinburgh to get your bow well strung and your
arrow well winged, look well before you let go the string, for, once your
arrow is shot, you cannot recall it so as to take a second aim. With an
early and a complete conversion you would have the advantage also of
having your whole life for growth in grace and for the knowledge of
yourself, of the word of God and of Jesus Christ; for the formation of
your character also, and for the service of God and of your generation.
And then when your friends met around your grave, instead of hiding you
and your ravelled hesp away in shame and silence, they would stand, a
worshipping crowd, saying over you: 'Those that be planted in the house
of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still
bring forth fruit in old age, they shall be fat and flourishing.'

And then, like the true and sure guide to heaven that Rutherford was, he
led his young correspondents on from strength to strength, and from one
degree and one depth of grace to another, as thus, 'Common honesty will