'I am made of extremes.'--_Rutherford_.

A story is told in Wodrow of an English merchant who had occasion to
visit Scotland on business about the year 1650. On his return home his
friends asked him what news he had brought with him from the north. 'Good
news,' he said; 'for when I went to St. Andrews I heard a sweet, majestic-
looking man, and he showed me the majesty of God. After him I heard a
little fair man, and he showed me the loveliness of Christ. I then went
to Irvine, where I heard a well-favoured, proper old man with a long
beard, and that man showed me all my own heart.' The little fair man who
showed this English merchant the loveliness of Christ was Samuel
Rutherford, and the proper old man who showed him all his own heart was
David Dickson. Dr. M'Crie says of David Dickson that he was singularly
successful in dissecting the human heart and in winning souls to the
Redeemer, and all that we know of Dickson bears out that high estimate.
When he was presiding on one occasion at the ordination of a young
minister, whom he had had some hand in bringing up, among the advices the
old minister gave the new beginner were these:--That he should remain
unmarried for four years, in order to give himself up wholly to his great
work; and that both in preaching and in prayer he should be as succinct
as possible so as not to weary his hearers; and, lastly, 'Oh, study God
well and your own heart.' We have five letters of Rutherford's to this
master of the human heart, and it is in the third of these that
Rutherford opens his heart to his father in the Gospel, and tells him
that he is made up of extremes.

In every way that was so. It is a common remark with all Rutherford's
biographers and editors and commentators what extremes met in that little
fair man. The finest thing that has ever been written on Rutherford is
Mr. Taylor Innes's lecture in the Evangelical Succession series. And the