his days, or till he had attained to his threescore years and ten, or
whether it was to run on to the labour and sorrow of four-score years,
not even his guardian angel knew, but God only. And then beside that
sand-glass a leaf, taken out of the seven-sealed book, was laid open, on
the top of which was found written the as yet unbaptized name of this new-
born child. And under his name was found written all that John Gordon
was appointed and expected to do while his sand-glass was still running.
His opening life as child and boy and man in Galloway; his entrance on
Rusco; his friendship with Samuel Rutherford; his duties to his family,
to his tenants, to his Church, and to the Scottish Covenant; the inward
life he was commanded and expected to live alone with God; the seven
things he was every day to remember; the evangelical graces of heart and
life and character he was to be told and to be enabled to put on; the
death he was to die, and the 'freehold' he was after all these things to
enter on in heaven. And it is of that sand-glass that was at that moment
running so fast and so low within the veil that Rutherford writes so
often and so earnestly to the so-forgetful laird of Rusco. And how
solemnising it is, if anything would solemnise our hard hearts, that we
all have a sand-glass standing before God with our names written upon it,
and that it is running out before God day and night unceasingly. We
shall all be too suddenly solemnised when the last grain of our measured-
out sand has dropped down, and the blind Fury will come, and without pity
and without remorse will slit our thin-spun life with her abhorred
shears. And that whether our life-work is finished or no, half-finished
or no, or not even begun. The night cometh, and the shears with it, when
no man can work. Our family must then be left behind us, however they
have been brought up; our farm also, however it has been worked; our
estate also, however it has been managed; our pulpit, our pew, our
church, our character, and even our salvation, and we must, all alone
with God, face and account for the empty sand-glass and the accusing