e look in his eye made them keep at arm's-
length as he growled out that without holiness no man shall see God!
Writing from Aberdeen to John Bell of Hentoun, Samuel Rutherford says: "I
beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, to mind your country above; and now, when
old age is come upon you, advise with Christ before you put your foot
into the last ship and turn your back on this life. Many are beguiled
with this that they are free of scandalous sins. But common honesty will
not take men to heaven. Alas! that men should think that ever they met
with Christ who had never a sick night or a sore heart for sin. I have
known a man turn a key in a door and lock it by." "I can," says John
Owen, "and I do, commend moral virtues and honesty as much as any man
ought to do, and I am sure there is no grace where they are not. Yet to
make anything to be our holiness that is not derived from Jesus Christ,--I
know not what I do more abhor." "Are morally honest and sober men
qualified for the Lord's Supper?" asks John Flavel. "No; civility and
morality do not make a man a worthy communicant. They are not the
wedding garment; but regenerating grace and faith in the smallest measure
are." "My outside may be honest," said this honest old pilgrim, "while
all the time my heart is most unholy. My life is open to all men, but I
must hide my heart with Christ in God."
4. And then this racy-hearted old bachelor was as full of delight in
children, and in children's parties, with all their sweetmeats and nuts
and games and riddles,--quite as much so--as if he had been their very
grandfather himself. Nay, this rosy-hearted old rogue was as inveterate
a matchmaker as if he had been a mother of the world with a houseful of
daughters on her hands and with the sons of the nobility dangling around.
It would make you wish you could kiss the two dear old souls, Gaius the
innkeeper and Old Honest his guest, if you would only read how they laid
their grey heads together to help forward the love-making of Matthew and
Mercy. Yes, it would be a great pity, said Old Honest,--thinking with a
sigh of his own childless old age,--it would be a great pity if this
excellent family of our sainted brother should fail for want of children,
and die out like mine. And the two old plotters went together to the
mother of the bridegroom, and told her with an aspect of authority that
she must put no obstacle in her son's way, but take Mercy as soon as
convenient into
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