t and inclination and evil affection! O
blessed people who are under such a Redeemer from sin and death and hell!
O truly famous saint, the Lady Robertland, who got so many and so rare
outgates from the Amen with the keys! Who shall give me an outgate from
this body? cries the great apostle, not chafing in his chains for death,
but for the true life that lies beyond death. Paul, with all his intense
love of life and service--nay, because of that intense love--felt
sometimes that this present life at its very best was but a life of
relaxed imprisonment rather than of true liberty. Paul was, as we say, a
kind of first-class misdemeanant, as Samuel Rutherford also was in his
prison-palace in Aberdeen, and the Lady Robertland in Stewarton House;
they had a liberty that was not to be despised; they had light and air
and exercise; they were not in chains in the dungeon; they had pen and
ink; they had books and papers, and their friends might on occasion visit
them. They might have better food also if they paid for it; and, best of
all, they could, till their full release came, beguile and occupy the
time in work for Christ and His Church. But still they were present in
this body of sin and death, and absent from the Lord, and they pined,
and, I fear, sinfully murmured sometimes, for the last and the greatest
and the best outgate of all. 'As for myself,' writes Rutherford, 'I
think that if a poor, weak, dying sheep seeks for an old dyke, and the
lee-side of a hill in a storm, I surely may be allowed to long for
heaven. I see little in this life but sin, and the sour fruits of sin;
and oh! what a burden and what a bitterness is sin! What a miserable
bondage it is to be at the nod of such a master as Sin! But He who hath
the keys hath sworn that our sin shall not loose the covenant bond, and
therefore I wait in hope and in patience till His time shall come to take
off all my fetters and make a hole in this cage of death that the
imprisoned bird may find its long-promised liberty.'

'I would not live alway, thus fettered with sin,
Temptation without and corruption within;
In a moment of strength, if I sever the chain,
Scarce the victory is mine ere I'm captive again;
E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears,
And the cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears;
The festival trump calls for jubilant songs,
But my spirit her own _miserere_ prolongs.

'Who, who would live always away from hi