ur
corruption, it helps you somewhat to discover how deep and how deadly it
is--then Samuel Rutherford will not have written this old letter in vain
for you.

XI. ALEXANDER GORDON OF EARLSTON

'A man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise.'
Livingstone's _Characteristics_.

The Gordons of Airds and Earlston could set their family seal to the
truth of the promise that the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness to children's
children. For the life of grace entered the Gordon house three long
generations before it came to our Alexander of to-night, and it still
descended upon his son and his son's son. His great-grandfather,
Alexander Gordon also, was early nicknamed 'Strong Sandy,' on account of
his gigantic size and his Samson-like strength. While yet a young man,
happily for himself and for all his future children, as well as for the
whole of Galloway, Gordon had occasion to cross the English border on
some family business, to buy cattle or cutlery or what not, when he made
a purchase he had not intended to make when he set out. He brought home
with him a copy of Wycliffe's contraband New Testament, and from the day
he bought that interdicted book till the day of his death, Strong Sandy
Gordon never let his purchase out of his own hands. He carried his
Wycliffe about with him wherever he went, to kirk and to market; he would
as soon have thought of leaving his purse or his dirk behind him as his
Wycliffe, his bosom friend. And many were the Sabbath-days that the
laird of Earlston read his New Testament in the woods of Earlston to his
tenants and neighbours, the Testament in the one hand and the dirk in the
other. Tamed and softened as old Sandy Gordon became by that taming and
softening book, yet there were times when the old Samson still came to
the surface. As the Sabbath became more and more sanctified in Reformed
Scotland, the Saints' days of the Romish Calendar fell more and more into
open neglect, till the Romish clergy got an Act passed for the enforced
observance of all the fasts and festivals of the Romish Communion. One
of the enacted clauses forbade a plough to be yoked on Christmas Day, on
pain of the forfeiture and public sale of the cattle that drew the
plough. Old Earlston, at once to protest against the persecution, and at
the same time to save his draught-oxen, yoked ten of his stalwart sons to
the mid