s of
their respective days. As Rutherford also says, the truth kept the
causey in the south-west of Scotland largely through the intelligence,
the courage, and the true piety of the Gordon house.

While still living at home and assisting his father in his farms and
factorships, young Earlston was already one of Rutherford's most intimate
correspondents. In a kind of reflex way we see what kind of head and
heart and character young Earlston must already have had from the letters
that Rutherford wrote to him. If we are to judge of the character and
attainments and intelligence of Rutherford's correspondents by the
letters he wrote to them, then I should say that William Gordon of
Earlston must have been a remarkable man very early in life, both in the
understanding and the experience of divine things. One of the Aberdeen
letters especially, numbered 181 in Dr. Andrew Bonar's edition, for
intellectual power, inwardness, and eloquence stands almost if not
altogether at the head of all the 365 letters we have from Rutherford's
pen. He never wrote an abler or a better letter than that he wrote to
William Gordon the younger of Earlston on the 16th of June 1637. Not
James Durham, not George Gillespie, not David Dickson themselves ever got
a stronger, deeper, or more eloquent letter from Samuel Rutherford than
did young William Gordon of Airds and Earlston. William Gordon was but a
young country laird, taken up twelve hours every day and six days every
week with fences and farm-houses, with horses and cattle, but I think an
examination paper on personal religion could be set out of Rutherford's
letters to him that would stagger the candidates and the doctors of
divinity for this year of grace 1891. 'William Gordon was a gentlemen,'
says John Howie, 'of good parts and endowments; a man devoted to religion
and godliness.' Unfortunately we do not possess any of the letters young
Earlston wrote to Rutherford. I wish we did. I would have liked to have
seen that letter of Gordon's that so 'refreshed' Rutherford's soul; and
that other letter of which Rutherford says that Gordon will be sure to
'come speed' with Christ if he writes to heaven as well about his
troubles as he had written to Rutherford in Aberdeen. What a detestable
time that was in Scotland when such a man as William Gordon was fined,
and fined, and fined; hunted out of his house and banished, till at last
he was shot by the soldiers of the Crown and thrown int