e bishops and harried
by the dragoons till he had nothing left to deliver to the Commissioners
but six silver spoons and a single heart? It would seem so. Like the
woman in the Gospel, Gordon gave to the Covenant all that he had. Had
Robert Gordon been a Highlander instead of a Lowlander; had he been a
Ross-shire crofter instead of a small laird in Wigtown, he would have
been one of the foremost of the well-known 'men.' His temperament and
his experiences would have made him a prince among the ministers and the
men of the far north. Were it nothing else, the pains he spent on the
growth of the life of grace in his own soul,--that would have canonised
him among the saintliest of those saintly men. He would have set the
Question on many a Communion Friday, and the Question in his hands would
not have concerned itself with surface matters. Was it because
Rutherford had now gone nearer that great region of experimental
casuistry that he started that excellent Friday problem in a letter from
Aberdeen to Knockbrex in 1637? With Rutherford everything,--the most
doctrinal, experimental, ecclesiastical, political, all--ran always up
into Christ, His love and His loveableness. 'Is Christ more to be loved
for gaining for us justification or sanctification?' Such was one of the
questions Rutherford set to his correspondent in the south. Did any of
you north-country folk ever hear that question debated out before one of
your Highland communions? If you care to see how Rutherford the minister
and Knockbrex the man debated out their debt to Jesus Christ, read the
priceless correspondence that passed between them, and especially, read
the 170th Letter. But first, and before that, do you either know, or
care to know, what either justification or sanctification is? When you
do know and do care for these supreme things, then you too will in time
become a single-hearted and painstaking Christian like Robert Gordon, or
else an ecstatic and enraptured Christian like Samuel Rutherford. And
that again will be very much according to your natural temperament, your
attainments, and your experiences. And nothing in this world will
thereafter interest and occupy you half so much as just those questions
that are connected first with all that Christ is in Himself and all that
He has done for you, and then with the signs and the fruits of the life
of grace in your own souls.

XIV. JOHN GORDON OF RUSCO

'Remember these seve