imself that has always reminded me of Socrates' similar
defence before the judges of Athens. 'My lords,' said Guthrie, 'my
conscience I cannot submit. But this old and crazy body I do submit, to
do with it whatsoever you will; only, I beseech you to ponder well what
profit there is likely to be in my blood. It is not the extinguishing of
me, or of many more like me, that will extinguish the work of reformation
in Scotland. My blood will contribute more for the propagation of the
Covenant and the full reformation of the kirk than my life and liberty
could do, though I should live on for many years.' One can hardly help
thinking that Guthrie must have been reading _The Apology_ in his manse
in Stirling at the moment he was apprehended. But in the case of
Guthrie, as in the case of Socrates, no truth, no integrity, and no
eloquence could save him; for, as Bishop Burnet frankly says, 'It was
resolved to make a public example of a Scottish minister, and so Guthrie
was singled out. I saw him suffer,' the Bishop adds, 'and he was so far
from showing any fear that he rather expressed a contempt of death.'
James Cowie, his precentor, and beadle, and body-servant, also saw his
master suffer, and, like Bishop Burnet, he used to tell the impression
that his old master's last days made upon him. 'When he had received
sentence of death,' Cowie told Wodrow's informant, 'he came forth with a
kind of majesty, and his face seemed truly to shine.' It needed
something more than this world could supply to make a man's face to shine
under the sentence that he be hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh, his body
dismembered, and his head fixed on an iron spike in the West Port of the
same city. The disgraceful and ghastly story of his execution, and the
hacking up of his body, may all be read in Howie, beside a picture of the
Nether Bow as it still stands in our Free Church and Free State Day. 'Art
not Thou from everlasting, O Lord my God?' were James Guthrie's last
words as he stood on the ladder. 'O mine Holy One: I shall not die, but
live. Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have
seen Thy salvation.'

There is one fine outstanding feature that has always characterised and
distinguished the whole of the Rutherford circle in our eyes, and that is
their deep, keen Pauline sense of sin. Without this, all their
patriotism, all their true statesmanship, and even all their martyrdom
for the sake of the truth, would h