us leave it
till we love one another more.' If hot-blooded Samuel Rutherford had sat
more at James Guthrie's feet in the matter of managing a controversy, his
name would have been almost too high and too spotless for this present
life. Samuel Rutherford's one vice, temper, was one of James Guthrie's
chief virtues.

We have only two, or at most three, of the many letters that must have
passed between Rutherford and Guthrie preserved to us. And, as is usual
with Rutherford when he writes to any member of his innermost circle, he
writes to Guthrie so as still more completely to win his heart. And in
nothing does dear Rutherford win all our hearts more than in his deep
humility, and quick, keen sense of his own inability and utter
unworthiness. 'I am at a low ebb,' he writes to Guthrie from the
Jerusalem Chamber, 'yea, as low as any gracious soul can possibly be.
Shall I ever see even the borders of the good land above?' I read that
fine letter again last Sabbath afternoon in my room at hospitable
Helenslee, overlooking the lower reaches of the Clyde, and as I read this
passage, I recollected the opportune sea-view commanded by my window. I
had only to rise and look out to see an excellent illustration of my much-
exercised author; for the forenoon tide had just retreated to the sea,
and the broad bed of the river was left by the retreated tide less a
river than a shallow, clammy channel. Shoals of black mud ran out from
our shore, meeting and mingling with shoals of black mud from the
opposite shore. There was scarce clean water enough to float the
multitude of buoys that dipped and dragged in their bed of mire. That
any ship, to call a ship, could ever work its way up that sweltering
sewer seemed an utter impossibility. There was Rutherford's low ebb,
then, under my very eyes. There was low water indeed. And the low water
seemed to laugh the waiting seamen's hopes to scorn. But next morning my
heart rose high as I looked out at my window and saw all the richly-laden
vessels lighting their fires and spreading their sails, and setting their
faces to the replenished river. And I thought of Samuel Rutherford's
ship, far past all her ebbing tides now, and for ever anchored in her
haven above.

On the wall of my room in the same beautiful house there was a powerful
cartoon of Peter's crucifixion, head downwards, for his Master's sake.
The masterpiece of Filippino Lippi I felt to be an excellent illustration
al