who did nothing else. When he was composing his
_Saving Interest_, he somehow heard of a poor countryman near Haddington
who had come through some extraordinary experiences in his spiritual
life, and he set out from Fenwick all the way to Haddington to see and
converse with the much-experienced man. All that night and all the next
day Guthrie could not tear himself away from the conversation of the man
and his wife. But at last, looking up and down the country, his angling
eye caught sight of a trout-stream, and, as if he had in a moment
forgotten all about his book at home and all that this saintly man had
contributed to it, Guthrie asked him if he had a fishing-rod, and if he
would give him a loan of it. The old man felt that his poor rough tackle
was to be absolutely glorified by such a minister as Guthrie
condescending to touch it, but his good wife did not like this come-down
at the end of such a visit as his has been, and she said so. She was a
clever old woman, and I am not sure but she had the best of it in the
debate that followed about ministers fishing, and about their facetious
conversation. The Haddington stream, and the dispute that rose out of
it, recall to my mind a not unlike incident that took place in the street
of Ephesus, in the far East, just about 1800 years ago. John, the
venerable Apostle, had just finished the fourteenth chapter of his great
Gospel, and felt himself unable to recollect and write out any more that
night. And coming out into the setting sun he began to amuse himself
with a tame partridge that the Bactrian convert had caught and made a
present of to his old master. The partridge had been waiting till the
pen and the parchment were put by, and now it was on John's hand, and now
on his shoulder, and now circling round his sportful head, till you would
have thought that its owner was the idlest and foolishest old man in all
Ephesus. A huntsman, who greatly respected his old pastor, was passing
home from the hills and was sore distressed to see such a saint as John
was trifling away his short time with a stupid bird. And he could not
keep from stopping his horse and saying so to the old Evangelist. 'What
is that you carry in your hand?' asked John at the huntsman with great
meekness. 'It is my bow with which I shoot wild game up in the
mountains,' replied the huntsman. 'And why do you let it hang so loose?
You cannot surely shoot anything with your bow in that condition!'