od a nurse for his soul
as she was for his body.

Samuel Rutherford's favourite correspondent was, to begin with, a woman
of quite remarkable powers of mind. We gather that impression powerfully
as we read deeper and deeper into the remarkable series of letters that
Rutherford addressed to her. To no one does he go into deeper matters
both of Church and State, both of doctrinal and personal religion than to
her, and the impression of mental power as well as of personal worth she
made on Rutherford, she must have made on many of the ablest and best men
of that day. Robert Blair, for instance, tells us that when he was on
his way home from London to Ireland he visited Scotland chiefly that he
might see Rutherford at Anwoth and Marion M'Naught at Kirkcudbright, and
when he came to Kirkcudbright he found Rutherford also there. And when
Rutherford was in exile in Aberdeen, and in deep anxiety about his people
at Anwoth, he wrote beseeching Marion M'Naught to go to Anwoth and give
his people her counsel about their congregational and personal affairs.
But, above all, it is from the depth and the power of Rutherford's
letters to herself on the inward life that we best gather the depth and
the power of this remarkable woman's mind.

There is no other subject of thought that gives such scope for the
greatest gifts of the human mind as does the life of God in the soul.
There is no book in all the world that demands such a combination of
mental gifts and spiritual graces to understand it aright as the Bible.
The history and the biography of the Bible, the experimental parts of the
Bible, the doctrines of grace deduced by the apostles out of the history
and the experience recorded in the Bible, and then the personal, the most
inward and most spiritual bearing of all that,--what occupation can be
presented to the mind of man or woman to compare with that? True
religion, really true religion, gives unequalled and ever-increasing
scope for the best gifts of mind and for the best graces of heart and
character. 'In truth, religious obedience is a very intricate problem,
and the more so the farther we proceed in it.' And he has poor eyes and
a poor heart for true religion, and for its best fruits both in the mind
and the heart and the character, who does not see those fruits increasing
letter by letter as Rutherford writes to Marion M'Naught.

Her public spirit also made Marion M'Naught to be held in high honour.
Her husband was