t have been written and left open
among you in vain.

XXIII. JOHN FLEMING, BAILIE OF LEITH

'I wish that I could satisfy your desire in drawing up and framing for
you a Christian Directory.'--_Rutherford_.

Samuel Rutherford and John Fleming, Bailie of Leith, were old and fast
friends. Away back in the happy days when Rutherford was still a
student, and was still haunting the back-shop of old John Meine in the
Canongate of Edinburgh, he had formed a fast friendship with the young
wood-merchant of Leith. And all the trials and separations of life,
instead of deadening their love for one another, or making them forget
one another, had only drawn the two men the closer to one another. For
when Rutherford's two great troubles came upon him,--first his dismissal
from the Latin regency in Edinburgh University, and then his banishment
from his pulpit at Anwoth,--John Fleming came forward on both occasions
with money, and with letters, and with visits that were even better than
money, to the penniless and friendless professor and exiled pastor. 'Sir,
I thank you kindly for your care of me and of my brother. I hope it is
laid up for you and remembered in heaven.'

Robert M'Ward, the first editor of Rutherford's _Letters_, with all his
assiduity, was only able to recover four letters out of the heap of
correspondence that had passed between the rich timber-merchant of Leith
and the exiled minister, but, those four tell us volumes, both about the
intimacy of the two men and about the depth and the worth of the bailie's
character. Fleming wrote a letter to Rutherford in the spring of 1637,
which must have run in some such terms as these:--'My life is fast ebbing
away, and I am not yet begun aright to live. I am in mid-time of my
days. I sometimes feel that I am coming near the end of them; and what
evil days they have been! My business that my father left me is
prosperous. I have a good and kind wife, as you know. My children are
not wholly without promise. My place in this town is far too honourable
for me, and I have many dear friends among the godly both in Leith and in
Edinburgh. But I feel bitterly that I have no business to mix myself
among them, and to be counted one of them. For, what with the burdensome
affairs of this great seaport, and my own growing business, my days and
my nights are like a weaver's shuttle. I intend and I begin well, but
another year and another year comes to an end an