oasted, was always preparing his sermons,
always visiting his people, always writing books, and always entertaining
strangers,--would you believe it that one of his worst consciences was
for the bad improvement of his time? What an insatiable thirst for
absolute and unearthly perfection God has awakened in the truly gracious
heart! Give the truly gracious heart a little godliness and it cries out
night and day for more. Give it more, and it straightway demands all.
Give it all and it still accuses you that it has literally got none at
all. Samuel Rutherford gave all his time and all his strength to his
pastoral and his professorial duties, and yet when he looked into his own
heart to write a letter to Bailie Fleming out of it, his whole heart
condemned him to his face because he had so mismanaged his time, and had
not aright redeemed it. 'You complain that your time is fast speeding
away, and that you have not even begun to employ it well. So is mine. I
give a good part of my time to my business, as you say you do to yours;
but, just like you, that leaves me no time to give to God. God forgive
me for the way I forget Him and neglect Him all the time that I am
bustling about in the things of His house! Let us both begin, and me
especially, to give some of God's best earthly gift back to Him again.
Let us spare a little of His time that He allows us and bestow it back
again upon Himself. He values nothing so much as a little of our
allotted time. Let us meditate on Him more, and pray more to Him. Let
us throw up ejaculations of prayer to Him more and more while we are at
our daily employments; you in the timber-yard, down among the ships, at
the desk, and at the Council-table; and I among my books, and among my
people, and in my pulpit. These are always golden moments to me, and why
they do not multiply themselves into hours and days and years is to me
but another proof of my deep depravity. And, John Fleming, sanctify you
the Sabbath. As you love and value your immortal soul, sanctify and do
not waste and desecrate the Sabbath. Let no man steal from you a single
hour of the Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work,
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.'

2. And again and again in his letters to Fleming Rutherford returns to
the sins of the tongue. Rutherford himself was a great sinner by his
tongue, and he seems to have taken it for granted that the bailies of
Leith