ing that is truly good; but Fleming, as he read his
Directory daily, would always think of growth in grace as the right
improvement of his remaining time, and, especially, its religious use and
dedication to God; as also of the government of his own untamed tongue;
the extinction of the desire for revenge, and of all delight in the
injury of his enemies; and, above all, and including all, in making God
his chief end in all that he did. How all-important, then, is a sound
and Scriptural Directory to instruct us how we are to grow in grace. And
how precious must that directory-letter have been to a man in dead
earnest like John Fleming. It was precious to his heart, you may be
sure, above all his ships, and all his woodyards, and all his fine
houses, and all his seats of honour. And if his growth in grace in Leith
has now become full-grown glory in Heaven, how does he there bless God to-
day that ever he met with Samuel Rutherford in old John Maine's shop in
his youth, and had him for a friend and a director all his after-days.
And when John Fleming at the table above forgets not all His benefits,
high up, you may be very sure, among them all he never forgets to put
Samuel Rutherford's letters; and, more especially, this very directory-
letter we have read here for our own direction and growth in grace this
Communion-Sabbath night.

XXIV. THE PARISHIONERS OF KILMACOLM

'For want of time I have put you all in one letter.'--_Rutherford_.

There is a well-known passage in _Lycidas_ that exactly describes the
religious condition of the parish of Kilmacolm in the year 1639. For the
shepherd of that unhappy sheepfold also had climbed up some other way
before he knew how to hold a sheephook, till, week after week, the hungry
sheep looked up and were not fed. The parishioners of Kilmacolm must
have been fed to some purpose at one time, for the two letters they write
to Rutherford in their present starvation bear abundant witness on every
page to the splendid preaching and the skilful pastorate that this parish
must at one time have enjoyed. There must have been men of no common
ability, as well as of no common profundity of spiritual life in
Kilmacolm during those trying years, for the letters they wrote to
Rutherford would have done credit to any of Rutherford's ablest and best
correspondents--to William Guthrie, or David Dickson, or Robert Blair, or
John Livingstone. Indeed, the expert author of the _Therap