ry service itself. But, then, it must be what
Rutherford calls 'honest sorrow after a sincere aim.' And let no man
easily allow himself to take shelter under that, lest it turn out to him
like taking shelter in a thunderstorm under a lightning rod. For what an
aim must that be, and then, what a sorrow, that is as good in the sight
of God as a full obedience is itself. At the same time, 'A sincere aim,
and then an honest sorrow, both of the right quality and quantity, taken
together with Christ's intercession, must be our best life before God
till we be over in the other country where the law of God will get a
perfect soul in which to fulfil itself. Your complaint on this head is
already booked in the New Testament (Rom. vii. 18).'

6. 'The less sense of liberty and sweetness, the more true spirituality
in the service of God,' is Rutherford's reply to their next perplexity.
Ought we to go on with our work and with our worship when our hearts are
dry and when we have no delight in what we do? That is just the time to
persevere, replies their evangelical guide, for it is in the absence of
all sense of liberty and sweetness that our duties prove themselves to be
truly spiritual. A sweet service has often its sweetness from an
altogether other source than the spiritual world. Let a man be engaged
in divine service, or in any other religious work, and let him have
sensible support and success in it; let him have liberty and enjoyment in
the performance of it; and, especially, let him have the praise of men
after it, and he will easily be deceived into thinking that he has had
God's Spirit with him, and the light of God's countenance, whereas all
the time it has only been an outpouring on his deceived heart of his own
lying spirit of self-seeking, self-pleasing, and self-exalting. While,
again, a man's spirit may be all day as dry as the heath in the
wilderness, and all other men's spirits around him and toward him the
same, yet a very rich score may be set down beside that unindulged
servant's name against the day of the 'well-dones.' 'I believe that many
think that obedience is lifeless and formal unless the wind be in the
west, and all their sails are filled with the joys of sense. But I am
not of their mind who think so.'

7. The scrupulosity of the Kilmacolm people was surely singular and
remarkable even in that day of tests and marks and scruples in the
spiritual life. The ministry may not have been wholly