ng in a sham doctor's certificate because your husband was too much
of a time-server to go to Edinburgh to give his vote for a persecuted
church. Think of having to wear the title and decoration your husband
had purchased for you at the cost of his truth and honour and manhood.
Lady Kenmure needed Samuel Rutherford's very best letters to help to keep
her in bare life all the time the county dames were green with envy at
the dear-bought honours. And Kenmure himself had to be brought to his
death-bed before he became a husband worthy of his wife. We still read
in his _Last Speeches_ how God made Lord Gordon's sins to find him out,
and with what firmness and with what tenderness Rutherford handled the
soul of the dying man till all his cowardice, title-hunting, and truth-
betraying life came back to his death-bed with a sharper sting in them
than even his grossest sins. Whoredom and wine after all are but the
lusts of a man, whereas time-serving and truth-selling are the lusts of a
devil. 'Dig deeper,' said Rutherford to the dying courtier, and Kenmure
did dig deeper, till he came down to the seals and the titles and the
ribbons for which he had sold his soul. But he that confesses and
forsakes his sins even at the eleventh hour shall always find mercy, and
so it was with Lord Kenmure.

'Between the stirrup and the ground
Mercy I sought and mercy found.'

We do not grudge Viscount Kenmure all the grace he got from God; we shall
need as much grace and more ourselves; but we do somewhat grudge such a
man a place of honour among the Scots worthies. We are tempted to throw
down the book and to demand what right John Gordon has to stand beside
such men as Patrick Hamilton, and John Knox, and John Wishart, and
Archibald Campbell, and Hugh M'Kail, and Richard Cameron, and Alexander
Shields? But Lochgoin answers us that God sometimes accepts the late
will for the whole timeous deed, and the bravery and loyalty of the wife
for the meanness and poltroonery of the husband. 'Have you a present
sense of God's love?' 'I have, I have,' said the dying Viscount. As
Rutherford continued in prayer, Kenmure was observed to smile and look
upwards. About sunset Lord Kenmure died, at the same instant that
Rutherford said Amen to his prayer. _The Last and Heavenly Speeches_ is
a rare pamphlet that will well repay its price to him who will seek it
out and read it.

This was the correspondent, then, to whom Samuel Rutherford wr