f preachers,'
a preacher determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
but not so much crucified, as crucified and risen again--crucified
indeed, but now glorified. Rutherford's life for his people at Anwoth
has something altogether superhuman and unearthly about it. His
correspondents in his own day and his critics in our day stumble at his
too intense devotion to his charge; he lived for his congregation, they
tell us, almost to the neglect of his wife and children. But by the time
of his banishment his home was desolate, his wife and children were in
the grave. And all the time and thought and love they had got from him
while they were alive had, now that they were dead, returned with new and
intensified devotion to his people and his parish.

Fair Anwoth by the Solway,
To me thou still art dear,
E'en from the verge of heaven
I drop for thee a tear.

Oh! if one soul from Anwoth
Meet me at God's right hand,
My heaven will be two heavens
In Immanuel's Land.

This then was the spy chosen by Jesus Christ to go out first of all the
ministers of Scotland into the life of banishment in that day, so as to
try its fords and taste its vineyards, and to report to God's straitened
and persecuted people at home.

To begin with, it must always be remembered that Rutherford was not laid
in irons in Aberdeen, or cast into a dungeon. He was simply deprived of
his pulpit and of his liberty to preach, and was sentenced to live in
silence in the town of Aberdeen. Like Dante, another great spy of God's
providence and grace, Rutherford was less a prisoner than an exile. But
if any man thinks that simply to be an exile is a small punishment, or a
light cross, let him read the psalms and prophecies of Babylon, the
_Divine Comedy_, and Rutherford's _Letters_. Yes, banishment was
banishment; exile was exile; silent Sabbaths were silent Sabbaths; and a
borrowed fireside with all its willing heat was still a borrowed
fireside; and, spite of all that the best people of Aberdeen could do for
Samuel Rutherford, he felt the friendliest stairs of that city to be very
steep to his feet, and its best bread to be very salt in his mouth.

But, with all that, Samuel Rutherford would have been but a blind and
unprofitable spy for the best people of God in Scotland, for Marion
M'Naught, and Lady Kenmure, and Lady Culross, for the Cardonesses,
father, and mother, and son, and for Hugh Mack