ld laird rises before our eyes with more than his
proper share of human nature--a mass of sinful manhood, strong in will,
hot in temper, burdened with debt--debt in Edinburgh, and a deeper and
darker debt elsewhere. The old lion lay, taken in a net of trouble, and
the more he struggled the more entangled he became. And then her
ladyship, a religious woman; yes, really a religious woman, only, like so
many religious women, more religious than moral; more emotional than
practically helpful in everyday life. All who have only heard of Samuel
Rutherford and his letters will feel sure that he was just the effusive
minister, and that his letters were just the soft stuff, to foster a
piety that came out in feminine moods and emotions rather than in well-
kept accounts and a well-managed kitchen and nursery. But we who have
read Rutherford know better than that. Lady Cardoness is told, in
kindest and sweetest but most unmistakable language, that she has to work
out a not easy salvation in Cardoness Castle, and that, if her husband
fails in his hard task, no small part of his blood will lie at her door.

But as we stand and look at Cardoness Castle, with its hard tasks for
eternal life, a divine voice says to ourselves, Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling; and at that voice the old keep fades
from our eyes, and our own house in modern Edinburgh rises up before us.
Here, too, are old men with hard tasks between them and their salvation--a
past life to read, to repent of, to redress, to reform, to weep
deliberate and bitter tears over. There are debts and many other
disorders that have to be put right; there are those under us--tenants
and servants and poor relations--whose cases have to be dealt with
considerately, justly, kindly, affectionately. There are things in those
we love best--in a father, in a mother, in a husband, in a wife--that we
have to be patient and forbearing with, and to command ourselves in the
presence of Salvation was not easy in Cardoness Castle, with such a
master, and such a mistress, and such children, and such tenants, and
with such debts and straits of all kinds; and Cardoness Castle is
repeated over and over again in hundreds of Edinburgh houses to-night.

VI. LADY CULROSS

'Grace groweth best in winter.'--_Rutherford_.

Elizabeth Melville was one of the ladies of the Covenant. It was a
remarkable feature of a remarkable time in Scotland that so many ladies
of bi