ail, and such like, if he
had tasted nothing more bitter than borrowed bread in Aberdeen, and
climbed nothing steeper than a granite stair. 'Paul had need,'
Rutherford writes to Lady Kenmure, 'of the devil's service to buffet him,
and far more, you and me.' I am downright afraid to go on to tell you
how Satan was sent to buffet Samuel Rutherford in his banishment, and how
he was sifted as wheat is sifted in his exile. I would not expose such a
saint of God to every eye, but I look for fellow-worshippers here on
these Rutherford Sabbath evenings, who know something of the plague of
their own hearts, and who are comforted in their banishment and battle by
nothing more than when they are assured that they are not alone in the
deep darkness. 'When Christian had travelled in this disconsolate
condition for some time he thought he heard the voice of a man as going
before him and saying, "_Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow
of Death I will fear no ill, for Thou art with me_." Then he was glad,
and that for these reasons:--Firstly, because he gathered from thence
that some one who feared God was in this valley as well as himself.
Secondly, for that he perceived that God was with them though in that
dark and dismal state; and why not, thought he, with me? Thirdly, for
that he hoped, could he overtake them, to have company by and by.' And,
in like manner, I am certain that it will encourage and save from despair
some who now hear me if I just report to them some of the discoveries and
experiences of himself that Samuel Rutherford made among the siftings and
buffetings of his Aberdeen exile. Writing to Lady Culross, he says:--'O
my guiltiness, the follies of my youth and the neglects of my calling,
they all do stare me in the face here; . . . the world hath sadly
mistaken me: no man knoweth what guiltiness is in me.' And to Lady Boyd,
speaking of some great lessons he had learnt in the school of adversity,
he says, 'In the third place, I have seen here my abominable vileness,
and it is such that if I were well known no one in all the kingdom would
ask me how I do. . . . I am a deeper hypocrite and a shallower professor
than any one could believe. Madam, pity me, the chief of sinners.' And,
again, to the Laird of Carlton: 'Woe, woe is me, that men should think
there is anything in me. The house-devils that keep me company and this
sink of corruption make me to carry low sails. . . . But, howbeit I am a
wretche