,' cried Augustine; and 'Felix culpa,' cried
Gregory. 'My sins have in a manner done me more good than my graces,'
said holy Mr. Fox. 'I find advantages of my sins,' said that most
spiritually-minded of men, James Fraser of Brea. Those who are willing
and able to read a splendid passage for themselves on this paradoxical-
sounding subject will find it on page xii. of the Address to the Godly
and Judicious Reader in Samuel Rutherford's _Christ Dying and Drawing
Sinners to Himself_.

What Rutherford was bold to say to Lady Boyd about her corruptions she
was able herself to say to Trochrig about her crosses. 'Right Honourable
Sir,--It is common to God's children and to the wicked to be under
crosses, but their crosses chase God's children to God. O that anything
would chase me to my God!' There speaks a woman of mind and of heart who
knows what she is speaking about. And, like her and her correspondents,
when all our other crosses have chased us to God, then our master cross,
the corruption of our heart, will chase us closer up to God than all our
other crosses taken together. We have no cross to be compared with our
corruptions, and when they have chased us close enough and deep enough
into the secret place of God, then we will begin to understand and adorn
the dangerous doxologies of Augustine and Gregory, Fraser and Fox. Yes;
anything and everything is good that chases us up to God: crosses and
corruptions, sin and death and hell. 'O that anything would chase me to
my God!' cried saintly Lady Boyd. And that leads her ladyship in another
letter to Trochrig to tell him the kind of preaching she needs and that
she must have at any cost. 'It will not neither be philosophy nor
eloquence that will draw me from the broad road of perdition: I must have
a trumpet to tell me of my sins.' That was a well-said word to the then
Principal of Glasgow University who had so many of the future ministers
of Scotland under his hands, all vying with one another as to who should
be the best philosopher and the most eloquent preacher. Trochrig was
both an eloquent preacher and a philosophic principal and a spiritually-
minded man, but he was no worse to read Lady Boyd's demand for a true
minister, and I hope he read her letter and gave his students her name in
his pastoral theology class. 'Lady Boyd on the broad road of perdition!'
some of his students would exclaim. 'Why, Lady Boyd is the most saintly
woman in all the country.