Alexander Brodie
'Mr. Rutherford's letter desiring me to deny myself.'Brodie's Diary.
Alexander Brodie was born at Brodie in the north country in the year 1617. That was the same year that saw Samuel Rutherford matriculate in the College of Edinburgh. Of young ... read more
Alexander Gordon
'A man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise.' Livingstone's Characteristics.
The Gordons of Airds and Earlston could set their family seal to the truth of the promise that the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting ... read more
Believing Prayer
"But without faith it is impossible to please him..."
(Heb. 11:6).
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"
(Matt. 3:17).
First in His believing study and believing appropriation of the Messianic Scriptures, and then in His life o ... read more
Earlston the Younger
'A renowned Gordon, a patriot, a good Christian, a confessor, and, I may add, a martyr of Jesus Christ.'Livingstone's Characteristics.
Thomas Boston in his most interesting autobiography tells us about one of his elders who, though a poor man, ... read more
George Gillespie
'Our apprehensions are not canonical.'Rutherford.
George Gillespie was one of that remarkable band of statesmanlike ministers that God gave to Scotland in the seventeenth century. Gillespie died while yet a young man, but before he died, as Rutherfo ... read more
Grace Flows Down
"Ye are not under the law, but under grace"
(Rom. 6:14).
And then, what is grace? Grace is love. But grace is not love simply, and purely, and alone. Grace and love are, in their innermost essence, one and the same thing. Only, grace is love adapti ... read more
James Bautie, Student
'You crave my mind.'Rutherford.
As a rule the difficulties of a divinity student are not at all the difficulties of the best of his future people. A divinity student's difficulties are usually academic and speculative, whereas the difficulties ... read more
James Guthrie
'The short man who could not bow.'Cromwell.
James Guthrie was the son of the laird of that ilk in the county of Angus. St. Andrews was his alma mater, and under her excellent nurture young Guthrie soon became a student of no common name. His fathe ... read more
Jean Brown
'Sin poisons all our enjoyments.' Rutherford.
Jean Brown was one of the selectest associates of the famous Rutherford circle. We do not know so much of Jean Brown outside of the Rutherford Letters as we would like to know, but her son, John Brown o ... read more
John Fergushill
'Ho, ye that have no money, come and buy in the poor man's market.'Rutherford.
It makes us think when we find two such men as Samuel Rutherford and John Fergushill falling back for their own souls on a Scripture like this. We naturally think of Sc ... read more
John Fleming
'I wish that I could satisfy your desire in drawing up and framing for you a Christian Directory.'Rutherford.
Samuel Rutherford and John Fleming, Bailie of Leith, were old and fast friends. Away back in the happy days when Rutherford was still a s ... read more
John Gordon
Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every day.'Rutherford.
If that gaunt old tower of Cardoness Castle could speak, and would tell us all that went on within its walls, what a treasure to us that story would be! Even the sighs and the moanings that ... read more
John Gordon of Rusco
'Remember these seven things.'Rutherford.
There were plenty of cold Covenanters, as they were called, in Kirkcudbright in John Gordon's day, but the laird of Rusco was not one of them. Rusco Castle was too near Anwoth Kirk and Anwoth Manse, a ... read more
John Meine, Student
If you would be a deep divine I recommend you to sanctification.' Rutherford.
Old John Meine's shop was a great howf of Samuel Rutherford's all the time of his student life in Edinburgh. Young Rutherford had got an introduction to the Canongate sho ... read more
Joshua Redivivus
'He sent me as a spy to see the land and to try the ford.' Samuel Rutherford.
Samuel Rutherford, the author of the seraphic Letters, was born in the south of Scotland in the year of our Lord 1600. Thomas Goodwin was born in England in the same year, ... read more
Lady Boyd
'Be sorry at corruption.' Rutherford.
Out of various published and unpublished writings of her day we are able to gather an interesting and impressive picture of Lady Boyd's life and character. But there was a carefully written volume of manuscript ... read more
Lady Cardoness
'Think it not easy'Samuel Rutherford
What a lasting interest Samuel Rutherford's pastoral pen has given to the hoary old castle of Cardoness. Those nine so heart-winning letters that Rutherford wrote from Aberdeen to Cardoness Castle will still ... read more
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 birth, intellect and influence were found on the side of the ... read more
Lady Kenmure
'Build your nest, Madam, upon no tree here, for God hath sold this whole forest to death.'Rutherford.
Lady Kenmure was one of the Campbells of Argyll, a family distinguished for the depth of their piety, their public spirit, and their love for t ... read more
Lady Robertland
'That famous saint, the Lady Robertland, and the rare outgates she so often got.'Livingstone's Characteristics.
The Lady Robertland ranks in the Rutherford sisterhood with Lady Kenmure, Lady Culross, Lady Boyd, Lady Cardoness, Lady Earlston, Ma ... read more
Marion M'Naught
'O woman beloved of God.'Rutherford
'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,' says Sir Henry.Taylor in his Philip Van Artevelde; and it knows much less of its greatest women. I have not found Marion M'Naught's name once mentioned outsid ... read more
Our Lord as a Believing Man
The workings of our Lord's human mind, the affections and the emotions of our Lord's human heart, and all the spiritual experiences of our Lord's human life-take Jesus Christ in all these things, and He is the most absorbing, the most satisfying, and t ... read more
Parishoners of Kilmacolm
'For want of time I have put you all in one letter.'Rutherford.
There is a well-known passage in Lycidas that exactly describes the religious condition of the parish of Kilmacolm in the year 1639. For the shepherd of that unhappy sheepfold also h ... read more
Robert Gordon
'A single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed in parliaments and public meetings after the year 1638.'Livingstone.
'Hall-binks are slippery.'Gordon to Rutherford.
Robert Gordon of Knockbrex, in his religious character, was a combinati ... read more
Samuel Rutherford and Some of His Extremes
'I am made of extremes.'-Rutherford.
A story is told in Wodrow of an English merchant who had occasion to visit Scotland on business about the year 1650. On his return home his friends asked him what news he had brought with him from the north. 'Goo ... read more
Starving Prayer
"We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you"
(Col. 1:3).
I am as certain as I am standing here, that the secret of much mischief to our own souls, and to the souls of others, lies in the way that we stin ... read more
To Take Away Sin
"... to give his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28).
You have heard sometimes about hell being let loose. Yes, but hear this. Come to Caiaphas' palace on the passover night, and look at this. "Then did they spit in His face, and buffeted Him: th ... read more
Truly Penitent
"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God"
(Isa. 40:1).
No man living in any known sin is ever comforted of God. The Holy Ghost never yet spake one word of all His abounding consolations to any man so long as he lived in any actual sin, or ... read more
What Pleases God
"Who hath believed our report?"
(Isa. 53:1).
Among the amazing things of which this amazing chapter is full, there is nothing that arrests us, and overawes us, and, indeed, staggers us more than this--that it "pleased the Lord to bruise" His Messi ... read more
William Guthrie
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.'Solomon.
William Guthrie was a great humorist, a great sportsman, a great preacher, and a great writer. The true Guthrie blood has always had a drop of humour in it, and the first minister of Fenwick was a ge ... read more
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