hristina Rossetti is no Calvinist, but she puts the
Calvinistic and Puritan position about the sin-poisoned enjoyments of
this life in her own beautiful way: 'Yes, all our life long we shall be
bound to refrain our soul, and keep it low; but what then? For the books
we now forbear to read we shall one day be endued with wisdom and
knowledge. For the music we will not now listen to we shall join in the
song of the redeemed. For the pictures from which we turn we shall gaze
unabashed on the beatific vision. For the companionship we shun we shall
be welcomed into angelic society and the companionship of triumphant
saints. For the amusements we avoid we shall keep the supreme jubilee.
For all the pleasure we miss we shall abide, and for ever abide, in the
rapture of heaven.'

All through Rutherford's lifetime preaching was his chiefest enjoyment
and his most exquisite delight. He was a born preacher, and his
enjoyment of preaching was correspondingly great. Even when he was
removed from Anwoth to St. Andrews, where, what with his professorship
and principalship together, one would have thought that he had his hands
full enough, he yet stipulated with the Assembly that he should be
allowed to preach regularly every Sabbath-day. But sin, again, that
dreadful, and, to Rutherford, omnipresent evil, poisoned all his
preaching also and made it one of the heaviest burdens of his conscience
and his heart and his life. There is a proverb to the effect that when
the best things become corrupt then that is corruption indeed. And so
Rutherford discovered it to be in the matter of his preaching. Do what
he would, Rutherford, like Shepard, could not keep the thought of what
men would think out of his weak and evil mind, both before, and during,
but more especially after his preaching. And that poisoned and corrupted
and filled the pulpit with death to Rutherford, in a way and to a degree
that nobody but a self-seeking preacher will believe or understand.
Rutherford often wondered that he had not been eaten up of worms in his
pulpit like King Herod on his throne, and that for the very same
atheistical and blasphemous reason.

Those in this house who have followed all this with that intense and
intelligent sympathy that a somewhat similar experience alone will give,
will not be stumbled to read what Rutherford says in his letter to his
near neighbour, William Glendinning: 'I see nothing in this life but sin,
sin and the sour f