. And so, said Rutherford, is it with the weaver and
the web of life, when a man's life-hesp is ravelled in the morning of his
days. I stood not long ago at the grave's mouth of a dear and intimate
friend of mine who had fatally ravelled both his own hesp and that of
other people, till we had to get the grave-diggers to take a cord and
help us to bury him. Horace said that in his day most men fled the empty
cask; and all but two or three fled my poor friend's ravelled hesp. He
had recovered the lost thread before he died, but his tangled life was
past unravelling in this world, and we wrapped his ragged hesp around him
for a winding-sheet, and left him with Christ, who so graciously took the
cumber of Rutherford's ill-ravelled life also. Young men whose hesp
still runs even, and whose web is not yet torn, as Rutherford says to
Earlston, 'Make conscience of your thoughts and study in everything to
mortify your lusts. Wash your hands in innocency, and God, who knoweth
what you have need of before you ask Him, will Himself lead you to
encompass His holy altar, and thus to enter the harbour of a holy home
and an unravelled life.'

Rutherford's Letters are all gleaming with illustrations, some homely
enough, like the ill-ravelled hesp, and some classically beautiful, like
the arrow that has gone beyond the bowman's mastery. Writing to young
Lord Boyd about seeking Christ in youth, and about the manifold
advantages of an early and a complete conversion, Rutherford says: 'It is
easy to set an arrow right before the string is drawn, but when once the
arrow is in the air the bowman has lost all power over it.' Look around
at the men and women beside you and see how true that is. Look at those
whose arrow is shot, and see how impossible it is for them, even when
they wish it, either to call their arrow back or to correct its erring
flight. And thank God that you are still in your youth, and that the
arrow of your future life is not yet shot. And while your arrow still
lies trembling on the string be sure your face is in the right direction
and your aim well taken. Rutherford, with all his experience and all his
frankness and all his eloquence, could not tell his young correspondents
half the advantages of an early conversion. Nor can I tell you half of
the changes for good that would immediately take place in you with an
early, immediate, and complete conversion. Perhaps the very first thing
some of you would do woul