guage, as far as the cross, but
he remains there. He says the burden is off his back, and he takes care
that he shall keep out of that kind of life that would put it on again.
He has been once pardoned, and he takes his stand upon that. He strove
hard till he was converted, and he sometimes strives hard to get other
men brought to the same conversion. But his conversion has been all
exhausted in the mere etymology of the act, for he has only turned round
in his religious life, he has not made one single step of progress. But
let one of the greatest masters of true religion that ever taught the
Church of Christ speak to us on the subject of this gin-horse Christian.
'The Scriptures,' says Jonathan Edwards, 'everywhere represent the
seeking, the striving, and the labour of a Christian as being chiefly to
be gone through _after_ his conversion, and his conversion as being but
the beginning of the work. And almost all that is said in the New
Testament of men's watching, giving earnest heed to themselves, running
the race that is set before them, striving and agonising, pressing
forward, reaching forth, crying to God night and day; I say, almost all
that is said in the New Testament of these things is spoken of and is
directed to God's saints. Where these things are applied once to sinners
seeking salvation, they are spoken of the saint's prosecution of their
high calling ten times. But many have got in these days into a strange
anti-scriptural way of having all their striving and wrestling over
_before_ they are converted, and so having an easy time of it
afterwards.'

4. Remember, also, wrote Rutherford, to look up the Scriptures and read
and lay to heart the lessons of Esau's life and Judas's, of the life of
Balaam, and Saul, and Pharaoh, and Simon Magus, and Caiaphas, and Ahab,
and Jehu, and Herod, and the man in Matthew viii. 19, and the apostates
in Hebrews vi. For all these were at best but watered brass and
reprobate silver. 'One day,' writes Mrs. William Veitch of Dumfries in
her autobiography, 'having been at prayer, and coming into the room where
one was reading a letter of Mr. Rutherford's directed to one John Gordon
of Rusco--giving an account of how far one might go and yet prove a
hypocrite and miss heaven--it occasioned great exercise in me.' Dr.
Andrew Bonar is no doubt entirely right when he says that this letter,
now open before us, must have been the heart-searching letter that caused
that God-