f Rutherford's technical terms that he
constantly uses to his expert correspondents. 'I was under great
challenges,' he says, in this same letter; and in a letter written the
same month of March to William Rigg, of Athernie, he says, 'Old
challenges revive, and cast all down.' Dr. Andrew Bonar, Rutherford's
expert editor, gives this glossary upon these passages: 'Charges, self-
upbraidings, self-accusations.' Challenges of conscience came to
Rutherford like these: 'Why art thou writing letters of counsel to other
men? Counsel thyself first. Why art thou appealed to and trusted and
loved by God's best people in Scotland, when thou knowest that thou art a
Cain in malice and a Judas in treachery, all but the outbreaks? Why art
thou taking thy cross so easily, when thou knowest the unsettled
controversy the Lord still has with thee?' 'Hall binks are slippery,'
wrote stern old Knockbrex, challenging his old minister for his too great
joy. 'Old challenges now and then revive and cast all down again.' That
reminds me of a fine passage in that great book of Rutherford's, _Christ
Dying_, where he shows us how to take out a new charter for all our
possessions, and for the salvation of our souls themselves when our
salvation, or our possessions and our right to them, is challenged. It
is better, he says, to hold your souls and your lands by prayer than by
obedience, or conquest, or industry. Have you wisdom, honour, learning,
parts, eloquence, godliness, grace, a good name, wife, children, a house,
peace, ease, pleasure? Challenge yourself how you got them, and see that
you hold them by an unchallengeable charter, even by prayer, and then by
grace. And if you hold these things by any other charter, hasten to get
a new conveyance made and a new title drawn out. And thus old, and
angry, and threatening challenges will work out a charter that cannot be
challenged.

And, then, when George Gillespie was lying on his deathbed in Edinburgh,
with his pillow filled with stinging apprehensions, as is often the case
with God's best servants and ripest saints, hear how his old friend, now
professor of divinity in St. Andrews, writes to him:--

'My reverend and dear brother, look to the east. Die well. Your life of
faith is just finishing. Finish it well. Let your last act of faith be
your best act. Stand not upon sanctification, but upon justification.
Hand all your accounts over to free grace. And if you have any bands of