e of the leaves
that were hardest to read in the diary of Gordon's early manhood told the
bitter history of some added bonds. Sin would need to be sweet, for it
is very dear. And then had come years of rack-renting of his tenants;
the virtuous tenantry had to pay dearly for the vices of their lord.
Rutherford had not been silent to old Cardoness about this matter in
conversation, and he was not silent in his letters. 'You are now upon
the very borders of the other life. I told you, when I was with you, the
whole counsel of God in this matter, and I tell it you again. Awake to
righteousness. Do not lay the burden of your house on other people; do
not compel honest people to pay your old debts. Commit to memory 1 Sam.
xii. 3, and ride out among your tenantry, my dear people, repeating, as
you pass their stables and their cattle-stalls, "Behold, I am old and
grey-headed; behold, here I am: whose ox have I taken? Whose ass have I
taken? Whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed?" I charge you to
write to me here at once, and be plain with me, and tell me whether your
salvation is sure. I hope for the best; but I know that your reckonings
with the righteous Judge are both many and deep.' That was a hard task
to set to a tyrannical old landlord who had been used to call no man
master, or God either, to take such commands from a poor banished
minister! But Cardoness did it. He mastered his rising pride and
resentment and did it; and though he found it a hard task to go through
with his reductions at next rent-day, yet he did it. Such boldness in
the Day of Judgment will a good conscience give a man, as when old
Cardoness actually stood up before the parishioners in the kirk of Anwoth
and read to them, after the elders had conducted the exercises, a letter
he had received last week from their silenced minister. It is one of
Rutherford's longest and most passionate letters. Take a sentence or two
out of it: 'My soul longeth exceedingly to hear whether there be any work
of Christ in the parish that will bide the trial of fire and water. I
think of my people in my sleep. You know how that, out of love to your
souls, and out of the desire I had to make an honest account of you, I
often testified my dislike of your ways, both in private and in public.
Examine yourselves. I never knew so well what sin is as since I came to
Aberdeen, though I was preaching about it every day to you. It would be
life to me if you