'O woman beloved of God.'--_Rutherford_.
'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,' says Sir Henry Taylor in
his _Philip Van Artevelde_; and it knows much less of its greatest women.
I have not found Marion M'Naught's name once mentioned outside of Samuel
Rutherford's Letters. But she holds a great place--indeed, the foremost
place--in that noble book, to be written in which is almost as good as to
be written in heaven.
Rutherford's first letter to Marion M'Naught was written from the manse
of Anwoth on the 6th of June 1627, and out of a close and lifelong
correspondence we are happy in having had preserved to us some forty-five
of Rutherford's letters to his first correspondent. But, most
unfortunately, we have none of her letters back again to Anwoth or
Aberdeen or London or St. Andrews. It is much to be wished we had, for
Marion M'Naught was a woman greatly gifted in mind, as well as of quite
exceptional experience even for that day of exceptional experiences in
the divine life. But we can almost construct her letters to Rutherford
for ourselves, so pointedly and so elaborately and so affectionately does
Rutherford reply to them.
Marion M'Naught is already a married woman, and the mother of three well-
grown children, when we make her acquaintance in Rutherford's Letters.
She had sprung of an ancient and honourable house in the south of
Scotland, and she was now the wife of a well-known man in that day,
William Fullarton, the Provost of Kirkcudbright. It is interesting to
know that Marion M'Naught was closely connected with Lady Kenmure,
another of Rutherford's chief correspondents. Lord Kenmure was her
mother's brother. Kenmure had lived a profligate and popularity-hunting
life till he was laid down on his death-bed, when he underwent one of the
most remarkable conversions anywhere to be read of--a conversion that, as
it would appear, his niece Marion M'Naught had no little to do with. As
long as Kenmure was young and well, as long as he was haunting the
purlieus of the Court, and selling his church and his soul for a smile
from the King, the Provost of Kirkcudbright and his saintly wife were
despised and forgotten; but when he was suddenly brought face to face
with death and judgment, when his ribbons and his titles were now like
the coals of hell in his conscience, nothing would satisfy him but that
his niece must leave her husband and her children and take up her abode
in Kenmure Castle. _The Last and Heavenly Speeches of Lord Kenmure_ was
a classic memoir of those days, and in that little book we read of his
niece's constant attendance at his bedside, as good a nurse for his soul
as she was for his body.
Samuel Rutherford's favourite correspondent was, to begin with, a woman
of quite remarkable powers of mind. We gather that impression powerfully
as we read deeper and deeper into the remarkable series of letters that
Rutherford addressed to her. To no one does he go into deeper matters
both of Church and State, both of doctrinal and personal religion than to
her, and the impression of mental power as well as of personal worth she
made on Rutherford, she must have made on many of the ablest and best men
of that day. Robert Blair, for instance, tells us that when he was on
his way home from London to Ireland he visited Scotland chiefly that he
might see Rutherford at Anwoth and Marion M'Naught at Kirkcudbright, and
when he came to Kirkcudbright he found Rutherford also there. And when
Rutherford was in exile in Aberdeen, and in deep anxiety about his people
at Anwoth, he wrote beseeching Marion M'Naught to go to Anwoth and give
his people her counsel about their congregational and personal affairs.
But, above all, it is from the depth and the power of Rutherford's
letters to herself on the inward life that we best gather the depth and
the power of this remarkable woman's mind.
There is no other subject of thought that gives such scope for the
greatest gifts of the human mind as does the life of God in the soul.
There is no book in all the world that demands such a combination of
mental gifts and spiritual graces to understand it aright as the Bible.
The history and the biography of the Bible, the experimental parts of the
Bible, the doctrines of grace deduced by the apostles out of the history
and the experience recorded in the Bible, and then the personal, the most
inward and most spiritual bearing of all that,--what occupation can be
presented to the mind of man or woman to compare with that? True
religion, really true religion, gives unequalled and ever-increasing
scope for the best gifts of mind and for the best graces of heart and
character. 'In truth, religious obedience is a very intricate problem,
and the more so the farther we proceed in it.' And he has poor eyes and
a poor heart for true religion, and for its best fruits both in the mind
and the heart and the character, who does not see those fruits increasing
letter by letter as Rutherford writes to Marion M'Naught.
Her public spirit also made Marion M'Naught to be held in high honour.
Her husband was a public man, and his intelligent fidelity to truth and
justice in that day made his name far more public than ever he wished it
to be. And in all his services and sufferings for the truth he had a
splendid wife in Marion M'Naught. 'Remember me to your husband,'
Rutherford writes; 'tell him that Christ is worthy to be suffered for not
only to blows but to blood. He will find that innocence and uprightness
will hold his feet firm and make him happy when jouking will not do it.'
And again, 'Encourage your husband and tell him that truth will yet keep
the crown of the causey in Scotland.' And when the petition is being got
up for his being permitted to return to Anwoth, Rutherford asks his
correspondent to procure that three or four hundred noblemen, gentlemen,
countrymen and citizens shall be got to subscribe it--a telling tribute,
surely, to her public spirit and her great influence.
But an independent mind and a public spirit like hers could not exist in
those days, or in any day this world has yet seen, without raising up
many and bitter enemies. And both she and her husband suffered heavily,
both in name and in estate, from the malice and the hatred that their
fearless devotion to truth and justice stirred up. So much so, that some
of the finest passages in Rutherford's early letters to her are those in
which he counsels her and her husband to patience, and meekness, and
forgiveness of injuries. 'Keep God's covenant in all your trials. Hold
you by His blessed word, and sin not; flee anger, wrath, grudging,
envying, fretting. Forgive an hundred pence to your fellow-servant, for
your Lord has forgiven you ten thousand talents.' And again: 'Be
patient; Christ went to heaven with many a wrong. His visage was more
marred than that of any of the sons of men. He was wronged and received
no reparation, but referred all to that day when all wrongs shall be
righted.' And again: 'You live not upon men's opinion. Happy are you
if, when the world trampleth upon you in your credit and good name, you
are yet the King's gold and stamped with His image. Pray for the spirit
of love, for love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things. Forgive, therefore, your fellow-servant his
one talent. Always remember what has been forgiven you.' And on every
page of the Kirkcudbright correspondence we see that, amid all these
temptations and trials, no man had a better wife than the provost, and no
children a better mother than Grizel and her two brothers. Her talents
sought no nobler sphere for their exercise and increase than her own
fireside; and her public spirit was better seen in her life at home than
anywhere out of doors. Hers was truly a public spirit, and like a spirit
it inspired and animated both her own and her husband's life with
interest in and with care for the best good, both of the Church and the
State. Her public spirit was not incompatible with great personal
modesty and humility, and great attention to her domestic duties, all
rooted in a life hid with Christ in God.
And then, all this--her birth, her station, her talents, and her public
spirit--could not fail to give her a great influence for good. In a
single line of Rutherford's on this subject, we see her whole lifetime:
'You are engaged so in God's work in Kirkcudbright that if you remove out
of that town all will be undone.' What a tribute is that to the
provost's wife! And again, far on in the Letters he writes to Grizel
Fullarton: 'Your dear mother, now blessed and perfected with glory, kept
life in that place, and my desire is that you succeed her in that way.'
What a pride to have such a mother; and what a tradition for a daughter
to take up! So have we all known in country towns and villages one man
or one woman who kept life in the place. Out of the memories of my own
boyhood there rises up, here a minister and there a farmer, here a cloth-
merchant and there a handloom weaver, here a blacksmith's wife and there
a working housekeeper, who kept life in the whole place. It is not
station that does it, nor talent, though both station and talent greatly
help; it is character, it is true and genuine godliness. True and
genuine godliness--especially when it is purged of pride, and harsh
judgment, and too much talk, and is adorned with humility and meekness,
and all the other fruits of holy love--true and pure godliness in a most
obscure man or woman will find its way to a thousand consciences, and
will impress and overawe a whole town, as Marion M'Naught's rare
godliness impressed and overawed all Kirkcudbright. Just as, on the
other hand, the ignorance, the censoriousness, the bitterness, the
intolerance, that too often accompany what would otherwise be true
godliness, work as widespread mischief as true godliness works good. 'One
little deed done for God's sake, and against our natural inclination,
though in itself only of a conceding or passive character, to brook an
insult, to face a danger, or to resign an advantage, has in it a power
outbalancing all the dust and chaff of mere profession--the profession
whether of enlightened benevolence or candour, or, on the other hand, of
high religious faith and fervent zeal;' or, as Rutherford could write to
Marion M'Naught's daughter: 'There is a wide and deep difference between
a name of godliness and the power of godliness.' Even the schoolboys of
Kirkcudbright could quite well distinguish the name from the reality; and
long after they were Christian men they would tell with reverence and
with love when, and from whom, they took their first and
never-to-be-forgotten impressions. It was, they would say to their
children, from that woman of such rare godliness as well as public
spirit, Marion M'Naught.
It was all this, and nothing other and nothing less than all this, that
made Marion M'Naught Rutherford's favourite correspondent. Her mind and
her heart together early and often drew her across the country to
Rutherford's preaching. Marion M'Naught had a good minister of her own
at home; but Rutherford was Rutherford, and he made Anwoth Anwoth. I
think I can understand something of her delight on Communion forenoons,
when his text was Christ Dying, in John xii. 32, or the Syro-Phoenician
woman, in Matt. xv. 28. And then the feasts on the fast-days at
Kirkcudbright, over the cloud of witnesses, in Heb. xii. 1, and all tears
wiped away, in Rev. xxi. 4, and the marriage of the Lamb, in xix. 7. And
then, on the other hand, Rutherford is not surely to be blamed for loving
such a hearer. His Master loved a Mary also of His day, for that also
among other good reasons. If a good hearer likes a good preacher, why
should a good preacher not like a good hearer? Take a holiday, and give
us another day soon of such and such a preacher, our people sometimes say
to us. And why should that preacher not also say to us, Give me a day
soon again of your good hearers? As a matter of fact, our good preaching
friends do say that to us. And why not? Fine hearers, deep hearers,
thoroughly well-prepared hearers, hearers of genius are almost as scarce
as fine, deep, thoroughly well-prepared preachers and preachers of
genius. And who shall blame Rutherford for liking to see Marion M'Naught
coming into the church on a Sabbath morning as well as she liked to see
him coming into the pulpit? 'I go to Anwoth so often,' she said,
'because, though other ministers show me the majesty of God and the
plague of my own heart, Mr. Samuel does both these things, but he also
shows me, as no other minister ever does, the loveliness of Christ.' It
is as great a mistake to think that all our Christian people are able to
take in a sermon on the loveliness of Christ as it is that all ordained
men can preach such a sermon. There are diversities of gifts among
hearers as well as among preachers; and when the gifts of the pulpit meet
the corresponding graces in the pew, you need not wonder that they
recognise and delight in one another. Jesus Christ was Rutherford's
favourite subject in the pulpit, and thus it was that he was Marion
M'Naught's favourite preacher, as she, again, was his favourite hearer in
the church and his favourite correspondent in the Letters. To how many
in this house to-night could a preacher say that he wished them all to be
'over head and ears in love to Christ'? What preacher could say a thing
like that in truth and soberness? And how many could hear it? Only a
preacher of the holy passion of Rutherford, and only a hearer of the
intellect and heart and rare experience of Marion M'Naught. 'O the fair
face of the man Jesus Christ!' he cries out. And again: 'O time, time,
why dost thou move so slowly! Come hither, O love of Christ! What
astonishment will be mine when I first see that fairest and most lovely
face! It would be heaven to me just to look through a hole of heaven's
door to see Christ's countenance!' No wonder that the congregations were
few, and the correspondents who could make anything of a man of such a
'fanatic humour' as that! But, then, no wonder, on the other hand, that,
when two fanatics so full of that humour as Samuel Rutherford and Marion
M'Naught met, they corresponded ever after with one another in their own
enraptured language night and day.