'Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every day.'--_Rutherford_.
If that gaunt old tower of Cardoness Castle could speak, and would tell
us all that went on within its walls, what a treasure to us that story
would be! Even the sighs and the meanings that visit us from among its
mouldering stones tell us things that we shall not soon forget. They
tell us how hard a task old John Gordon found salvation to be in that old
house; and they tell us still, to deep sobs, how hard it was to him to
see the sins and faults of his own youth back upon him again in the sins
and faults of his son and heir. Old John Gordon's once so wild heart was
now somewhat tamed by the trials of life, by the wisdom and the goodness
of his saintly wife, and not least by his close acquaintance with Samuel
Rutherford; but the comfort of all that was dashed from his lips by the
life his eldest son was now living. Cardoness had always liked a good
proverb, and there was a proverb in the Bible he often repeated to
himself in those days as he went about his grounds: 'The fathers have
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' The
miserable old man was up to the neck in debt to the Edinburgh lawyers;
but he was fast discovering that there are other and worse things that a
bad man entails on his eldest son than a burdened estate. There was no
American wheat or Australian wool to reduce the rents of Cardoness in
that day; but he had learnt, as he rode in to Edinburgh again and again
to raise yet another loan for pocket-money to his eldest son, that there
are far more fatal things to a small estate than the fluctuations and
depressions of the corn and cattle markets. Gordon's own so expensive
youth was now past, as he had hoped: but no, there it was, back upon him
again in a most unlooked-for and bitter shape. 'The fathers have eaten
sour grapes' was all he used to say as he rose to let in his drunken son
at midnight; he scarcely blamed him; he could only blame himself, as his
beloved boy reeled in and cursed his father, not knowing what he did.
The shrinking income of the small estate could ill afford to support two
idle and expensive families, but when young Cardoness broke it to his
mother that he wished to marry, she and her husband were only too glad to
hear it. To meet the outlay connected with the marriage, and to provide
an income for the new family, there was nothing for it but to raise the
rents of the farms and cottages that stood on the estate. Anxious as
Rutherford was to see young Cardoness settled in life, he could not stand
by in silence and see honest and hard-working people saddled with the
debts and expenses of the Castle; and he took repeated opportunities of
telling the Castle people his mind; till old Cardoness in a passion
chased him out of the house, and rode next Sabbath-day over to Kirkdale
and worshipped in the parish church of William Dalgleish. The insolent
young laird continued, at least during the time of his courtship, to go
to church with his mother, but Rutherford could not shut his eyes to the
fact that he studied all the time how he could best and most openly
insult his minister. He used to come to church late on the Sabbath
morning; and he never remained till the service was over, but would rise
and stride out in his spurs in the noisiest way and at the most unseemly
times. Rutherford's nest at Anwoth was not without its thorns. And that
such a crop of thorns should spring up to him and to his people from Lady
Cardoness's house, was one of Rutherford's sorest trials. The marriage-
day, from which so much was expected, came and passed away; but what it
did for young Cardoness may be judged from such expressions in
Rutherford's Aberdeen letters as these: 'Be not rough with your wife. God
hath given you a wife, love her; drink out of your own fountain, and sit
at your own fireside. Make conscience of cherishing your wife.' His
marriage did not sanctify young Cardoness; it did not even civilise him;
for, long years after, when he was an officer in the Covenanters' army,
he writes from Newcastle, apologising to his ill-used wife for the way he
left her when he went to join his regiment: 'We are still ruffians and
churls at home long after we are counted saints abroad.'
One day when Rutherford was in the Spirit in his silent prison, whether
in the body or out of the body, he was caught up into Paradise to see the
beauty of his Lord, and to hear his little daughter singing Glory. And
among the thousands of children that sang around the throne he told young
Cardoness that he saw and heard little Barbara Gordon, whose death had
broken every heart in Cardoness Castle. 'I give you my word for it,'
wrote Rutherford to her broken-hearted father, 'I saw two Anwoth children
there, and one of them was your child and one of them was mine.' And
when another little voice was silenced in the Castle to sing Glory in
heaven, Rutherford could then write to young Cardoness all that was in
his heart; he could not write too plainly now or too often. Not that you
are to suppose that they were all saints now at Cardoness Castle, or that
all their old and inherited vices of heart and character were rooted out:
no number of deaths will do that to the best of us till our own death
comes; but it was no little gain towards godliness when Rutherford could
write to young Gordon, now old with sorrow, saying, 'Honoured and dear
brother, I am refreshed with your letter, and I exhort you by the love of
Christ to set to work upon your own soul. Read this to your wife, and
tell her that I am witness for Barbara's glory in heaven.'
We would gladly shut the book here, and bring the Cardoness
correspondence to a close, but that would not be true to the whole
Cardoness history, nor profitable for ourselves. We have buried
children, like John Gordon; and, like him, we have said that it was good
for us to be sore afflicted; but not even the assurance that we have
children in heaven has, all at once, set our affections there, or made us
meet for entrance there. We feel it like a heavy blow on the heart, it
makes us reel as if we had been struck in the face, to come upon a
passage like this in a not-long-after letter to little Barbara Gordon's
father: 'Ask yourself when next setting out to a night's drinking: What
if my doom came to-night? What if I were given over to God's sergeants
to-night, to the devil and to the second death?' And with the same post
Rutherford wrote to William Dalgleish telling him that if young Cardoness
came to see him he was to do his very best to direct and guide him in his
new religious life. But Rutherford could not roll the care of young
Cardoness over upon any other minister's shoulders; and thus it is that
we have the long practical and powerful letter from which the text is
taken: 'Put off a sin or a piece of a sin every day.'
Old Cardoness had been a passionate man all his days; he was an old man
before he began to curb his passionate heart; and long after he was
really a man of God, the devil easily carried him captive with his
besetting sin. He bit his tongue till it bled as often as he recollected
the shameful day when he swore at his minister in the rack-renting
dispute. And he never rode past Kirkdale Church without sinning again as
he plunged the rowels into his mare's unoffending sides. Cardoness did
not read Dante, else he would have said to himself that his anger often
filled his heart with hell's dunnest gloom. The old Castle was never
well lighted; but, with a father and a son in it like Cardoness and his
heir, it was sometimes like the Stygian pool itself. Rutherford had need
to write to her ladyship to have a soft answer always ready between such
a father and such a son. If you have the Inferno at hand, and will read
what it says about the Fifth Circle, you will see what went on sometimes
in that debt-drained and exasperated house. Rutherford was far away from
Cardoness Castle, but he had memory enough and imagination enough to see
what went on there as often as fresh provocation arose; and therefore he
writes to young Gordon to put off a piece of his fiery anger every day.
'Let no complaining tenants, let no insulting letter, let no stupid or
disobedient servant, let no sudden outburst of your father, let no
peevish complaint of your wife make you angry. Remember every day that
sudden and savage anger is one of your besetting sins: and watch against
it, and put a piece of it off every day. Determine not to speak back to
your father even if he is wrong and is doing a wrong to you and to your
mother; your anger will not make matters better: hold your peace, till
you can with decency leave the house, and go out to your horses and dogs
till your heart is again quiet.'
Rutherford was not writing religious commonplaces when he wrote to
Cardoness Castle; if he had, we would not have been reading his letters
here to-night. He wrote with his eye and his heart set on his
correspondents. And thus it is that 'night-drinking' occurs again and
again in his letters to young Gordon. The Cardoness bill to Dumfries for
drink was a heavy one; but it seems never to have occurred, even to the
otherwise good people of those days, that strong drink was such a costly
as well as such a dangerous luxury. It distresses and shocks us to read
about 'midnight drinking' in Cardoness Castle, and in the houses round
about, after all they had come through, but there it is, and we must not
eviscerate Rutherford's outspoken letters. The time is not so far past
yet with ourselves when we still went on drinking, though we were in debt
for the necessaries of life, and though our sons reeled home from company
we had made them early acquainted with. If you will not even yet pass
the wine altogether, take a little less every day, and the good
conscience it will give you will make up for the forbidden bouquet; till,
as Rutherford said to Gordon, 'You will more easily master the remainder
of your corruptions.'
Let us all try Samuel Rutherford's piecemeal way of reformation with our
own anger; let us put a bridle on our mouths part of every day. Let us
do this if we can as yet go no further; let us bridle our mouths on
certain subjects, and about certain people, and in certain companies. If
you have some one you dislike, some one who has injured or offended you,
some rival or some enemy, whom to meet, to see, to read or to hear the
name of, always brings hell's dunnest gloom into your heart--well, put
off this piece of your sin concerning him; do not speak about him. I do
not say you can put the poison wholly out of your heart; you cannot: but
you can and you must hold your peace about him. And if that beats
you--if, instead of all that making you more easily master of your
corruption, it helps you somewhat to discover how deep and how deadly it
is--then Samuel Rutherford will not have written this old letter in vain
for you.