Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) was born and lived in Scotland during years of religious turmoil. He was apparently a convert to the faith as a young adult, and joined into ministry for his entire adult life. Rutherford knew deeply his Savior, Jesus Christ, and spoke and wrote eloquently of Him. He became an influential voice for Christ and against the excesses and intrigues of the institutional religions of his day. He was devoted to Christ and committed to reaching those who did not yet know Him. For a time he was a preacher on the Firth of Solway, where the ongoing religious strife took the lives of the famous Solway Martyrs 24 years after Rutherford’s death.

Rutherford served in other Scottish cities as well. At one point he was exiled to Aberdeen for two years for not yielding to the demands of the religionists. Late in his life, he was to be tried and possibly martyred, but was too sick to go to the trial and died in his home.

While in Aberdeen, Rutherford wrote some 200 letters to his friends and parishioners, encouraging them to stand fast in the faith and amidst their trials. Many of those letters were saved and have been published as a book. Excerpts from the letters were compiled by Ellen Lister into a little book, “The Loveliness of Christ.” Below are a few excerpts from that little book. The language has not been updated and may seem stilted to the modern reader. Don’t let that distract you from the loveliness of Christ that Rutherford describes.

“God hath called you to Christ’s side, and the wind is now in Christ’s face in this land; and seeing ye are with Him, ye cannot expect the lee-side or the sunny side of the brae*.” * Brae – hill or slope.

“There is no sweeter fellowship with Christ than to bring our wounds and our sores to Him.“

“I find it most true that the greatest temptation out of hell is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air and the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.“

“O pity for evermore that there should be such an one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency, and sweetness, and so few take Him! O ye poor dry dead souls, why will ye not come hither with your toom* vessels and your empty souls to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your toom vessels?” * Toom – empty.

“O that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, pinched, so ebb*, and so void of all happiness, and yet men will not take Him! They lose their love miserably, who will not bestow it upon this lovely One.” *Ebb – shallow or backward.

“O what owe I to the file, to the hammer, and to the furnace of my Lord Jesus!“

“Scar* not at the sufferings for Christ: for Christ hath a chair, and a cushion, and sweet peace for a sufferer.” *Scar – scare.

“I see grace groweth best in winter.”

“I know, we may say, that Christ is the kindest in His love when we are at our weakest; and that if Christ had not been to the fore, in our sad days, the waters had gone over our soul.”

“Let Him make anything out of me, so being He glorified in my salvation: for I know I am made for Him.“

“Every day we may see some new thing in Christ. His love hath neither brim nor bottom.“

Banner image via Pixabay. Rutherford image via Forgotten Scottish History.