The Letters of Samuel Rutherford

I love The Letters of Samuel Rutherford. I think they should be far better known than they are. In fact, I'd say The Letters of Samuel Rutherford should be considered a Christian literary classic. Just like (say) The Confessions by Augustine of Hippo, Proslogion by Anselm of Canterbury, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, Communion with God by John Owen, The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, etc.

For one thing, The Letters of Samuel Rutherford offer a historical window into the 1600s. The age of the Puritans. Rutherford lived from 1600-1661. A time of tremendous political and religious upheaval in the British isles and continental Europe. A time when there was both philosophical theorizing over the proper relationship between church vs. state (e.g. Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan during this period; Rutheford also penned Lex, Rex) as well as literal persecutions and wars with the state and its arm of the established church (episcopacy) attempting to subjugate genuin Christians. The English Civil War, Crown vs. Parliament, the beheading of Charles I which was shocking at the time since monarchs had virtually never been executed by their people, Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, and so on. Yet it was likewise a time of tremendous reformation and revival for Protestant Christians. The Westminster Assembly was convened in this period by Parliament to reform the church, and Rutherford played a role in it. And consider that Rutherford lived contemporaneously with fellow Christians like John Owen (1616-1683), John Bunyan (1628-1688), Blaise Pascal (1623-1662); political leaders like Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), William Bradford who governed Plymouth Colony (1590-1657), King James of the KJV (1566-1625); artists like Rembrandt (1606-1669), Shakespeare (1564-1616), John Milton (1608-1674); and scientists like Galileo (1565-1642), Kepler (1571-1630), even Isaac Newton as a young man (1643-1727). I think there are some significant parallels from this period with us today.

More importantly, I think, The Letters display Rutherford as a devoted pastor who dearly loved his flock. Ironically, the bulk of The Letters (approximately 220 out of 365 letters) were written while Rutherford was in exile away from his flock. His flock lived in and around the little town of Anwoth in southwest Scotland near the English border. However, Rutherford was forced to move away from Anwoth by the ecclesiastical powers-that-be of the day. They forced Rutherford to live far north in Aberdeen where the ecclesiastical powers-that-be thought he'd be silenced. Yet thanks to God's providence, thanks to God who can bring good out of evil, Rutherford's exile did the opposite of silencing him inasmuch as his exile served as a major inspiration behind The Letters. Even today we can say of The Letters of Samuel Rutherford: "though he died, he still speaks" (Heb 11:4).

Finally, in terms of practical theology, The Letters illustrate Rutherford's deep care in guiding his flock, most of whom were average laypeople, from highborn to lowborn, how to walk with the Lord in tremendous suffering. Suffering that most of us today wouldn't have to face. Suffering that most of us today hear but faint echoes of when we hear of tragedies in developing nations or persecutions in nations like China or the Muslim world. From losing one's spouse and/or children to dealing with debilitating diseases to enemies of the faith seeking to literally kill them. Rutherford himself lost a wife at a young age (~30) as well as experienced the deaths of all but one of his half a dozen children. All the while Rutherford holds forth to his flock (and to us) "the loveliness of Christ".

To my knowledge, Banner of Truth publishes two versions of The Letters. A Puritan Paperbacks edition that contains a selection of Rutherford's letters and a full version that contains all 365 of Rutherford's letters along with other material (e.g. a biographical sketch of Rutherford's life). Personally I'd recommend the full version (ISBN-10 0851513883 | ISBN-13 978-0851513881). The full version is also available to download and read for free via Project Gutenberg which in turn is made possible thanks entirely to Andrew Bonar's work (see here). In fact, the Banner of Truth's full version is a facsimile edition of Andrew Bonar's work back in the 1800s so you'd get the same edition via Project Gutenberg as Banner of Truth publishes. (Banner of Truth has likewise published The Loveliness of Christ which is a very short book that takes a handful of quotations or excerpts from The Letters. It's much briefer than even the Puritan Paperbacks edition of The Letters. It's a good book to whet one's appetite for the full work.)

Portage Publications has a nice pdf version of The Letters. And our friends at Monergism have done various versions of The Letters as well.

Some others who have commended The Letters:

• Charles Spurgeon: "When we are dead and gone let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford's Letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men."
• Richard Baxter (who was no friend to Presbyterians including Rutherford): "Hold off the Bible, such a book as Mr. Rutherford's Letters the world never saw the like."
• A contemporary of Robert Murray M'Cheyne's said that "The Letters of Samuel Rutherford were often in his hand".
• Handley Moule: "[The Letters are] a small casket stored with many jewels".

One last thing. I've long loved the poem and hymn "The Sands of Time Are Sinking", written by Anne R. Cousin, based on The Letters of Samuel Rutherford. The full edition of The Letters has a section that tells us which letters lie behind the poem. And I enjoy this version of the hymn:

Some pastoral reflections on suffering

D. A. Carson offers some pastoral reflections on suffering in the Christian life in his book How Long, O Lord? (2nd ed.), pp 221-225.

The sheep hear his voice

10 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers” (Jn 10:1-5).

i) This is a much-loved passage of Scripture. Recently I saw a poster for a lost dog that made me aware of a distinction which commentators usually overlook. The distinction between hearing and naming. 

The poster had a picture of their dog. It said their dog "responds to the name…," then gave three variations on the same name or nickname. I assume the theory behind this is that if a stranger sees their dog roaming around, and he calls to it by name, it will come to him because it recognizes its name. 

That's an example of humans projecting human aptitudes on animals. It may flatter them to think their dog knows its own name. After all, they named it! 

But I think that overestimates canine intelligence. For that matter, we don't even know if dogs distinguish consonants and vowels the way we do. 

When people walk their dogs I sometimes notice then talking to their dogs, as if their dogs understand English. As if a dog is a child. 

Now, admittedly, I can't get inside the mind of a dog, and even if I could, I couldn't report back to you what a dog thinks like, since if I was thinking like a dog, I'd lack the cognitive ability to articulate my thoughts.

However, I'm guessing that when a dog responds to someone calling to it, what the dog recognizes is not the sound of a name, but the sound of a voice. It recognizes a familiar voice. The voice of its master or a family member. A unique timbre. A stranger can call a dog by name, but I doubt the dog will come to him for that reason. 

By the same token, dogs are very sensitive to the owner's tone of voice. A friendly tone. An angry tone. That's what they respond to. Not words, but tone and timbre. 

Of course, there are gregarious dogs who rush over to anyone they see. But that's a different principle.

ii) Naming is significant to the person who designates the dog. Hearing is significant to the dog. Naming has significance to the dog owner. It's a way the owner relates to his pet. He attaches personal significance to his dog by naming it. It's his dog, which is why he has the right to name it. It belongs to him. The name means nothing to the dog. 

However, the dog is familiar with his master's voice. He associates that voice with his master. That voice is significant to the dog. 

iii) I don't think sheep are terribly bright animals. And they're generally dumber than dogs. They are certainly dumber than sheep dogs (e.g. a collie or shetland shepherd). A sheep dog has to be smarter than the sheep to herd a flock of sheep. 

So the naming/hearing dichotomy applies to sheep as well as dogs.

Sometimes two or more flocks of sheep intermingle. Shepherds can separate them because his sheep know his voice. 

iv) I doubt shepherds name every sheep in their flock. It's been estimated that on average, a Palestinian shepherd had a flock of about 100 sheep. That would be a lot of names to keep track of. Fathers of large families sometimes find it hard to remember the names of all their kids! And they don't have a 100 kids. 

So this is probably a contrast between the average shepherd, who may name a few standouts, and the Good Shepherd, who really does know each sheep by name.

v) It's not just that Christ knows his sheep by name: he names them. Christian sheep have different first names, but the same last name (Rev 2:17; 3:12). Our surname is God's name. We are his adopted sons. 

In Scripture, naming is significant. When God names someone, that's an indication of possession, character, and/or future destiny. 

The elect are significant to God ever before God is significant to the elect. He loved us before we loved him. 

vi) Parents name their children. They often give a lot of thought to the name. Before the child is born, they may choose a boy's name and a girl's name, they wait to see which applies.

Babies aren't responsive to names, but they're responsive to their mother's voice. 

Unlike sheep, a child's name becomes significant to the child. He resents it if people forget his name, mispronounce his name, or make fun of his name.

vii) Sometimes this comes full circle. If the parent becomes senile, the parent will forget his (or her) child's name. The parent will forget his own name.

However, I suspect a parent who's becoming senile forgets a child's name before he forgets a child's voice. Until he becomes completely senile, he will continue to recognize the sound of his child's voice even after he's forgotten his child's name. 

Hearing his child's voice will comfort him. He won't feel so alone.

viii) Even though he's forgotten his own name, his child remembers. If a senile parent is hospitalized, he's surrounded by strangers. He could easily be lost.

His only real protection is having someone with the same last name who visits him regularly. If a grown child visits the parent every day, or camps out in the hospital room until he's discharged, the staff have to be more attentive. Whether or not they care about the patient, their actions are being monitored by someone who does. Someone who shares the same surname. 

That's a name they need to respect. There are legal liabilities if they don't. 

The Good Shepherd protects his sheep even when, or especially when, his sheep may be oblivious to danger, or defenseless in the face of danger. 

Is John Piper the next Pat Robertson?

John Piper’s recent tweet on the Oklahoma tornado has provoked a knee-jerk response. There’s even a malicious effort to create a defamatory narrative about Piper as another Pat Robertson.

Now, I don’t think it’s necessary for Piper to comment on every natural disaster that comes down the pike. It would make more sense for him to have a general treatment which he refers people to when tragedies like this take place. After all, natural disasters happen repeatedly, so it’s not as if you’re going to have something new to say about every new catastrophe.

Likewise, I don’t think Twitter is the best medium for commenting on natural disasters. And quoting Job without context invites ambiguity.

That said, I don’t share the outraged reaction to his tweet.

On his Facebook wall, Jeremy Pierce is making some customarily judicious observations on this manufactured controversy. There are also some judicious comments on Denny Burk’s post.

http://www.dennyburk.com/jobs-suffering-and-ours/

Finding the will of God

Tim Challies has written a positive review on a recently published book called Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will by Kevin DeYoung.

While we're on the topic, 9Marks has several reviews on similarly themed books as well.

"Some Pastoral Reflections"

The following excerpt offers some good, practical advice about how to help fellow Christians who are suffering (which I'd do well to constantly remember). It's from the single best book on the topic, IMHO, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (2nd ed.) by D.A. Carson.

Anyone who has suffered devastating grief or dehumanizing pain has at some point been confronted by near relatives of Job's miserable comforters. They come with their clichés and tired, pious mouthings. They engender guilt where they should be administering balm. They utter solemn truths where compassion is needed. They exhibit strength and exhort to courage where they would be more comforting if they simply wept. . . .

Here I have the Christian in view.

1. We must recognize that grief normally passes through predictable stages. For example, when someone is suddenly bereaved, it is not uncommon to find such stages of grief as the following, drawn from a useful little book by Granger Westberg: "we are in a state of shock"; "we express emotion"; "we feel depressed and very lonely"; "we may experience physical symptoms of distress"; "we may become panicky"; "we feel a sense of guilt about the loss"; "we are filled with anger and resentment"; "we resist returning to our usual activities"; "gradually hope comes through"; "we struggle to affirm reality."

Clearly there is no immutable law about these stages. How many stages an individual goes through, and how quickly, depends on many things: how stable that person is, how devoted to or dependent on the one who has died, how much support is given, how robust that person's faith is, how habitual that person's walk with God, and much more beside. The value of recognizing that stages of grief are common, however, is that the person who is trying to offer comfort will see the telltale signs and respond appropriately. The bereaved Christian who suddenly starts lashing out with anger and resentment will not be written off as an apostate. The Christian who at this moment finds little comfort in the doctrine of the resurrection, so great is the sense of loss, is not to be berated and rebuked. . . .

2. Some grief takes a long time to heal. . . . A young pastor I know lost his wife, the mother of their two children, and about a year later left the ministry. The church had proved marvelously supportive for the first two or three months. By six months, older saints, including the senior pastor, were simply telling him to get on with life, to pick up the pieces, to stop feeling sorry for himself.

It is possible that some of these things needed to be said -- but only in a context of giving this young man the repeated opportunity to talk out his grief, to pray with people, to find some continuing help with the children. Pastoral ministry being what it is, perhaps he should have been gently directed toward temporary resignation even earlier -- but only as a way of helping him to regain his moorings, not in a way that compounded his grief with a sense of failure and guilt. . . . My point is that many forms of grief need time.

3. Frequently in the midst of suffering the most comforting "answers" are simple presence, help, silence, tears. Helping with the gardening or preparing a casserole may be far more spiritual an exercise than the exposition of Romans 8:28. The Scriptures themselves exhort us to "mourn with those who mourn" (Rom. 12:15).

4. Many verbal expressions of encouragement should not be based on the assumption that they must answer an implicit "Why?" Not everyone asks that question. Some who need encouragement need reminding of simple things, not profound and complex answers to the "why" question. A young man became a Christian and almost immediately was diagnosed as having a rapid and incurable cancer. As he watched part of his body wither away and other parts of his body bloat grotesquely, those around him found that the greatest encouragement came to him from reciting John 11:25-26 and parts of 1 Corinthians 15.

5. When verbalized answers to anguished cries of "Why?" are required, what and how much we provide will depend largely on what might be called our spiritual diagnosis, that is, our assessment of the needs and capacity of the individual. Some crying "Why?" are not really asking questions; they are simply seeking comfort. Others are asking questions, but cannot at that moment bear more than the briefest reply. When a Christian I do not know very well asks that sort of question, my response to that question may be, "I cannot give you all the answers to your 'Why?' But you may draw courage from the fact that the one who loves you so much he died for you asked the same question: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'"

At some point, more reflective believers will want something more. Some will be ready to read, others to engage in simple Bible studies -- for instance, reflections on some of the psalms, or on the prayers of Paul, or on other passages briefly expounded in this book.

6. In this day when many in the Western world have been seduced by some form of the "power, health, and wealth" gospel, it is important to stress the Christian's location -- between the fall and the new heaven and the new earth, enjoying the "down payment" of the Spirit but by no means free of death and decay. There is nothing in Scripture to encourage us to think we should always be free from the vicissitudes that plague a dying world. Of course, it may be easier to say those things to believers before their time of suffering rather than in it. But where self-seeking, self-gratifying forms of Western Christianity predominate, it is essential to lay out these truths, loudly and often.

7. For one reason or another, suffering is often associated with guilt feelings. The sharpest diagnosis and care are called for. Sometimes there may be real guilt, that is, moral guilt before God for specific sins. Here, if anywhere, the Christian is able to offer good news. Jesus died to take our guilt. Real guilt in the face of suffering must be handled like real guilt in every situation: we must confess it, renounce the sin, ask God for his forgiveness, attempt restitution where possible, and learn to rest in the forgiving word of Christ.

But often there is false guilt, that is, a vague feeling of guilt for which there is no real breach before God. For the Christian, the long-term answer is to establish, on the basis of God's Word, what we should and should not feel guilty about, and thus expose false guilt as nothing less than the devil's lie.

8. Some forms of suffering require active intervention. A wife being beaten by her husband, for instance, requires a judgment: at what point must you counsel the wife to leave him, even to get a court order to provide her with some sort of protection? The case of a child being sexually abused by a relative demands that we bring in police or other services: the need for haste is often balanced by the need for discretion or reasonable certainty. . . . In countless instances, Christians provide -- they must provide -- more than a counseling service or a shoulder to cry on.

9. It is important to offer hope -- not only the hope of the consummation, but hope even on the shorter term.

10. Nevertheless, it is important to help people to live one day at a time. When a horrible and terminal disease is hanging over your head, you do not need grace for the end -- yet. You need grace for today -- just for today. We all are under sentence of death; all of us need grace for today.

11. Above all, we must help people to know God better. Too many answers we give are merely intellectual, merely theoretical, merely propositional. We must so teach and counsel and pray with people that we deepen their experiential knowledge of God. We must so get them into meditative and rigorous reading of the Word of God that they draw vast comfort from its pages. At the deepest level, men and women must learn, with Job, that God is very great, and it is an inexpressible privilege to know him, to be satisfied with him, even when -- especially when! -- we do not have all the answers. Then men and women will learn to rest in his love, and will return again and again to the cross, where their vision of that love will be constantly renewed.

When C.S. Lewis finished writing his book The Problem of Pain (originally published in 1940 at the outbreak of World War II), he wrote a preface explaining that his aim was to address certain intellectual problems relating to the problem of pain. Then he added this sentence:

For the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

12. To this end, we must pray for those who suffer. God himself is the one "who comforts the downcast" (2 Cor. 7:6); he is "the God of all comfort" (2 Cor. 1:3). In the deepest suffering, many find it almost impossible to pray. Should not the rest of us intercede for them?

There have been times when I have seen the face of suffering transformed, permanently transformed, in answer to specific, believing prayer. There is surely something unhealthy and deformed about a vision of Christianity that offers counsel but not intercession -- a trap into which I have tumbled on far too many occasions. If God is the God of comfort, he, finally, must provide it -- often through human agents, sometimes not, but he must do it. So let us ask, remembering that he delights to give good things to his children, and that very often our lack is a reflection of a pathetic refusal to ask (James 4:2).

Likewise, Carson's sermons on the same are well worth listening to.