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In two well-chosen words John Livingstone tells us the deep impression that the laird of Knockbrex made on the men of his day. With a quite Scriptural insight and terseness of expression, Livingstone simply says that Robert Gordon was the most 'single-hearted and painful' of all the Christian men known to his widely- acquainted and clear-sighted biographer.
For when I had opened his book at the word 'single-hearted, he at once told me that Knockbrex was an open, frank, natural, straightforward, altogether trustworthy man. He was above-board, outspoken, downright, blunt even, and bald, always calling a spade a spade.
Only, as long as the Crown and the Parliament had their hands so deeply in the things of the Church, Knockbrex was not hard to persuade to go to Parliament to watch over interests that were dearer to him than life, or family, or estate.
As we read his raptures we almost say with cautious old Knockbrex, that possibly Rutherford is somewhat too full of ecstasy for this fallen, still unsanctified, and still so slippery world. It took two men to carry back the cluster of grapes the spies cut down at Eshcol, and there is sweetness and strength and ecstasy enough for ten men in any one of Rutherford's inebriated Letters.
Why art thou taking thy cross so easily, when thou knowest the unsettled controversy the Lord still has with thee? 'Hall binks are slippery, wrote stern old Knockbrex, challenging his old minister for his too great joy.
Was it because Rutherford had now gone nearer that great region of experimental casuistry that he started that excellent Friday problem in a letter from Aberdeen to Knockbrex in 1637? With Rutherford everything, the most doctrinal, experimental, ecclesiastical, political, all ran always up into Christ, His love and His loveableness.
'A single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed in parliaments and public meetings after the year 1638. Livingstone. 'Hall-binks are slippery. Gordon to Rutherford. Robert Gordon of Knockbrex, in his religious character, was a combination of Old Honest and Mr. Fearing in the Pilgrim's Progress.
Such was not Samuel Rutherford's judgment, as will be seen in his 36th Letter. And such was not Robert Gordon's judgment, when he left the woods and fields of Knockbrex and gave himself wholly up to the politics of his entangled and distressful day.
Blunt old Knockbrex, for one, wrote to his old minister to restrain somewhat his ecstasy. So true was it, what Rutherford said of himself to David Dickson, that he was 'made up of extremes. So he was, for I know no man among all my masters in personal religion who unites greater extremes in himself than Samuel Rutherford.
What an opportunity, and what an education, it must be to tenant Knockbrex with recollection, with understanding, and with sympathy even for a season. Robert Gordon would very willingly have remained behind the screen all his days.
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