DURING the life-and-death struggle of Presbytery against prelatic Episcopacy in seventeenth-century Scotland, women—and among them many titled ladies—showed “a fortitude as manifest as that of their fathers, husbands and sons. We have seen the matron and the maid going out behind the banners of the Son of God, and performing their part in the battle.” In the year 1642 there was a characteristic Covenanting document penned by Mr. Archibald Porteous, himself a “pertinent, knowing, serious youth.” It is the “edifying narration of the sad sweet exercise of soul, and blessed death, of Dame Mary Rutherford, Lady Hundalee.” The following extract regarding her is from The Men of the Covenant, by the late Rev. Dr. Alexander Smellie:—
“Here, indeed, the reader learns (the Covenanting document by Mr. Archibald Porteous above referred to) with what agonising earnestness men and women in this old seventeenth century sought for the assurance of the love of Christ, and how poor and pitiable they accounted their condition until they were certain of their Heavenly Bridegroom’s grace. It is an accent distinct from the religious dialects of to-day. It compels us to question whether we know the same sorrows of desertion, the same ardency of desire, the same triumphs of appropriation and communion.
“Lady Hundalee, with her cousin and waiting-woman, Mary McConnell, and her young chaplain, Archibald Porteous, had journeyed sometime in 1642, from Scotland up to London. But the pestilence was raging in the city; and soon the good waiting-woman was visited by a presentiment, ‘a post from the Celestial City with matters of great importance,’ to tell her that her Master called her to stand in His presence, in clothes of immortality, within a few days. She was enraptured at the thought. ‘Well is my soul,’ she cried, ‘I shall get Christ, my Love, now.’ But her mistress would not be outdone; she avowed that she also was hungering and thirsting to be caught up immediately into Paradise. And the chaplain broke in upon them with his separate aspiration: ‘Madam, I could never endure strife; but I am glad to see such a strife as this. May not I, as a third, challenge my part in the bargain? I hope ye dare not envy any that come to Christ.’ Thus those three stretched out their eager hands to welcome Death, because in Death they saw simply the herald and apparitor of Him Who governed their souls with His sceptre of gold.
“Before many hours had passed, Mary McConnell’s presage was fulfilled, and she had ‘peaceably entered the everlasting kingdom.’ But, when she had gone, a darkness as of seven midnights swept over Lady Hundalee. She was ‘mightily discouraged,’ veteran soldier of the divine King though she was. Her inbred corruptions started up to slay her faith, and the temptations of Satan gathered round. It was in vain that her spiritual counsellor, wise beyond his years, strove to impart the consolations of God. ‘Nothing shall hinder your Lord,’ he said; ‘though your sins were as hard as a rock, and as high as mountains in the way, yet neither the height of the one, nor the hardness of the other shall keep Him from you. For He would as fain be at you, as you at Him, and fairer too. Take courage! He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.’ They were strong anodynes; but they did not pluck the rooted sorrow from the memory and spirit. She had been but a hypocrite, the Lady mourned; and between Christ and herself what was there except ‘fremmitness’—distance and estrangement, and alienation? In a day or two, however, there appeared some little lifting of the gloom. At least she could talk to the chaplain about the grievous lapses and wanderings with which she was chargeable: her ‘deadness, dullness, coldness in prayer, distraction and forgetfulness in hearing, an unruly passion, and a number of such ills breaking out.’ ‘Away! away!’ she expostulated, when again he tried to comfort, ‘speak not to me of any grace that I have, for I am graceless; I feel not so much as a dram of grace.’ Yet, as the needle points to its pole ‘and knows not why,’ her soul constantly turned to Him Whom she reckoned better than all the world. One morning, after a short rest, she showed Porteous a tiny manuscript book in which she had written a catalogue of God’s providences and Christ’s special mercies. She protested that each of these was ‘a dittay,’ an indictment, against her thanklessness and disobedience. But the scattering of the night-clouds had begun, and the sun was preparing to rise.
“The pestilence had caught her ere now in its fatal grasp; but, with the return of inward peace, she could glory over the bodily fever and pain. Once, those who attended her marked that she sang in her sleep. ‘Madam,’ asked the chaplain, ‘what did ye dream when ye smiled?’ ‘Smile!’ she said, ‘how could I but smile, when I saw my Lord drawing by the bed curtain? But He went swiftly away.’ Then she bade her friend leave her for two hours. He came back at the appointed time, to discover that there was no trace of the long-continued combat—nothing but the ravishment of deliverance. She had her good confession to make. ‘Now I see that all is not lost that is in danger; and that God’s children will have as many troubles as twice over ten horses will bear; and yet they will bear them all, though they seem to be sunk under them. I see they who love Christ love Him not for nought, but shall get as good as they brought, yea, ten thousand times better. I see God never wholly casts off those whom He once takes by the hand, and who honestly indent with him; and, if He seems to cast them off, it’s only in their own apprehension, and for the trial of their grace, and only for a while; and, in the meanwhile, His hand is under their head to support them, though they perceive it not.’
“Step by step she went down to the swellings of Jordan, with a shining radiance on her face. ‘Give me Hell, if Thou wilt,’ she was heard pleading, ‘but Christ with it; for He and I shall never part again.’ What did she think of eternal life, the minister queried. ‘O, it’s the only life!’ she replied. ‘This is but a living death. But it’s a lively, everlasting, honourable, immortal, easy, happy and comfortable life.’ And how did she like death, he queried again. ‘Very well,’ she answered. ‘I think it will do me the best turn that can be. It is a passage to bring me to, and to plunge me in the ocean of love. If I could win out of this house, I would be content to go to see my own grave made.’ By and by she left off speaking, although the onlookers knew by the motion of her lips that she persevered in prayer. And, on the next day-break, when he saw her dissolution approaching, Mr. Porteous, as he had promised, sounded in her ears, ‘the love of Christ.’ And she, with hands uplifted and eyes fixed and smiling countenance, did step victoriously into Eternity. Because this history, first of desolation and then of delight, was repeated in numbers of Covenanting hearts, it is well worth our while to remember Lady Hundalee’s sore struggle and glorious ‘outgate.'”
It is very much to be feared that conscious experimental knowledge of the above-referred to spiritual “desolations and then delights” is sadly rare among professing Christians in our day, but that was also the type of godly men and women who were conspicuous in the early history of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. They are to be found among us still, for which we have deep reason for gratitude to the Most High, for they are “the salt of the earth, and the light of the world,” but there is reason to fear that they are becoming fewer and fewer. To profess to live spiritually without these love visits from the blessed Saviour, and without conscious realised manifestations of His presence, favour, and fellowship, seems very strange, to say the last, to truly exercised Christians.
—J. P. McQ.