mind had been given up already to those terrible problems of the soul that both humble and exalt the man who spends his life among them.  Beattie’s future congregation will not vaunt themselves about their minister’s ability or scholarship or eloquence; his sermons will soon push his people back behind all such superficial matters.  Beattie’s preaching and his whole pastorate will soon become another illustration of the truth that it is not gifts but graces in a minister that will in the long-run truly edify the body of Christ.  You have James Beattie’s portrait as a divinity student in Rutherford’s 249th letter, and you will find a complementary portrait of Beattie as a grey-haired pastor in Dr. Stalker’s Preacher and his Models.  ’He was a man of competent scholarship, and had the reputation of having been in early life a powerful and popular preacher.  But it was not to those gifts that he owed his unique influence.  He moved through the town, with his white hair and somewhat staid and dignified demeanour, as a hallowing presence.  His very passing in the street was a kind of benediction; the people, as they looked after him, spoke of him to each other with affectionate reverence.  Children were proud when he laid his hand on their heads, and they treasured the kindly words which he spoke to them.  They who laboured along with him in the ministry felt that his mere existence in the community was an irresistible demonstration of Christianity and a tower of strength to every good cause.  Yet he had not gained this position of influence by brilliant talents or great achievements or the pushing of ambition; for he was singularly modest, and would have been the last to credit himself with half the good he did.  The whole mystery lay in this, that he had lived in the town for forty years a blameless life, and was known by everybody to be a godly and a prayerful man.  The prime qualification for the ministry is goodness.’

Beattie as a student challenged himself severely on this account also, that some truths found a more easy and unshaken credit with him than other truths.  This is a common difficulty with many of our modern students also, and how best to advise with them under this real difficulty constantly puts their professors and their pastors to the test.  Whatever Beattie may have got, I confess I do not get much help in this difficulty out of Rutherford’s letter back to Beattie.  Rutherford, with all his splendid gifts of mind and heart, had sometimes a certain dogmatic and dictatorial way with him, and this is just the temper that our students still meet with too often in their old and settled censors.  The ‘torpor of assurance’ has not yet settled on the young divine as it has done on too many of the old.  There was a modest, a genuine, and an every way reasonable difficulty in this part of Beattie’s letter to Rutherford, and I wish much that Rutherford had felt himself put upon his quite capable mettle to deal