GLASGOW, 9th December 1878.
MY DEAR ROBERT,
—From Day to Day is a book of
most pleasant and profitable reading. It is 365 meditations—as many as
Samuel Rutherford's Letters—as many as Enoch's years of earthly
pilgrimage and walking with God. There is a clearness and pointedness in your
style of writing that at once attracts the reader, and, dipping his rod in the
honey, he finds his eyes enlightened.
Had I attempted such a book my aim
would have been to forge a chain of 365 links—every day a doctrine that
naturally followed the one before! But I fear my idea is Utopian.
Many
thanks—and may you get thanks of the best kind in the prayers of those who
are receivers of blessing by your pages.—Your brother in the faith and
patience of the Lord Jesus,
ANDREW A. BONAR.
GLASGOW, 16th May 1882.
MODERATOR,
—I understand that to-morrow is your
birthday. Well, in turning over some papers, I lighted on a few scraps of
Robert M'Cheyne's, and one is entitled a 'Birthday Ode' to his father. I
venture, my dear Moderator-Elect, to apply to you the two lines with which the
fragment concludes :—
'We pray that, as oft as thy birthday
appears,
Thy purified joys may increase with thy years.'
I hope to see and hear you on Thursday, if the Lord will. (The
opening of the Free Church Assembly, of which Dr. Macdonald was that year to be
Moderator.) Take this text, brother, 'Only be strong and very courageous,
that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law. Turn not from it to
the right hand nor to the left, for then thou shalt prosper and have good
success.' —
Your fellow-soldier,
ANDREW A.
BONAR.
GLASGOW, 18th Jany. 1886.
MY DEAR
'ROBERT MACDONALD,'
—Only think how old you and I must be! (1)
You were ordained in Blairgowrie before I was a minister at Collace, and I was
there eighteen years, and have been in this city twenty-nine years. (2) This
being so, it must be forty-seven years at least since you and I began to
interchange ministerial services! How old we are now! Well, remember the
Eastern saying,'‘The palm-tree bears the finest dates when it is a hundred
years old,' and as you are on the way to that goal (though not quite in sight
of it yet), we here in Glasgow, who are expecting you in the end of the week,
are, of course, warranted to look for the 'finest dates' that were ever shaken
from the Blairgowrie-and-North Leith Palm-tree. . .
Paul wrote to Philemon
(verse 22nd): 'Prepare me a lodging.' Let me anticipate any such request by
saying your prophet's chamber shall be ready for you (with a good fire in this
cold, cold weather) whenever you come on Saturday. . . . —Ever yours, dear
brother,
ANDREW A. BONAR.
Transcribed from Reminiscences of Andrew A.Bonar D.D.
first published
LONDON, HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27 Paternoster
Row
1895
HTML transcription files copyright © 2001-2006.
Jane Newble
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