Fair Anwoth by the Solway

Another day off spent on pilgrimage. This time to Scotland’s rolling hills just across the Solway. Providence gave us sunshine and blue skies, and Kirkcudbrightshire gave us fair Anwoth. It was in this charming backwater, for eleven happy years, that Samuel Rutherford was minister. He was a member of the Westminster Assembly which wrote the Confession upon which Salem Chapel frames its doctrine, and he died in prison in Aberdeen in 1661 awaiting a likely death sentence for his sincere and uncompromising Presbyterianism. Furthermore, his words form the basis of one of my favourite hymns, The Sands of Time are Sinking.

Rutherford was exiled from his beloved congregation for political reasons in 1636, but he always looked back at those years with a deep and moving affection. Although most hymnbooks omit those verses which allude to the obscure Scottish village, the place was clearly for him a foretaste of heaven as he sat meditating in his stinking prison cell, while outside, his books were being burned by the Common Hangman on the street below.

6. E’en Anwoth was not heaven—

E’en preaching was not Christ

And in my sea-beat prison

My Lord and I held tryst:

And aye my murkiest storm-cloud

Was by a rainbow spann’d,

Caught from the glory dwelling

In Immanuel’s land.

 

9. The little birds of Anwoth

I used to count them blest,—

Now, beside happier altars

I go to build my nest:

O’er these there broods no silence,

No graves around them stand,

For glory, deathless, dwelleth

In Immanuel’s land.

 

10. Fair Anwoth by the Solway,

To me thou still art dear!

E’en from the verge of Heaven

I drop for thee a tear.

Oh! if one soul from Anwoth

Meet me at God’s right hand,

My Heaven will be two Heavens,

In Immanuel’s land!

 

It was a pleasure to walk among the ruins of his old kirk, where the pastor-poet preached Christ and led, he hoped, many sons to glory. He, his congregation and his persecutors are all now in eternity, and his kirk is now empty, but his life and doctrine continue to inspire. 

18. I have borne scorn and hatred,

I have borne wrong and shame,

Earth’s proud ones have reproach’d me,

For Christ’s thrice blessed name:

Where God His seal set fairest

They’ve stamp’d their foulest brand;

But judgment shines like noonday

In Immanuel’s land.