SO pleasures would not do; they could give no comfort; they could not provide the heart with anything that could support it in the thought of an ever-approaching judgment.
Self-righteousness would not do; it was ignorant and it was powerless. Worse than this, Louie's own heart would not do; it was constantly inclined to the sins which yet burdened and terrified it; it constantly longed and went after those pleasures which were so vain, its only suggestion was that covering of self-righteousness which God had pronounced to be “as filthy rags" in His sight.
Louie began afresh to struggle against her own heart just as she had struggled, long ago, when first she be-became convinced that to be a child of God was the only hope of deliverance from the sinner's doom. But now her trouble was no longer in those outbreaks of naughtiness and heedlessness which, as a little child, had so often brought all her hopes to nothing; she could often pass through the day in a manner which brought no reproach from any around her, yet all the time her own heart constantly and bitterly reproached her, for she could not find within herself one spark of that love to God which yet, she knew, was due to Him who had made her, who had showered blessings upon her, and above all, had given His only-begotten Son to die for sinners. Louie would often refuse the books which her own mind delighted in, and, taking her Bible, would go out to a lonely bank beside a stream, and there would sit and read, and think, and sing some of the sweet hymns which happy children of God had written. But all was useless; none of these efforts ever produced in Louie's heart the feelings she so desired to find there; all the reading and the singing and the wishing only filled her heart with the dreary assurance of its own hardness and barrenness.
Oh! what was to become of poor Louie! Her need was deep and real and constantly increasing, yet there was nothing around her, and nothing within her, to meet it.
But Louie was not left to despair. Just at this moment, a door opened before her, a little door, a dark-looking door, but a door, nevertheless, of hope; she would tell all out to God. Yes, the secret which she had never told to man she would tell to God; she would own before Him that a multitude of sins, witnessed against her, and proclaimed her worthy of no other portion than the lake of fire; that her own heart was so wicked, so deceitful, so foolish, that from it there was no hope; that all her efforts had been, and she felt sure would only be, useless; that if salvation was to reach her, it must be through the working of God's sovereign mercy, through a work in which she had no part; that if any good thing was ever to be found in her, it must be of God's own implanting.
And this, this moment when Louie gave up all hope in herself, was the moment when God opened a door of hope before her. “Trust in him at all times, ye people, pour out your heart before him, God is a refuge for us."
It was only a door of hope, it was not salvation; it was a strange mixture, a moment of entire hopelessness as to all that had been her trust, yet a moment that made her heart happy with a sweet, new hope. She could not have yet told how salvation would reach her, but she felt sure that, in some way, God, to whom she had committed all, would work for her. At times, she was earnest in expectation; at times, she was drawn away by cares and pleasures of this life, for she had still the same heart, weak, wicked and worthless; the only difference was that she was learning to look away from that heart, to distrust its thoughts, and to listen for the thoughts of God.
You may be sure that she was not disappointed; many little lessons and helps were sent to her during this time. One day, a stranger came to preach in the town near which she lived; he was said to preach in a manner quite unusual; some praised the new preacher much for his clearness, boldness, and earnestness; some thought his preaching rough and unpolished; but Louie thought that this new kind of preaching might, be just what she was in need of, and in answer to her eager request, she was taken to hear the stranger.
It was a new style indeed, quite different from any of the many sermons which Louie had listened to before; and yet, what the preacher said was not new, it was but a proclamation in public of that which
Louie's own heart had so long felt. The secret whispers of her own heart were “proclaimed upon the housetop"—all were alike: rich, poor, black, white, papist, protestant, learned, ignorant. "There is no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." It was a terrible word for those whom Satan had lulled to sleep with false ways and false hopes; an unwelcome word for those who desired to walk undisturbed in the broad way and not to hear that “it leadeth to destruction." Plenty were found to complain against the new preacher, but Louie's heart, like Lydia's of old, was opened by the Lord, so that she attended to the things spoken.
Not long after this, a little newspaper fell into Louie's hands; not one of those ordinary papers which tell what is going on in the world, what men are suffering and doing, but a paper setting forth what God was doing; for God was working most specially and graciously at that time, and many a needy soul had found, like Louie, in their most hopeless moment, a door of hope. Much Louie wondered as she read!
Not poor heathens, in lonely or half-civilized places, not papist soldiers, but educated persons, living in just such towns as Louie's present home, children taught and brought up just as she herself had been, were every day being converted, were being turned from their own thoughts and their own ways to learn the thoughts and ways of God, were believing the very word of God, were finding the Savior Jesus to be their Savior, and were confessing, with joyful lips,—I am saved. Oh! this was what Louie needed, and she prayed that God would work in like manner in the place where she was. God was teaching Louie and, at that very time, while she was praying this prayer in her solitary corner, Christians had come together in the town with the same request, that God would graciously grant in that place an outpouring of the blessed shower which had refreshed so many far and near.