THE retrospect of my life so wonderfully corroborates the text, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord," that for the comfort of those who may have relatives in distant lands for whom they can only pray, I am induced to write a brief sketch of how the Lord found me.
I was born in India, and, like other Anglo-Indian children, was sent home for my education, and my father being Scotch, Edinburgh was my destination.
I can see now this was the first link in the chain. Edinburgh was indeed a new life for the little spoilt Indian child, whose every whim had been gratified by the ayah (nurse), and whose whole time had been spent in playing with pets of all kinds, and reading the silliest of story books.
Though eleven years old, I literally knew nothing of God or His word. Going to church, and learning the Scriptures, were new things to me. There was a freshness and novelty in them no child can understand who has been made to sit still through a service from babyhood, and commit verses to memory without understanding them. When I was about twelve years old, the great Scotch preacher, Dr. Guthrie, came to Edinburgh, and gave a special address for children, to which I was taken.
Though the text was soon forgotten, one of his illustrations, graphically given, of a ship going out to sea, without chart or pilot, being like a soul without Christ, doomed to perish, had such an effect on my soul, that I went home, and in an empty room, on bare boards, I knelt down, and for the first time really prayed. This surely was the second link.
In another year I was written for to return to India. Though still but a child, and not half educated, the voyage was such an expensive and long one (lasting for three or four months), that the opportunity of my sharing the cabin with an old friend, and of my being taken care of, could not be lost. When our good old minister heard I was leaving for India, he came to see me, and warned me of the temptations and worldliness into which I should be thrown, and kneeling down, committed the "little lassie" to the Lord's care. Take heart, believers, and pray with and for the little lads and lasses.
After a voyage of nearly four months I reached India in safety, and was thrown into such a godless house in Calcutta that I shudder to think of it—all my early impressions seemed blotted out, but to pacify conscience, I would, at times, hurry through a chapter in the Bible when I came home from a dance.
A whole year was spent in every sort of thoughtless gaiety, and before I was fifteen I was engaged to be married—need I add, to a godless young man, for none other visited at the house.
Not long after this we left Calcutta, and had to travel far into the interior—our journey occupying more than a week. There were no railways then in India, and so we travelled in a beautifully fitted-up river barge, called a "pinnace," passing through a portion of the Ganges delta, called the “Sunderbunds," which teemed with all the animals of a tropical climate, and was thickly clothed with jungle to the water's edge. On reaching our home we all looked out anxiously for letters, and my brother came to me with one in his hand, and with his face unusually solemn, to announce that in that short week of my absence from Calcutta the young man to whom I was engaged had suddenly died.
It was so sudden that my soul was made to tremble, and I could not rest. The question would recur, "What would become of you if you were to die?" This was the third link, and up in a lonely indigo plantation, five hundred miles from all means of grace, God by His Spirit opened my eyes to see I was a lost sinner.
Then came the question, "How can I make myself acceptable to God?” There are very few of God's children who have not in some measure gone through the experience of the seventh chapter of Romans—beating their rings against the bars of the legal cage, though the door of grace is wide open, only they turn their backs—poor, silly birds!—trying to make a way of escape, when He, "the Way," is waiting to set them free.
I began by imposing all sorts of mortifications on myself, which told on my health, and would have done any penance to gain peace.
I used to sit as far from the punkah (a fan slung from the roof) as possible, and almost faint with the heat—the punkah being as essential in India to a European for health (if not life) as fire is in winter in England.
I did not see it then, but I was really doing exactly what I was shocked at in the heathen devotees around me, who held one hand aloft till the sinews shrank, or clenched a fist till the nails grew through the hand. These mortifications, instead of bringing peace to my soul, or glory to Him who died for me, only gave cause to those about me to call me a Roman Catholic spoilt, and my efforts to be free left me just where I was, still beating my poor wings against the bars.
Many a weary month I passed without peace. However, I felt bound to speak to those around me, and to a dear brother, years older than myself, who was brought to the Lord some time after; and yet I would not have dared to say I was saved. The good Lord gave me deliverance by an illustration, just as He at first had used one to awaken my conscience. It was this: One in deep distress of soul dreamed that he was trying to climb to heaven, and suddenly found himself unable to go up or down, with merely a foothold to cling to. In the midst of his horror there came a voice, saying, "Trust me, and let go." “No, I could not do that," said the climber. "Then you must perish," was the answer. The voice came again, “Trust me, and let go." And now, panting and exhausted, with all hope in himself gone, in terror the hands relaxed, and instead of whirling into the abyss, lo! the everlasting arms were underneath, and from the trembling lips came the word, "Saved."
Then I saw that salvation was outside my poor self, that the Lord Jesus had satisfied the righteousness of God, that He had been “made sin for me who knew no sin, that I might be made the righteousness of God in Him." In Him I was accepted—in Him complete—and saved with an everlasting salvation.
Surely God's ways are not our ways; and after years and years of ups and downs-weariness often, sickness and deep sorrows—I can trace link after link which has brought me to Himself, and given me to be among those who are waiting for His coming. S.