Will anyone stay to listen to — or rather to read — a little memory-story: a testimony to God’s power to convert a very little child, and to keep her to old age? It is worth reading because it is true, and proves that God is true. Well, here it is then.
A dear little child, a tiny little creature, with dark brown eyes (who grew up to be a beautiful girl, and who, when she discovered this, dedicated her beauty to her Lord), a wee girl, born into the family of God just four years after she was born into the earthly family in which He placed her, and who was “kept by the power of God,” a shining member of His great family, for over ninety years. From four years old to ninety!
Imagine this little thing standing in the corner, biting her pinafore in her passion, but all the while in some strange way wanting to be good. So often was she there that she began to see that her own unaided trying was no use. Suddenly it came into her memory: “Papa says if we ask God, He will help us to be good and make us His own children.” And then and there she did ask Him. Well she remembered it afterward, though not the words, and she often talked of it. Found among her papers, after she had passed away, were the notes of an address given years ago in Edinburgh, and the following was in her own handwriting:
“I see it now, that nursery corner, and I perfectly remember the feeling. ‘Here again! naughty again!’ I said to myself, ‘and they think I don’t care, but I do care very much, and I’ll try again. I’m determined to be good.’ And here let me say to mothers and sisters, and all who have the care of little children, try to help them out of their naughtiness. Often when you think they don’t care, they are very sorry — only too proud to show it. It is sad, but yet delightful to me to think how I tried day after day, and yet failed. ‘Delightful?’ you say. Yes, because by this I learned a lifelong lesson, not to trust in myself.
“In the evening (I perfectly remember this too) I had as usual said my prayers beside my little bed, but I lay thinking: ‘How strange after all my trying. Naughty again today! Whatever shall I do?’ Suddenly the thought came again into my mind: ‘Papa says, if I ask Him, God will make me. His little child, and help me to be good.’ I’ll ask Him. So then and there, upon my bed, I poured out my little heart to Him, and He heard me. I had tried; now I prayed. The very next morning, when the milk and biscuits came up into the nursery (I had so often been in the corner by that time!) with astonishment I found myself happy and good with the others. Oh, what a lesson this has been to me all my life! We cannot alone — with God, we can.”
She had a family of nine children to care for, four of her own and five motherless ones of her missionary sister’s. The name “Aunt Louisa” (as well as the sweet one, “Mother”), was just a musical expression, descriptive of all that was loving and Christ-like. Even though she had all these to care for, she had a youths’ Sunday School class every Sunday morning in the schoolroom, and a young women’s Bible class in the afternoon in her own house. In later years many of these having married, they formed the nucleus of a Sunday afternoon meeting, numbering from twenty to thirty, which she held for many years, her daughters helping her with the singing and the visiting. This we know was greatly blessed by God to the conversion and help of many of them. Her portrait was taken a few months before she passed into the heavenly glory, and it shows her face — even then in her ninetieth year — with the beauty of the Lord our God upon her.” She was a faithful follower of Him all those years, loved and loving all her days, a bright example and help to all around, and greatly used by God.
Troubles, sorrows, trials during those long years? Oh yes, many and severe. And, of course, failures too. But the joy of it all is that God kept her faithful to Him, and sweet and bright even when “passing through the waters,” so that she could — and did — sing the thrice triumphant song in Ezekiel, “He brought me through.”
A little while before she died she wrote: “Certainly I am passing through the fires, but they do not kindle upon me. Every night as I lie down in my bed I seem to sink into the Everlasting Arms, and I feel that I am there.”
Sometime before she had asked me (her daughter), after she had gone Home, to write and make known her testimony to the keeping power of God, as well as His converting power, of even little children.
The point of this little memory-story is this: That lesson learned, and also the assurance that came to her then, for she told me often of how she remembered, “Then I am God’s little child, and He has helped me to be good.” This she said to her baby-self when she found the day had passed and she had not been “in the corner.”
As God has opened this “door of utterance” for her dear testimony, He will bless it to those who read it. Knowing this, we praise Him beforehand.
“Suffer the little children to come unto Me.”
“Even to your old age, I am He, and to hoar hairs will I carry you.”
Mellowed Fruit.
Who is this that cometh up
From the wilderness,
Leaning hard upon the One
Who is her Beloved?
Ninety years, in all distress.
His great love she proved.
Who is this that cometh — so,
Leaning all the while?
One who in her childhood’s days
Knew she was beloved.
Nothing can this bond defile,
Though the earth be moved!