It was such a pretty village. The trim cottages with thatched roofs were grouped on the side of a hill. Its winding paths were bordered with sweet brier and honeysuckle, and a rippling brook coursed through the little valley below under a canopy of spreading trees.
I was visiting my brother who had recently been appointed rector of the parish. On my first walk with him I could not but express delight at the charming scene.
“To judge by appearances," said my brother, "it is an ideal village. These thatched roofs appear to cover only contented people, but misery and sorrow are concealed here as well as elsewhere. To convince you, you have only to enter the first house you reach on your road: this, for instance, on our right. There lives in this house a woman who is the picture of despair. The neighbors look upon her as insane. She believes she is lost, and all my efforts to bring before her the consolation of religion have so far been in vain.”
We had now reached the gate of the little garden and my brother opened it. He bade me to enter the house alone, as he must go on for a visit elsewhere.
Surely God alone could avail for such a case, I thought. I lifted up my heart to Him, praying that He might give me a message from Himself for this agonized soul.
At my tap on the door a woman's voice invited me in. She was at work when I entered, but s h e ceased when I told her I had come to see her. She placed a chair for me so that we sat face to face. We were in a large room with a big fireplace and slabs of stone for a floor.
Looking to the Lord to open the conversation, I spoke of the beauty and peace of the little village. My eulogies produced only a look of gloom, and she replied with a solemn voice, "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”
“No," I replied, "no peace, if it is sought within; but there is perfect peace in Jesus. 'He is our peace.”
The poor woman turned away her head, and I saw the tears roll down her pale face.
I spoke to her of the love of Jesus who came to seek and to save that which was lost. I reminded her of the price paid for our ransom. I felt that the Lord was giving me each word. At length I asked, "Will you not now accept the salvation which the Lord offers you?”
“I must wait His appointed time for that," she replied. "It may be that He will give me peace at the moment of my death. He has His own time.”
“Let us see in the Word what is His time," I answered as I opened my Bible. "I do not ask you to believe my word, but God's. Do you believe that all He has said is true?”
“Yes.”
“Yes," said she hesitatingly.
“I believe that God has sent me to you this after-
noon, and the message I bring is from Him. Will you not believe it?”
The expression on the poor woman's face showed the struggle going on in her soul. Satan was striving to hold his victim while I was lifting up my heart to the Lord that He would accomplish His work of deliverance in her. After a short silence she said, slowly and seriously: "If you have been sent by God, and your message is from Him, I must accept it.”
"Then you now accept Jesus as your Savior?”
"Yes," she said with emotion. We kneeled down on the stone floor and I asked the Lord not only to give her sustaining grace in coming to Him, but to grant entire confidence in His power to keep her.
I returned the following day and found her peaceful and happy. She was no longer occupied with her own sentiments, but with the One who had died to give her life and peace.
She then told me that the Lord Jesus had drawn her to Himself three years before, but that Satan had been unceasing in his efforts to disturb her peace. He had succeeded in turning her thoughts away from Christ and in occupying her with her own sad state. Now Christ at length had broken the chains and set her free.