Bessie Walton was a young lady in a fashionable millinery establishment, and, with others, was invited to attend a Bible class specially intended for young persons engaged in business. She was merry and thoughtless, fond of dress, and worldly amusements. She came at times to the class, but was more frequently absent. Having gone to the house where she was employed to inquire for her, after a longer absence than usual, the visitor heard that she was ill, so called at her mother’s house to see her.
Poor Bessie was not pleased, and asked if she was supposed to be worse than any other young people that it was thought necessary to visit and speak seriously to her. However, a few kind words, and an assurance that the visit was not from any idea that she was worse than others, soothed her, and she listened quietly while a few verses were read from the Word.
She recovered so far as to be able to return to business for a time, but did not come to the class, as she was not well enough to be out late. She was visited from time to time, and though she no longer objected, it was evidently more from civility than enjoyment.
Her health again gave way, and soon it became evident that consumption was rapidly doing its fatal work. Still there was no evidence that her conscience had been reached by the Word, and those who watched for her soul, became doubly anxious.
The first evidence of interest she showed was one day when Romans 4 was being read to her, and the reader paused at verse 3. and repeated slowly: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”
With startling earnestness Bessie suddenly asked, “Where is that?” She said nothing more, but her visitor felt assured that a ray of light from God had reached her, and this assurance was confirmed when, at the next visit, the same subject being before them, it was remarked that Abraham had nothing but God’s Word to rest on, he was shut up to faith; apart from that, all was hopeless impossibility.
The speaker glanced up at the girl’s face, as she lay back with closed eyes, and as she looked, two great tears forced themselves from beneath the tightly-compressed lids and rolled silently down the wasted cheeks, while a deep, though silent, thanksgiving went up to God from the visitor’s heart. After this the reserve which Bessie had hitherto maintained, gradually gave way, and she gladly welcomed any who came to speak to her of the Lord. She was always ready for the Word, and was soon rejoicing in Jesus as her Savior. Never afterward, with one exception, did her joy seem to be interrupted for a moment.
That exception and her countenance and manner at the time, could never be effaced from the heart of the young Christian who witnessed the exercise through which her soul was passing. Going into her room one day, the contrast to the usually happy, peaceful face and bright greeting, was too apparent not to be noticed, and her visitor asked, “What is the matter, Bessie; has Satan been tempting you to doubt the Lord?”
“No,” she replied; “I have neither doubt nor fear. It is not that.”
“And what is it, then? Something is wrong.”
She had not yet raised her eyes, but now lifting them, she said, with a never-to-be-forgotten look, and a tone of the deepest sadness,
“O, Miss—, I have lost my life.”
At once her friend understood what she meant; it was not that she was dying; it was not that she was being cut down in her youth; no, it was that the brief life with which she had been entrusted, had been spent for her own pleasure, and now it was over, it was A LOST LIFE. There was silence, no word was spoken between those two—one about to be called away just as she had entered the wilderness path; the other with the path stretched out before her still to be trodden. It was a solemn moment. God was exercising each heart, and she who seemed likely to have many years still before her, thought—If one only lately converted, when dying, feels like this, how must it be with those who have long known the Lord as their Savior, and have lived for themselves, and not for Him who laid down His life to save them.
The cloud passed away; not so the impression it had made, and it may be that the God of all grace permitted that cloud for the accomplishing of His own will, and that dear Bessie’s has not been altogether a lost life.