Imagine to yourself a fine, old-time garden with the flowers blooming in their beauty all around. An ancient baronial castle, under whose walls many a chieftain had drawn his sword, but now a scene of unbroken peace. An aged lady of noble bearing, who, in her younger years, had been an intimate friend of Royalty, and a frequent visitor in its palaces, seated in that evening hour, engaged in quiet conversation with a young girl of seventeen, her grand-niece, who had come to bid her aged relative good-bye, before leaving her home to enter on her studies at a school in Switzerland.
The aged Countess—for such was her rank—was a decided Christian, and had lost “caste” in the aristocratic world, because of her allegiance to Christ, and her clear-ring testimony for His Name, whose love had won her heart, and the power of whose Cross had severed the links that once bound her to the pleasure mad world, enabling her to joyfully count all as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, whom she had learned to own and confess—like one of earlier times—as ‘Christ Jesus, my Lord’ (Phil. 3:8) and to spread the savor of His saving name by the testimony of her lips, and the attractiveness of a life lived in His love and the enjoyment of His smile.
That evening hour she regarded as a heaven-sent opportunity to speak from the heart, of the One whose praises she delighted to tell, and Whom, she knew, alone could save the soul and satisfy the heart of her young niece, about to enter on the path of life, without, so far as she knew, a personal knowledge of Christ as her Saviour. She had prayed for heavenly wisdom to speak the right word—for, while the gospel is the same for all, there is a message peculiarly fitted to the need of each individual soul, which becomes as the voice of God and the life-conveying Word, to the one to whom it is given, as all true soul-winners know.
That word in season was given by the aged Countess, in a simple, sweet manner, relating the story of her conversion some fifty years before, amid the very scenes in which they sat, under the preaching of a servant of Christ, much used in that time to bear the gospel in its fullness, among the aristocracy of the British Isles.
“I was saved through a simple personal acceptance of Christ as my Saviour, as He is presented in the words of Isaiah 53:5, which I made mine by reading them, ‘He was wounded for my transgressions, He was bruised for my iniquities, the chastisement of my peace was upon Him and with His stripes I am healed.’ This is saving faith, and this is what wins the heart to Christ, and makes His service that heart’s delight.”
For a full hour, the aged Countess, her eyes gleaming with a joy that filled and thrilled her heart, told her life story as a Christian, and how joyful, even when forsaken by her early life friends, her life had been, in following Christ. Her grand-niece listened with a strange surprise, and the effect of that testimony on her, shall be told in her own words.
“That story was the first real-life testimony to a living Christianity I had heard, and all so different from the half-worldly half-churchy religion I had been accustomed to see and hear of. That hour in the garden, under the tall elms, listening to the story of my grand-aunt, the aged Countess, was the turning-point in my life, although I do not say I was saved by a personal faith in the Lord Jesus, just then. It took other means to bring me to the point of decision, and to a definite acceptance of Him, as my grand-aunt had done, by putting in my own claim to a saving interest in His finished Work on Calvary, as my own Sacrifice and Substitute, my own Ransom and Redeemer.
I had to get pride broken down, to take the place and the name of a guilty sinner before God, ere I could claim the lost sinner’s Saviour, and shelter my sinful soul on the merits of His shed blood, which atones for sin. But it was that testimony to the suitability of Christ, to meet the wants of the soul and satisfy the desires of the heart, that bright, glowing testimony that flowed from the lips of one whose heart was fixed on Christ, and who was living in the warm sunshine of His love, that convinced me of the reality of being a true Christian, and made me dissatisfied with all that the world had to give. And now, like my aged kinswoman, I can say,
“Now, none but Christ can satisfy,
None other Name for me;
There’s love, and life, and lasting joy,
Lord Jesus, found in Thee.”
Has the reader this assurance?