THE current of my life flowed on, as it were, amidst sunshine and flowers until I was about seventeen; then came my first sorrow.
My eldest brother, Charles, who was the pride and the joy of the family, was smitten with a grievous illness, the result of an over-worked brain, which, after days and nights of anxious watching, ended in his death. Oh! a sister's love for a favorite brother is very, very deep, having its spring in those earliest associations and affections from which the character takes its future tone, and I felt that all my life was darkened when Charles was taken from us.
My grandfather's death in the early part of that year, led to our removal to St. Leonard's. Here the ocean, in all its varied moods, became my teacher. Well do I remember the soothing, hopeful influence which would steal over my sorrowing heart as I looked, evening after evening, upon the flood of glory shed by the setting sun upon the waves. Brilliant in beauty was the surface, but cold, dark death lurked beneath. Such, I had lately learned, in bitterness and anguish, was the character of the life upon which I was entering. Yet there lay that pathway of golden light, leading on, across and beyond those cold waters, into the very center and fullness of the sun's effulgence! My thoughts turned to the Sun of Righteousness. Was there then a path to Him? And with deep heart-yearning came the next question, Could I ever hope to tread that path of light?
God, in tender mercy, strengthened these my first desires after Himself by four sermons on the Second Advent, which I heard the same autumn. I do not remember any special truth that I gathered, but my soul was exceedingly attracted. I had never heard a Christian preacher before, and I felt inexpressible delight in listening. The hymn we sang at the close"—
Lo! He comes, in clouds descending,
Once for favor’d sinners slain,"
made a deep impression on me, and a lasting one, as I afterwards proved, and became indeed the first feeble gleam of the dawning of that light which was in due time to rise upon my soul.
It was about this time that a friend of ours, with whom we used to practice archery, gave my sister and myself, as a little memento of our intercourse, two books, which were the first evangelical volumes that had ever gained admission into our house. I read and re-read them with intense interest, and with a heart increasingly attracted by the truth, which from the first had appeared to me unutterably lovely.
The next few years I spent principally with a beloved and indulgent uncle and aunt, who took me much into society, and made my life festive with a constant round of pleasure and amusements. The journal which I kept shows how little all this satisfied my soul's longings, and how through it all, I pined for something higher. In the midst of the whirl of balls, I write: "It is not enthusiasm which leads me to form the determination to lead a life dissimilar to that of the majority; it is the calm, sober sense that such a life is the only one consonant with truth and happiness. I look within, and there I find a deep yearning after happiness, which has never yet met with anything approaching to satisfaction. This conviction has long led me to look forward to some future state of being as the object of my wishes."
Thus were all the powerful worldly influences by which I was surrounded unable to stay the gradual but steady progress of the true light in this poor heart.
Three years later I again write in my diary: " Sunday.—The text this morning was, ' O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.' (Hosea 6:44O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away. (Hosea 6:4).) The Sun of Righteousness has at times almost risen on my heart, but the brightness of His beams has hitherto only gilded the distant clouds. Lord, grant me grace through my Redeemer ever to grow and increase in the knowledge of Thy will, and in the strength to practice it. Ah! the consideration is awful that we are ever vacillating between good and evil, making little real progress."
Notwithstanding these graver thoughts, I went on in my worldly course, bound to it by the powerful link of the love I bore to my relations, for I foresaw that separation from the world involved separation from them.
Returning one night from a ball, where I had been dancing with the gavest, and conversing with the most brilliant, I remember falling on my knees by my bed-side, dressed as I was in white satin and pearls, and there shedding floods of tears for I was utterly wretched and dissatisfied. "O my God!” I exclaimed,” I never, no, never, shall know what happiness is until I am given wholly to Thee!”
My agonized cry was heard above, but how was it to be answered? How was the most idolatrous heart ever possessed by a daughter of Eve to be taught to say, “What have I any more to do with idols?”
The answer came in a way I little anticipated. In the autumn of that year, as I was busily and merrily engaged in preparations for a fancy ball, I was suddenly seized with severe indisposition. I had lain in my darkened room two or three days, when the fearful conviction came suddenly upon me that I had irretrievably sinned away the day of grace. I was in the most absolute blackness of darkness of despair. Every other feeling of my soul was absorbed in the overwhelming sense that I was lost, that for me there was no hope, either in time or in eternity. I opened my lips to no one as to the torturing conviction that had laid hold on me, ford felt all would utterly fail to convince me to the contrary.
The weather was brilliant, but the sunshine seemed to mock my sadness, and the blue sky was to me as sack-cloth and blackness. If I turned over the leaves of my Bible, it was but to seek those passages which speak of everlasting condemnation. The words sounded continually in my ears, “Thou hast destroyed thyself." (Hosea 13:99O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. (Hosea 13:9).) The blessed conclusion of the sentence, “but in Me is thine help “I, heard not, saw not! I thoroughly justified God in my condemnation; He had offered me light, and I had preferred darkness. My outward conduct might have been fair, but what of my heart? Ah! I had thought that very fair too, until now, but the thrice holy God was showing me myself in all my sinfulness and distance from Him.
Yet I preserved a perfectly calm exterior, and while on all other subjects my innermost thoughts were known to my uncle, of the one great question pending between my soul and God I never spoke, for I felt that I should not be understood, and that I should receive no help. I never therefore made the most distant allusion to my agony of mind. Once only -my uncle, bending lovingly over me as I lay on the sofa, made a touching remark on my unusual gravity, but I gave him no, explanation.
In this fearful state I continued for a fortnight; I can only say of this period, "the pains of hell gat hold upon me." Now my soul bows in adoration before the Savior, who, being about to draw me to Himself, and to give me peace, and joy, and rest of soul, enhanced the value of the wondrous gift by first showing to me the depths of the ruin from which His grace and love rescued me. His purpose of infinite mercy was to unfold to my soul the tenderness, the sweetness of that grace and love; hence He led me through those weeks of misery in which I learned my deep need and His great holiness.
At the close of the fortnight, as I was plaiting my hair one morning, the words of the hymn I had heard years before at St. Leonard's suddenly came to my mind:
“Lo! He comes, in clouds descending,
Once for favor'd sinners slain."
“If for sinners, why not for me?” I exclaimed. The scene described in 1 Thess. 4 rose vividly before me, and I felt the assurance that, as one of the sinners for whom Christ had died, I should be amongst those who would rise to meet Him in the air. All the darkness of my despair was instantly dispelled, and forever! And with a full heart I praised Him for His saving mercy. Not that 1 had settled peace yet; and I had everything to learn.
The Lord, in His tender pity, did not put my trembling, new-born faith to too hard a test. He did not ask me to give up my beloved uncle and aunt, but so ordered events in His gracious providence as to take me away from them. My aunt was called away to the bedside of an invalid friend, and I returned to my own people in Devonshire. Here, in the depths of the country, I devoted myself to earnest study of the word of God and to prayer.
In previous years my love of study had been great, and my kind, wise uncle used to smile, half reproachfully, at the heterogeneous character of the books I read. “Keep to one book, my dear," he would say. He little thought how literally and happily his injunction was soon to be followed; for I now found that all my desire to drink of the mingled and often bitter waters of human wisdom, gave way to the thirst which my God gave me after the living Fountain of His truth, and I discontinued all secular studies. I felt sadly my ignorance of the word of God, and I had no gospel ministry to help me-indeed, I knew not even one converted person. So the Lord became my Teacher by His Holy Spirit through the Scriptures.
That winter I wrote in my diary—
"After an eventful period, I resume my pen. Our prayers should uninterruptedly ascend to the throne of our Heavenly Father, for that love of Christ. Jesus, without which we are dead. But once having gained it, oh! how changed are our prospects for time and for eternity I All things are possible with God, and He will by no means cast out those that come to Him in sincerity. Oh! that Divine love may grow up in my heart! I am sufficiently ready to pour out the boundless ocean of affection upon earthly objects, when I see, or fancy that I see any perfection in them; shall I then receive coldly the marvelous blessings of redemption and sanctification? Shall the prospect of spending an eternity with my Savior affect me so little?"
“December 25.—To make all our requests known to God by prayer is an inexpressibly dear privilege. My supplication at the throne of mercy is, that in every sorrow and in every doubt I may have grace given me to see in what way it is God's will that I should walk. And I have faith that ' My God will be very gracious at the voice of my cry.' When He shall hear it, He will answer it, and my ears shall hear a voice saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it.' "
And the answer was not long in coming. As I was praying in my room one afternoon with my Bible before me, earnestly desiring to know if I in very deed were saved, my eyes fell on the text, " I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." The words entered into my soul with the deep, calm, living joy and power which the Holy Ghost alone can give. I knew that it was the voice of God, speaking to me through Christ Jesus my Lord by the Holy Ghost, and my whole being was filled with that " peace which passeth all understanding."
Here, then, was the answer to my cries—here the unutterably blessed filling up of the vacancy in my heart, which had made my life one long sigh! Now, indeed, I could come up from the wilderness leaning upon my Beloved! With the sweet assurance of the fullness of His delight in me, there was no room in my heart for any other claim, and, in His infinite grace, He did enable me now to say, "What have I any more to do with idols?”
One of the sweetest unfoldings of the grace of God towards us is surely that which makes us share of His own joy as the Giver. To be able to minister to others even the lower order of blessings is happiness. What shall we say, then, of the love which allows us to bring the light of life to those most dear to us?
During the following years, to my great joy, my three sisters and my youngest brother received Christ through conversations I continually had with them. Then my dear father's health began to decline, and our medical man at length requested my mother to allow me to tell my father that he was rapidly sinking. Up to this period he never would permit me to speak to him about the Lord, though I had found frequent opportunities of writing to him. The morning after the doctor's request I was alone in the bedroom with the beloved invalid. The room was darkened, so that I could not see his countenance. He suffered much from want of circulation, which I was trying to restore by rubbing his feet. As I knelt by his couch the Lord gave me courage to speak of Himself; who is “the Resurrection and the Life," and at the same time I told him the doctor's opinion as to his health. My father received all that I said with calmness and kindness, and from that day forward, for nearly three months, I had the joy daily of bringing to him the glad tidings of good things.
That my beloved parent gave up that righteousness of his own to which he had clung, and that he received Christ as his Savior, I have not the least doubt. On the last morning of his life he told me that he should die in the evening, and at the same time expressed his confidence in Christ alone. He passed away without a sigh, sitting in his easy-chair, at the moment that the sun sank in the crimson west.
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Thus did the Lord, in His saving pity, bring my feet into the way of peace-into that pathway of living light that, as a young girl, I had longed to tread. Truly I may say—
“I came to Jesus, and I found
In Him my Star, my Sun,
And in that light of life I'll walk
Till travelling days are done."
D.