The Count of M. was found guilty of treason against the realm and violence against the king, and was imprisoned for life in the impregnable castle of G. That mountain fortress is almost unequaled in its natural facilities, and has been fortified yet more by human skill.
For a year the Count lay in his frightful, lonely cell, without one star of hope in either his outer or inner sky, for he was a skeptic. If forced by consuming weariness and the monotony of idle time, to take up the one book left him—the Bible—he read it with anger and gnashing of teeth against the God it reveals.
But sore affliction, the agent which has brought to the Good Shepherd many a sheep, was effectual in his case. The more he read the Bible, the more he felt the pressure of the gentle hand of God on his forlorn and hopeless heart.
On a stormy night when the mountain gales howled round the fortress, the Count lay sleepless on his cot. The tempest in his breast was as fearful as that without. His whole past life rose before him; he was convicted of his sins; he felt that the source of all his misery lay in his forsaking God. For the first time in his life, his heart was softened, and his eyes wet with tears of genuine repentance. Rising from his cot, he opened his Bible, and his eyes fell on the verse, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." Psa. 50:1515And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. (Psalm 50:15).
This word of God reached the very depths of his soul; he fell upon his knees, for the first time since he was a child, and cried to God for mercy. God, who, full of grace and compassion, turns not any away from the first movement of faith toward Him, heard the cry of the sufferer in dungeon, and gave him not only spiritual but temporal deliverance.
That same night the king lay sleepless, tortured by bodily pains, and in utter exhaustion he begged of God to grant him one hour of refreshing sleep. The favor was granted, and when he woke again, he said to his wife, the gentle queen, "God has looked upon me very graciously, and I may well be thankful to Him. Who in my kingdom has wronged me most? I will forgive him.”
"The Count of M.," replied Louise.
"You are right," said the sick king, "let him be pardoned.”
Day had not dawned when a courier was dispatched to bear to the prisoner pardon and release.
It is the usual way of our Good Shepherd, in gathering His lost flock, for whom He died, to do it, "without observation," and when He holds up to us a marked instance like this, no doubt it is that our dormant faith may be quickened in His power to save in the face of every obstacle.
Is there one reader, who, though not in a dungeon, has yet hard thoughts of God? Be assured that God is love, and He can pardon us on a just basis because His holy Son bore our guilt.