I WAS spending the day at one of the most delightful country houses in Scotland. One of the guests present was a man of rare and wide learning and culture, with charming manners, and that easy and graceful address which made him as welcome in the drawing-room as in the cottage. With his face brightening up, he said to me: “I will tell you a story that will interest you. I can vouch for its truthfulness in every particular.”
M―was the daughter of a very distinguished and-wealthy family. When she was quite young, about twenty I believe, she was married to a young man of equal wealth and high social position. As was common, these young people were worldly and gay, given to everything going on in the fashionable world, and had nothing to do but to amuse themselves and gratify every whim which an idle fancy suggested. Of course they were utterly destitute of any spiritual knowledge of God and Christ, though, in their own way, devout Roman Catholics.
Shortly after their marriage they went one night to the theater and witnessed a play, in which, in one of the scenes, there was enacted the slaughter of the Huguenots. The scene was so vivid and life-like that it greatly distressed the mind of the lady. She asked her husband, with bated breath and strained eyes, what it meant. The reply was: “It is a representation of the killing of the Huguenots.” “Why were they killed?” asked his young wife. “Oh, they were killed for their heretical religion.” “And was it for no other reason than for their religion?” “For no other reason; they were heretics.” “And who had them killed?” Why I suppose it was done by order of the Church; they were heretics.” “And did our holy Church have these poor people massacred for no other reason than for believing Jesus Christ could save them without the help of our Church?” “For no other reason, so far as I know,” was the reply. “They were not criminals, but heretics.” And as best he could the young husband related the story of the massacre, without either justifying or condemning it, speaking of it rather as a matter of course.
This scene, and the story of the slaughter of the Huguenots, with which she had not been familiar, so wrought upon the young wife that she begged her husband to take her home. For days she could not shake off the impression of that scene and the story. It continued to weigh upon her mind until she fell into a deep state of melancholy and profound conviction of sin. There was none to help or instruct her, and she was as utterly ignorant of the Bible as she was destitute of the possession of one.
The husband became so distressed and alarmed at his wife’s condition that he called in medical advice. After hearing from the husband, the occasion of his wife’s mental distress, and from the lady herself the story of her horror, “that these poor people should be killed for their religion;” and being plied by her with questions concerning religion which he was utterly unable to answer, the physician withdrew and reported the case to the husband. “It is a case of religious monomania — a very bad one. You must act at once and promptly, or your wife will fall into hopeless melancholia, and perhaps end in permanent insanity. Do anything and everything that will divert her mind from the terrible subject that possesses her.”
Acting upon this advice the husband began a round of pleasure and fashionable dissipation, such as even they had never before indulged in. Night after night they were out at the theater, at concerts, at balls, and entertainments, the wife going reluctantly but obediently. One night they were at a great ball in the city. Of a sudden, like an apparition, there darted out before them a strange man dressed in black. He stepped up to the lady, and without a word of introduction or apology for speaking, said, with great eagerness “Madam, do you know ‘the Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us front all sin?’” To this startling and unheard of proclamation the lady replied: “What did you say, sir? Will you repeat those words?” At which the peculiar man in black again declared without note or comment, but with intense eagerness and pathos, “The Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin,” and then disappeared as suddenly and as strangely as he had appeared.
The lady stood still for a moment dumbfounded, and then remarked to her husband, “Did you ever hear that before? That is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard. What can it mean? “But as she spoke and mused on these words, and climbed the broad and lofty stairway, there fell upon her a peace so sweet and ecstatic that her whole face seemed lit up with an unearthly gladness. She went at once into the crowded salon, and approaching the first lady whom she saw, she said to her, “I have just heard the most extraordinary statement. I wonder if you ever heard it, and what does it mean, ‘The Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin?’
In a few minutes the words were whispered from lip to ear, “M — has gone mad.” But, like Paul, she was not mad, only filled with the gladness of God’s blessed peace. Noting the excited state of mind in which his wife had been thrown, her husband took her home. For days she simply dwelt in a paradise of joy, repeating over and over again the extraordinary words: “The Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”
She found out finally where the saying came from. For the first time she got hold of a Bible, and soon, through reading the New Testament, she learned the whole glad truth. It became the inspiration of a new life to her, and she became a noble and devoted witness for Christ.
Some months after the husband joined his wife in her new faith, and himself parted from the superstition of Rome. This lady lived on for sixty years, and never ceased to carry her joy and testimony wherever she went.
The singular thing about the whole matter was the sudden appearance of the man in black in that house on the night of a great ball, and his apparently read approach to the ballroom. He had occasion to visit the master or the house that night on urgent business, and as he was leaving, he was seized with an irresistible impulse to tell the first person he met that “the Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)).
Dr. G. F. Pentecost.