MIRANDA N—, says a Christian minister, was about eighteen years of age, much distinguished for personal beauty, but more for uncommon sweetness of disposition and great amiability of deportment. There was not, perhaps, amongst all the people of my charge one whose case would have been more promptly cited, and perhaps none so effectively, to disprove the doctrine of the entire sinfulness of the natural heart. She was deservedly a general favorite. She seemed to entertain the kindest affection toward all, and everyone who knew her loved her. One evening, at an inquiry meeting held at my house, I noticed in a full room a female in great apparent distress. Her loud sobs were a frequent and painful interruption of the silence of the room.
On coming to her seat, I was not a little surprised to find myself by the side of Miranda. The first enquiry I put to her was this: “What has brought you here, Miranda?” With emphasis she replied, “My sins, sir.” With a view to test the reality and depth of her convictions, I then said, “But what have you done, which makes either your heart or your life appear so heinously sinful?” At the second question she broke out into a voice that reached the extreme part of the room, and thrilled through every heart, for she was known and loved by everyone present, “I hate God, and I know it. I hate Christians, and I know it. I hate my own being. Oh that I had never been born!” As she uttered this acknowledgment, she rose and left the room in irrepressible agony. A few minutes after this, while walking the adjoining room in great distress, her eye lighted upon a copy of village hymns which lay upon the sideboard. She eagerly caught it up, and read at the first page to which she opened these words—
“There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.”
As she finished this verse, she dropped the book, and exclaimed, “I have found my Saviour! This is the Saviour I need! O precious Saviour!” and many other expressions of the same kind. Her enmity to God was gone, her burden was removed.