A recent instance of the grace of God to one in humble life is present with me. I had spoken in her father’s house on several occasions. They welcomed the messenger for the message, “Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Many heard the word gladly. The party in question was one of my hearers then; she lies silent in the grave now. She had been married a year before; the time I allude to, and, shortly afterward, gave birth to an infant. Her health, previous to this, had been but feeble. Her confinement accelerated a disease on her lungs, which assumed a fatal aspect. Some Christians had visited her and prayed with her. I was also requested to call. I found her anxiously inquiring the way to Heaven. Her mental struggles had been severe, and still continued so. She had in health slighted early convictions. This troubled her in sickness. In fact she had many troubles, as all have who are looking at themselves and not at Christ. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
To make no merit of duties, and not to be disheartened by sins, is a highway to the cross. But nature is unequal to the journey. Divine grace alone can give energy for it. “Ye must be born again.” Yet it is cheering to watch the struggle of the soul to apprehend the unspeakable gift of God, to mark the dawning of divine light in some gradually appearing, in others bursting in full glory, illuminating the understanding at the very moment it imparts life; slowly, however, did this young woman apprehend the gospel. She struggled hard after it, longed and thirsted for it; and when ready to faint, and because so too, the Physician was at hand. The cross was displayed. She saw the burden of her guilt borne by Jesus, and it fell from herself.
I visited her very shortly after her deliverance from the “power of Satan unto God.” I saw in her face that the trouble was relieved, and the joy of her heart found expression in unmistakable language. “I have peace, now,” was her greeting, as I entered her room, and shook her by the hand. And after sitting beside her for a little while, she related what had passed in her mind. “I had been harassed all night,” she proceeded, “with doubts and fears. I never was in so much trouble! This morning I could not look up at all, and I was so cast down, so heavy, I could scarcely bear, I groaned before God in spirit. I thought, to be sure, none had ever suffered as I did. I prayed to God for Christ’s sake to have mercy on me. And then I turned that scripture over in my mind which says, ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’
“Surely, I thought to myself, this is just meant for me. I cried, ‘Lord help me, and I will come.’ And then the vail was taken off my heart, and I saw Him as plainly in my mind as if He had stood beside me and showed me His hands and His side!” “Heigh!” she exclaimed, “but it was grand! I wept for very gladness; and just at this moment, as I was so full thinking of His love to me, (there was a school down behind our house, and it was loosing time, and) the little children came out singing,
‘Happy day! happy day!
When Jesus washed my sins away,’
and they stopped short at these two lines, and sang no more. And I thought it was of the Lord, their doing so; for it was just as far as I had gotten to, ‘my sins washed away.’”
Smile not, my reader, incredulously, at this poor woman’s experience. The looms were at work in the upper rooms the inmates had their constant occupation; for it was their lot to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Yet the eye of our Heavenly Father watched in pity over His poor distressed creature, lying on a bed of languishing, needing pity, and finding none: and He who spared not His only Son, would not withhold from her the comfort just suited to her necessity. She lingered some weeks after this, giving evidence of a real change of heart, and died in the blessed peace of the gospel of Christ.
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