SOME of our readers are already familiar with the story of Sukey (Susanna) Harley’s remarkable conversion and her clear views of the doctrines of grace. A new edition of her life has been reprinted, and is got up in a neat form, and published at a remarkably low price. Sukey Harley was born at Prolimoor, in the Parish of Wentnor, Shropshire. Her maiden name was Overton, and she was the youngest but one of a family of sixteen. Her education was neglected owing to the straitened circumstances of her parents, and she was not able to read. She married, while very young, Charles Harley, a quiet, industrious man, who earned his living as a farm labourer. Soon after her marriage, she went to live at Ryton, a small village not far from Shrewsbury, where it pleased the God of her salvation to visit her with a day of overwhelming conviction of her ruined and lost state as a sinner, and to put into her heart a cry for mercy that He graciously answered. She tells how her husband would rebuke her at times for swearing:—”Wheneves he heard me curse and swear, he would rebuke me, but very mildly; he used to say, ‘Sukey, I wish I could hear you talk without swearing: I wish you would leave off them words.’ I was ready to hit him for downright rage.” The Sabbath Day was one of Sukey’s great days for buying and pleasure-seeking. Here is her own account of how she spent the Sabbath:—”I made acquaintance with all the idle, frivolous girls in the village. I should think that there was not the like to be found in all the country; hooting and bawling, shouting, gammocking, and romping. On the Sabbath morning we used to collect together in a large barn, dancing and revelling and fooling away the time. I was a very good tuner on the fiddle, and they used to dance. This is the way my Sabbaths were spent.” Some of her neighbours got her to accompany them to their meeting-house, but Sukey, selling her pig to buy what she considered suitable apparel for the occasion, dressed herself out in such grotesque grandeur that they were somewhat ashamed of her company. At this time, she says:—”I was ignorant of a holy God; I was ignorant of my vileness, my devilish, hellish heart; my sins were hid from my sight, but my God knew me, though I knew not Him.” She went two or three times to chapel, and to quote her words again:—”It was now my trouble began; I soon flung away the new things; it was the devil made me put them on, and it was the devil made me throw them off; he had possession of my heart. At last I went such a sight to church, with my cap all collared and the strings dangling about. Well, the women were ashamed of my company again, just in the other extreme; but they durst not speak about it, I was such an odd woman, so hampered and entangled by the devil and my wicked heart.” At length she was in sore trouble, not through anything she had heard in the chapel, but with the thought that the good women who had invited her to the meetings had something of which she knew nothing. She set about, in her ignorance, to try to discover the secret, and as she said herself—”I would for ever make some light excuse to know what they two were about. I would peep into old Nancy Smith’s door; she would come out, the big tears standing in her eyes, and the Book in her hand; well, I hated her.” Then she would go to the other, who would invite her to come in and sit down, while she would read to her from the same precious Book. Then Sukey would go home pondering over the matter, puzzling her brains as to what they had which she had not. “I was weary, weary, weary; day and night I could find no rest,” she says, “Oh! I wanted something I couldna’ get. I began to think there must be a God; then I thought these women knew that God. They used to tell me I must pray; so in hopes of knowing their God, I did pray, that is, I said the Lord’s Prayer o’er and o’er and o’er again; this was all the praying I knew.” At this time she describes her state in her own quaint way: “I was in a dreadful, distressed, tossed state, the poorest, destitute creature on the face of the earth. I knew no God, that was the thing that kept me so wretched; I was such a harum-scarum, senseless thing, and very wicked.” She had not at this time given up her swearing, and her good friend, Nancy Smith, would rebuke her at times, saying—”Oh, Sukey Harley, hell will be your portion.” Then she would think of hell, what a dreadful place it must be, and some nights she would be afraid to close her eyes lest she would fall into that dreadful place. One day, about this time, she was trying to get two young pigs into a sty, which, with the contrariness of their kind, were determined to go in every direction but the one desired. This sorely tried Sukey’s temper, and she cursed and swore at the pigs. Old Nancy Smith, shocked at her godless speech, rebuked her, saying, “Oh, Sukey, Sukey, thee must be born again.” “Well,” she says, “these words confounded me; they clean up did me. What can the old hypocrite mean?” She went off to her friend Nancy Rowland, whom she loved better than Nancy Smith, and asked her what the words meant, at the same time expressing a willingness to believe them if they were in the Bible. Nancy was silent for a minute, then she went for her Bible, and read the impressive words so weighted with destiny for sinners. “Well, did I believe ’em?” she says. “No; I had no faith; how could I believe? And I say, No sinner can believe, nor do the least thing towards it, till the Lord is pleased to send him that true faith down from heaven; then he believes, but never till then; and if he thinks he does, it is only the deceit of the devil and his own heart.” “Thou must be born again” took hold of her, and she could get no rest. “I had no more understanding of them than a dead corpse.” was her own testimony. “I was rumbled and fluttered in my mind to find out the sense of these words.” She, like Christian, grew worse and worse. She thought it was because she could not read that she did not know God. Her two women friends were such fine scholars; they could read and pray—”They have got such a sight of prayers, and I have only known this one,” was Sukey’s next effort to arrive at a solution of the problem that was perplexing her mind. We give in her own words her description of this new effort:—”Then I thought I must have a new prayer, the old prayer won’t do. I kept repeating it over and over again, but I wanted a new prayer. I mourned, I cried to God to teach me a new prayer. These words clapped into my mind—”Lord, lead me into the true knowledge of thy dear Son.” I never heard that God had a Son, yet these words came into my heart. It was the prayer God taught me Himself; no one else taught me.” She kept praying this new prayer for a fortnight, and on a Sabbath night in the chapel she was in a dreadful state of mind, quite sure that she and others she knew in the congregation were going to hell, while her good friends, Nancy Smith and Nancy Rowlands, were going surely to heaven. As she was walking behind them on their way home, she heard the one remark to the other:—”Oh! Nancy, Nancy, there’s some precious soul called to-night.” She was now tempted to give up praying, as she felt there was no hope for her, but while in these deep waters the words that the preacher preached on came into her mind, though at the time she had paid no attention to them:—”Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. iii. 20). At length the great day in Sukey’s life came. She shut herself in in her room, and with earnest cries made her request unto the God of Salvation. “I stuffed the windows with all the old rags I could find,” she says; “I could not bear the light; then I went down on my knees in the dark corner, and began praying these same words that I used to do, the same words over and over and over again—the Lord’s Prayer, and ‘Lord, lead me into the true knowledge of Thy dear Son.’ I felt as if I would have pulled the roof over my head, I went tearing and tearing at it with such vehement earnestness. Well, who put that strong cry into my heart? Was it from myself? No; but He gave it me, and forced me to cry out, because it was His own blessed will to hear me and answer me. I felt Him come; it’s past my talking about! Such a wonderful time; it’s clean past telling. No words can express the feelings of my heart at this time. He fetched me off my knees; I started up. I cannot find words to express the wonderful things of that blessed moment. Well, this is part of it: He showed me all my sins that I had committed from a child. . . . Oh! He showed me my black desert, how I had deserved to go to hell; what a reprobate I had been, and how like a devil I had walked on the earth; how I had angered Him with my sinfulness. My heavy sins and my vileness came upon me. Oh! he appeared such a holy God, such a heavenly, oright, and glorious Being; suppose He had said to me then at that awful moment:—”Depart from Me, ye cursed;” He would have been just, and to hell I must have gone. . . . I had been frightened but not low; there was somewhat that held me from being frightened. He seemed to tell me all my sins were forgiven. I had such a sight inwardly of my dear Redeemer’s sufferings; how He was crucified, how He hung on the cross for me; it was as if he showed me what I deserved, yet He seemed to say, He had suffered that desert. It was as if He had made it so plain to me how that He would save me, because it was His own blessed will to save me. It was as if He had shown me how He had chosen me from the foundation of the world. He would have mercy on me, because He would have mercy.” The story of Sukey Harley after this momentous day is remarkable for the clear and deep experimental view she had of God’s only way of salvation. As one reads the remarkable narrative, the words of the Psalmist—”His ways are in the deep”—rise up before the mind. If ever there was a trophy of sovereign redeeming grace surely Sukey Harley was one, and we put on record the story of the Lord’s leading of and dealing with her until He brought her to the feet of her beloved Redeemer, whom she loved with a heart as if set aflame with heavenly fire. She said to her niece on one occasion—”I can tell you but little; but this I will tell you: I was not converted by man, nor yet by any power, but by the Spirit of God. I love to hear them talk what the Lord teaches. I love to hear them relate what the Lord has done for their souls. We can-na’ receive the light of life from man; it must be the gift of God. Oh, Emma, it’s a great work; it’s too great for a poor, blind, wretched sinner to undertake for himself. Our God is just and holy, a glorious, wonderful Being. Now, can such a vile, black sinner as I stand before Him? He must fit me. He must do all the work. I can-na’ do one hand’s turn for myself; there must be no intermixture. Yea, and He will do it all, and He shall have all the glory.”
* Memoir of Sukey Harley of the Parish of Pulverback, near Shrewsbury, by Miss Jane Gilpin. Pp. 127. Price 1s 6d. post free 1s 9d. Messrs Farncombe & Sons, Ltd., 30 Imperial Buildings, Ludgate Circus, London, E C.