A Godly Young Woman who passed through much tribulation, and died at Edinburgh in 1839.
BY THE LATE REV. FRANCIS M’BEAN, FREE CHURCH, FORT-AUGUSTUS.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE LATE PROFESSOR SMEATON, D.D.
I WILLINGLY comply with the request to prefix a few lines to these remarkable “Recollections.” They afford a glimpse of a soul in communion with God, in a very trying condition, and cannot be read by any Christian mind without astonishment and praise to a covenant God. They show great grace; a communion with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and how the Word was brought fresh to the mind from day to day. They give the artless utterance of unfeigned faith amid trials such as few endure. They show through what affliction a disciple sometimes has the graces of the divine life ripened, and what the Spirit of God can do for the bruised seed.
The Notes were taken down by the late Rev. Mr. M’Bean, a preacher of great power, and a keen scrutiniser of the human heart in the matter of religious experience. His questions and appended explanations show a true divine. And the Notes give a hint to Christians similarly situated, if they would accurately retain what is worthy of preservation.
The “Conversations,” called forth by leading questions which show a skilful spiritual adviser, bring to light a type of piety remarkable for its depth and humility, soundness of doctrine, and real communion, spirituality, patience, and zeal for the cause of God. It is the current coin of old Scottish piety, and the well-known phraseology with which one edified another from mouth to mouth. And the record cannot but prove quickening as an instance of world-overcoming faith, warm love, and hope of glory.
Some phrases might perhaps have been exchanged for the more modern English expression. But it is better to give the Notes as they were written by the remarkable man who thought them worthy of being taken down. I very cordially recommend them, and doubt not that they will quicken as well as humble many.
GEORGE SMEATON.
EDINBURGH, 9th August, 1881.
ACCOUNT of, and CONVERSATIONS with, BETSY LINDSAY, whom I visited, and found at No. 17 Dalrymple Place, Edinburgh.
- Betsy Lindsay was only in her twenty-third year when she died. This is a reprint from booklet issued in 1881.—Ed.
After a few interviews I judged the dealings of God with her so remarkable, that, to His praise, they ought not to be allowed to pass by into oblivion, and resolved to obtain from her as much of her history as her weak state of body should enable her to give at intervals, and her memory could recollect. In the following, I have copied carefully what dropped from her own mouth, taken on the spot, or recorded immediately after leaving her:—
In Musselburgh, I was born in the year 1816. I was always delicate from my youth, so that I could not be kept in a day school. When between seven and eight years I was sent to a Sabbath school. I could not sit in any confined place without fainting, which greatly interrupted my attendance at the Sabbath school. I then felt a sweetness in religious duties, such as reading the Word and prayer, and felt a dread at the neglect of prayer; though as to any spiritual understanding of the truth, I at that time had none, and though then on self-righteous ground, the reading of God’s blessed Word gave a peace of mind that was pleasant to me, though false. When at the age of thirteen, I went to serve to the family of Sir Robert Dick of Prestonfield, where I remained fifteen months, which was a time of utter neglect of my soul, except a cold, formal sort of prayer morning and evening.
Four years come May, I left Sir Robert Dick’s to serve Mr. Horne, who was tutor in the family when he got the parish of Gifford; and while with him he took particular care of my religious instruction, but it was like the morning cloud and the early dew; it soon passed away. I felt no powerful impressions from the truth until I heard a Mr. Leitch, a tutor in some family in Haddington, preach from 1 Kings xviii. 21—”How long halt ye between two opinions?” I cannot state any part of the sermon, because the text itself was such a wound to me. On his just reading the text, it came like a deathblow to me, as if it should have struck me to the ground. The text grasped my mind so powerfully, that it took my mind away to think of my undone condition, so that I have only a confused idea of the faithful contrast he drew between those who followed God, and those who followed the world. I forget also the psalms that were afterwards sung, but both they, and what my ear caught of the sermon, were as darts stuck in my heart. I thought I would have given the world to have been away from the church, as, if I had not come there, my peace of mind had not been disturbed, but sleep on in my delusion—so wretchedly and brutishly ignorant was I of my need of being awakened to a sense of my condition as a lost sinner. I retired from the church in a state of mind I cannot describe, but which may be conceived by one over whom the billows of the Lord had been rolling. I thought the frowns of an angry God formed a thick and dark cloud around me in the church. The evening passed in weeping and crying, constantly saying in my own mind, “A wounded spirit who can bear?”—not, however, making my plaint to the Lord, but rather trying to stir up something good in myself.
At worship, Mr. Horne made me read in the sixth chapter of Matthew. The twenty-fourth verse—”No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon,”—was to me as the text and the sermon. Mr. Horne asked me if I loved God, and if I served Him? I could give no other answer than that I did not. Before that day on which it pleased the Lord to open my eyes to see myself, had he asked me the question, I would have answered “Yes”; for I thought I believed and both loved and served Him, when all I did was self-righteousness and self-seeking. The chapter Mr. Horne read, the psalm he sung, and his prayer, were all set against me. I wondered at the minuteness with which, in his prayer, he went through my mind. I thought he had surely come some way to know the state of my mind, though I told neither him nor any other person a word about it. I retired, but not to sleep. The disease under which I am now labouring was on me then. All my body was swelled and pained from my toe to the crown of my head. Until I was wounded at the heart, I thought my bodily trouble great; but then it became nothing to me, though it no doubt tended to aggravate my sufferings. I dreaded to sleep, for I thought if I should do so I would surely waken before morning in eternal fire. I told no person how I felt.
I thought Mr. Horne picked out to read at worship the chapters that were more against me just to pain me, and if I should tell him how I felt, that he would grow worse in picking out more; and having already unendurable pangs of mental pain, I resolved to keep out of his power to be more pointed than he was. My neighbour, the servant, sometimes observing my distracted state of mind, when I would be more absent and off my guard, would say, “Surely, lassie, you are going mad.” Sometimes a ray of hope, through some passage or other, would beam in upon my mind, but my convictions were so powerful and my apprehensions so awful, that in a moment these rays would flee away. The idea I had of God was that He was inflexibly just; that His justice required vengeance; that, therefore, it was just in Him to punish me in the way He was now doing, and I was suffering; or in some other way befitting His glory and the honour of His law. When a ray of hope would break in upon my mind, I would then think of a possibility of being saved, but in a moment again the idea would overflow me, that though His power was able to save me, He would not will to save me, because I found myself so great a sinner. Days and weeks and months passed over me in that condition, with a constant succession of new ideas of sin and of wrath breaking in upon my mind as an overwhelming flood.
I continued to do my work as well as I could, notwithstanding my mental agony and bodily pain. I had not much time to retire for prayer, but often, at first, my mind went out in ejaculatory prayer, but to no avail. I then gave up prayer altogether, as a vain thing for me. I gave up reading the Bible, not from hatred to it, but from the fear and dread it always carried to my mind. I was obliged, however, to look into it at worship, which always was painful; and perhaps I might glance at it at other times, but very rarely. That Scripture was ever sounding in my mind—Hosea iv. 17, “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone.” I thought it contained and intimated a curse from God upon me direct, and could not get over it. Another portion also I thought fixed my doom—Prov. i. 24-31. I knew full well I had done as there described, and judged this to be the sin against the Holy Ghost, for which there was no pardon, and so concluded my salvation utterly impossible. I thus laid my account to eternal perdition, which appeared to me to be reasonable and just. In these chains I was held fast. Christ would seldom occur to my mind. I viewed all as in the hand of God the Father—Christ and salvation at God’s disposal, and subservient to Him. I could not endure the promises, because they had nothing for me. When, therefore, any of them were in the chapter at worship, they gave me great pain. I could not endure the singing at worship, yet I enjoyed to get to the garden to hear the birds sing. Mr. Horne asked me once why I did not sing. I told him I could not. I viewed myself as the only creature on earth under the absolute exclusion of God. I looked for death every moment, not at five minutes’ distance. I would sleep but little, and many nights no wink at all. Besides mental agony, my breathing was so obstructed with the flowing of blood to my throat, that I could not often lay my head to the pillow. It was just absolute misery, enduring excruciating pain in body and mind, and without a ray of hope from God, and my condition unknown to anybody. I do not think Mr. Horne, though more like a father or a brother than a master, even suspected that anything was the matter with me.
I remember the awful horrors I had during a thunderstorm, a few weeks before I had release. It commenced about eight in the evening. I was in one of the upper bedrooms when the first flash of lightning came, followed by a loud peal of thunder. I thought this was just come to send me in a moment among the flames. I ran downstairs and grasped the other servant, “pale as death,” as she said. I thought I was just struggling with death, and viewed every peal of thunder as the awful voice of an angry God having His wrath awfully disturbed against me. When Mr. Horne was praying at worship the loudest peal came, which made his voice to change and falter, and which increased my terror; yet I prayed none, but stood still and hardened myself to endure.
I remember two or three weeks before my release, when sitting at the fireside, I fell asleep, and thought I had seen a man in shining glittering garment, spangled like silver, from a high mountain, coming to me with his arms stretched out to embrace me; but when he just came to me I awoke. This, however, awoke in me a hope for two or three days, that perhaps a message from God from the holy hill of Zion might yet come with salvation.
It was some time in winter that I heard Mr. Leitch, and then in summer I heard Mr. Buchanan in North Leith. Perhaps six or eight months after, Mr. Buchanan preached at Gifford from that passage in Isaiah liv. 10—”For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” Just as he read the text I thought that a beam of light and glory filled the whole church and, with the text, entered into my heart. Christ Jesus, in His glory as a Saviour, suddenly came into the full view of my mind, and I thought God, through Christ, in that passage appeared to my mind as reconciled; and I felt His reconciliation and peace lodged in my heart. Christ appeared to my mind not in any shape or imaginary form, but in relation as Mediator between me and God. Thus were my strong chains broken asunder, my soul filled with light and understanding, and my heart overflowing with joy. During the sermon my joys increased, and at the last singing I thought the whole church should hear my singing. When I went out of the church I thought the whole face of nature had such a happy appearance, and everything smiling upon me, as if willing to rejoice with me. I had such a joy in looking at the works of my reconciled God; I saw such wisdom, skill, order, and beauty and goodness in them, that that passage leaped into my mind, “The whole earth is full of his glory”—Isaiah vi. 3. I thought how true and descriptive that passage is. Yet my mind was fastened to heaven, and the 103rd Psalm was my constant song:—
“O thou, my soul, bless God the Lord;
And all that in me is
Be stirred up, His holy name
To magnify and bless.”
My joy would increase when I came to the second verse—
“Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God,
And not forgetful be
Of all His gracious benefits
He hath bestowed on thee.”
I remained in Mr. Horne’s till Martinmas, when I came in to Edinburgh to serve with Mrs. Stark, Salisbury Green. Towards Christmas I became so ill that I was obliged to give up serving and go to Dumfries, where our family had gone. On the way I vomited so much blood in the coach that when I arrived I was scarcely able to walk upstairs. I was so much swelled all over, that when my mother saw me she could not persuade herself that I was so ill. She rather thought I was grown from being skin and bone to be full and fat. I, however, took to my bed, and became extremely ill. I was bled copiously once and again, besides my head being shaved, yet I became so feverish that for a fortnight I was quite insensible; yet they tell me I was constantly at the Bible, and marked in the Bible a great many of the most striking passages. When I saw this afterwards, I was quite surprised at the judgment I had about the Bible, when to other things I was quite absent. I had no recollection whatever of what passed during that fortnight.
In the course of time I began to grow better, until on the 1st of May we left Dumfries for this city. I came about twenty miles by the carriers, and being unable to come further with them, I came by the mail to the neighbourhood; and on Monday, the — of May, 1833, I came into this house. I continued sickly, but able to go about a little now and then until September, when I was confined wholly to bed. I thought I would have been choked by the flow of blood to my throat.
About the middle of March last my eyesight was taken away, and I was stone blind for ten weeks. In the beginning of June it was restored, only not so much as to enable me to read, but serving all other purposes of sight, and continued until the middle of July, when I again lost it for two months. About the middle of September my sight was again restored to me, and continued with me until Saturday, the 24th of January, in the same degree as before. From that time I have been quite blind.
On the 11th of August last, my jaws locked, and continued so for nine days, during which I could take no food but by means of a quill in a corked bottle; a little drink was put into my mouth through a crevice in a waste back tooth. In a few days thereafter, my jaws locked a second time for four days, and I received drink as before. From that time I have had my jaws locked eight different other times, varying from two days to eight days. The last time I had them locked from seven in the morning of Friday, until one in the morning of Sabbath. The time before the last they were locked eight days. Excepting the first two occasions I was unable to take drink, because my teeth overlapped, and my tongue was so bound in my mouth that I could not move it to swallow anything, even were it possible to enter the quill by my waste tooth. At one time my tongue, on the right side, was cut through by my jaws locking suddenly and catching it. The fourth time they locked, my upper jaw came down so suddenly, and with such a crash, that the farthest back tooth in my right side was thrown out of its place outside my gum. The eighth time I had them locked, they continued so for eight days; and during twenty-five days, including the time they were locked, I did not swallow as much as a teaspoonful of drink, let alone food of any kind. There was a gathering in my gullet passage that filled up to my throat, so that though I tried to swallow often I could not; and when the doctors repeatedly gave me medicine, which I tried to swallow, the moment it touched my gullet it not only returned, but excited such retching as put me almost into convulsions. At last the swelling broke, and came up by violent vomiting. The pain of the locked jaw is past describing.
(To be Continued.)