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.
(Continued from page 264.)
CONVERSATIONS WITH BETSY LINDSAY.
Sabbath, 22nd March.—Found that her sight was so far restored as to see my person, though unable to distinguish my features.
“On Thursday last, some parts of the day, I could see a glimmering of the light, which was the first dawn of my sight, and this day I find it on the increase.”
“What is your food to-day?” “‘Fear not, for I am with thee,’ etc.”
“You have had that promise before?” “Yes, sir, that wonderful promise has often been renewed to me.”
Her aunt came in and prevented any further conversation.
Sabbath, 29th March.—“What! what! Betsy! with glasses, reading your Bible?” “Oh yes, sir, reading my Bible. Did not I tell you that I would yet get my sight ere I should go hence?” “So you did.” “Well, His name is Wonderful.”
“Have you the sight of both eyes?” “Oh no, sir; I lost the sight of my left eye three years September last, and never recovered it.”
“Just so. What portion is this you have been reading?” “The thirty-first Psalm. The seventh verse caught my eye as I opened the book, and I have been musing upon it—’I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: for thou hast considered my trouble, thou hast known my soul in adversities.'”
“How applicable that verse is to yourself.” “Very, sir. The Lord has known my soul in adversities. And so is the following verse—’And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a large room.'”
“Well, what more news for the week?” “Nothing particular, sir, but just as usual—happy. Only I have been this week rather wandering, and just up and down; but I blame Monday for that.”
“How so?” “I was so elated for having my sight restored, that my mind began to wander; and to keep it right, I began to learn some of the Psalms by heart.”
“And how many did you manage?” “Before the evening I had the first seven.”
“Indeed! There is work for a sick woman.” “Yes, sir. It is an easy thing for me to commit to memory. I remember one day, before I lost my sight, I learned by heart the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of John, and another day the hundred and nineteenth Psalm.”
“Was it in prose you learned it?” “No, sir, but in metre. I cannot learn prose so fast as metre.”
“That shows you have a poetic mind.” “Yes, sir, I have a turn for poetry.”
2nd April.—”How are you this evening, Betsy?” “I am weaker, sir, than I have been for a few days past. The swelling or accumulation in my breast is growing larger, so that I feel great difficulty and pain in swallowing anything.”
“How is your sight continuing?” “It was a little bedimmed yesterday, and I think I have injured it a little by reading and writing.”
“What! have you been writing?” “Yes, sir, I have been writing a little to-day and yesterday.”
“Well, how has your mind been since Sabbath?” “I have this week been uncomfortable and cast down.”
“Why, what should discourage thee?” “I have not been so happy in my mind as I used to be. Yesterday I was thinking all my hopes were a mere delusion, and I was cast down; but to-day, when reading in the thirty-first of Jeremiah, the third verse—’I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee’—revived me, and brought me to my former element of comfort and joy in the Lord.”
“That reminds me of the remarkable conversation the Lord had with Peter.”
5th April.—Called, and found her jaws had locked on Friday morning, and without anything having touched her tongue since Thursday night. A blister having been applied, giving no relief, the doctor, having come in, ordered another at night.
6th April.—Had the satisfaction of being addressed by my dear friend, Betsy.
“When did your jaws open?” “About eight o’clock this morning—seventy-five hours. A fourth blister was applied to the back of my neck, which was the means of giving me relief.”
“And how do you feel?” “Extremely weak and sorely sick.”
“Where do you feel most pain?” “In my breast, sir, and also in my head. Though my jaws are opened, the pain in my head still continues; I feel as if it were tightly bound with cords. I think I would require to have blood drawn from my head. The doctor and all my friends were disappointed this time, for they all thought I was so far recovered that I should have no more locked jaw; but I knew myself I should have another turn of the locked jaw.”
“How so, Betsy?” “From the process going on between my breast and my head. I am now so well acquainted with it, that I can tell several days beforehand when I am to have them locked. The doctor used to call me foolish for telling him so, and this time—(with a smile)—I said nothing about it. I wished to give them a surprise.”
“Well, Betsy, call it a bed of affliction, when you can take your little diversion and amusement in the midst of it. Ah, lassie! But really, Betsy, I persuaded myself you were getting stronger.” “I was, somewhat; but the happiness of my mind often made me forget my affliction, and then I appeared to my friends to have got stronger. But really, sir, the difference of strength was not what you had supposed.”
“Well, and how were you during those days?” “I never was more painful and more sick than I was this time, and at no time was my mind more happy. I think I scarcely could endure to be more happy in my mind than I have been during those days. I could so comfortably smile upon my affliction—nay, I could confidently smile upon death itself.”
“Well, tell me wherewith were you made and kept so happy.” “Sir, with the sweet and comforting promises of the grace of God, and Himself smiling upon me in them.”
“Just so; what were they?” “I had them more abundantly this time than usual. One was—’My grace is sufficient for thee.’ ‘Fear not, I am with thee’; ‘When thou passest through the waters,’ etc., and such like.”
“You had these before?” “Oh yes, sir; I have had them often renewed to me, to my great comfort. And when promises are again brought back to the soul by the blessed and divine Spirit, He makes them to be as rich and full as they were at first—as if they were quite new; as a vessel emptied once, brought
back to the fountain, filled, and carried again with its new and fresh fulness. The Lord has indeed been taking me through deep waters, yet I found and felt Himself with me, and leading me to a wealthy place. He has been enabling me to say when most afflicted, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ I have been thinking, sir, of the common observation I used to hear—that after a locked jaw it was immediate death; and now this is the thirteenth time I have had my jaws locked, and death has not yet followed. In my case man’s wisdom and knowledge have been made vain, and God manifesting Himself a God of wonders. I remember a few days before the first time I had my jaws locked, when the doctor one day was going away, he said to my mother at the door to watch me carefully—that I might slip away just when she was turning her back to me to do something in the room. They did not think I was hearing them, but since I came to this bed my hearing has been very quick; and when the two were going on so seriously yonder at the door about the matter, I was just smiling at them in my own mind. This, His dispensation, is wonderful to myself and to others. I may well say with David, in Psalm lxxi. 7, ‘I am as a wonder unto many,’ and I trust I can also say with him the latter part of the verse—’but thou art my strong refuge.'”
“Have you tasted anything since Thursday night?” “Nothing, sir, and I am so weak I scarcely can speak, nor keep my eyes open.”
“Does your sight continue yet?” “Yes, sir; only it has been a good deal weakened and dimmed, but I have not lost it.”
“Well then, since you are so weak, I shall not trouble you any further at present, and hope to find you stronger when I come again.”
8th April.—Called with a gentleman, and found her after having laid aside her book.
Said the gentleman, “Do you sleep any at night?” “No, sir.”
“And when do you sleep?” “About seven in the morning.”
“And have you a candle burning here all night?” “Oh no, sir, I don’t need any. When the Lord graciously shines in His Word upon my mind, I have light enough, and He gives me songs in the night. I am quite happy. I don’t miss the light of a candle.”
I said—
“‘The Lord will light my candle, so—'”
“Yes, sir—
‘That it shall shine full bright:
The Lord my God will also make
My darkness to be light.’—Ps. xviii. 28.
“Are you afraid of death?” “Not at all, sir. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.’—Psalm xxiii. 4.
“Does it come in upon your mind that it is possible you are in a delusion?” “Of late, sir, that idea annoyed me more than it did.”
I said, “How did it commence?” “From a quarter, sir, whence I did not expect it. It was said that I was a mere hypocrite. I thought it was proper I should examine whether or not I was so, and in this examination a flood of temptation came in upon my mind, and made me doubt the saving reality of my former experience, comfort, and joy. I think the enemy took occasion to represent and lay before my mind, and construe to me, that I had nothing but delusion in this and in that; to all which the unbelief and perversion of my own heart assented, and so was cast down in misery. But after sinking in this condition for a day or two, the Lord again raised me up out of the mire, put my feet upon a rock, and a new song into my mouth, by that passage—”I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.”
“That was cruel treatment you had at the hands of your friends,” said I. “Yes, sir, it was more than what I expected.”
“Yes; and the enemy, as an angel of light, took the observation as a text, drew your attention to it, and threw light upon the subject with such plausibility, and made it such probable truth, that he gained your assent at every sentence.” “Yes, sir; but don’t you see what God the Lord turned the whole to and brought out of it? He made it an occasion of giving me a new token of good, and confirming to me all former tokens.”
12th April.—”Well, Betsy, how are you this day?” “Very much pained in my head, sir.”
“And how is your breast?” “Just, sir, full of sore pain.”
“And how is your mind?” “Full of happiness, sir. I could willingly at this moment go to the stake for Christ Jesus, my Lord.”
16th April.—”How dost thou to-day, Betsy?” “Rather worse than usual to-day, sir.”
“You have been painting, I see, and the flavour of the paint sickens you.” “No, sir, it is not that. I was, the other day, removed to a room in the next house, but and ben, that this room might be sized and washed out; having been disturbed out of my usual posture, and having caught a cold during the changing, have been the occasion of my being so low to-day.”
“Well, it is a great satisfaction to a visitor of the sick to find things clean, besides the comfort yielded to the sick themselves; and I cannot but observe the cleanliness I always found here—even a fresh flavour of cleanliness about you. This is a provision in providence which you should much value, and in having a mother caring so much for you, and attending so closely to you, that though you are now more than eighteen months confined, she does not seem to weary or grow careless about you, no more than if your trouble had been only so many hours.”
“Yes, sir, she has been a kind and a loving mother to me, and unweared in her nursing of me since ever she saw me. And it is not for eighteen months, but for eighteen years, that she has had a delicate and afflicted daughter to care for, and I have seen no abatement in her tender nursing of me; but more especially during this, my last sickness, which now has been for eighteen months last Friday, and only once during that time have my feet been on the floor. In all this, sir, I have to distinguish the hand of the Lord, in giving me a mother of such a disposition, and continuing her with me.”
After a pause she said, “Will you read, sir, the first chapter of the First Epistle of Peter?”
Having done so, “Well, sir, that is a wonderful chapter. Often have I found food in that chapter, and especially in that verse—’Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.’ When I used to be cast down and in heaviness and under strong temptations, that word, ‘if need be,’ used to be a wonderful support to me. It was as much as to say there was an absolute ‘need be’ that I should be so; and though unhappy, uncomfortable, and apprehensive, why run into despair, seeing the reason of my distress was a wise and fixed ‘need be,’ to answer ultimately a glorious end—the trial and purifying of faith might be found to the praise, honour, and glory of God at the appearing of Jesus Christ. This is the use I was wont to make of the ‘need be.’ After deliverance and coming again to a good hope through grace, I used to look back, and read in my trials, heaviness, and temptations, not an angry God seeking to devour and destroy me, but a God of mercy coming with His ‘need be,’ to the end that I should be tried, humbled, put out of conceit with myself, driven off every refuge of lies, and learn to look to the stronghold in time of storm and trouble; and so learn to live by faith, even when it afforded no comfort, and that this should be to the praise, honour, and glory of free grace, and a faithful God, at the coming of the Lord Jesus in death or in judgment. The other day, when I was sore troubled during and after my removal to the room in the other house, it came into my mind there is a ‘need be,’ and I became reconciled, and afterwards found the use of the ‘need be.’ That was the last house, and the room in that house, where I was before I took ill. In half-an-hour after coming from it, just eighteen months last Friday, I took to my bed. My going to it again was the occasion of leading me to review what had come my way since I had been there before, and then I discovered the ‘need be’ on this occasion. It made me joyful to retrace the doing of the Lord towards me since that time, and so found the benefit of my removal.”
19th April.—”What tidings to-day, Betsy?” “I have been worse, sir. I have not been that ill for these two or three days, but I have lost my sight again.”
“Lost your sight again, have you? When did that happen?” “It commenced on Friday, and yesterday I tried if I could read, and the leaf was all black to me; and to-day sometimes only I can make out faintly that it is daylight, and at other times I cannot.”
“Well, well, Betsy, is it not a blessing that your mouth is not shut?” “Oh, it is, sir; and what a blessing it will be to be freed from a body of sin, where there shall neither be blind eyes nor locked jaws.”
After a pause she said, “This being Sabbath, I felt a spirit of envy rising in my mind towards those who were able to go to the house of the Lord and attend the ministration of the Word of Life; but the Lord soon quieted me by that precious word—’Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off’—Isaiah xxxiii. 17. It is wonderful, sir, though that land be very far off, as between earth and heaven, how very near the Lord can bring it in His promises, and at death how soon the distance is travelled.”
“What time, think you, does it take the soul of the saint to fly to heaven?” “Absent from the body, present with the Lord”—2 Cor. v. 8. There is no space there set between absent and present, to be measured by the measures of time.”
After another pause—”I do not recollect, sir, if I told you of the death of a Sabbath school companion of mine two or three weeks ago. She was serving in Leith, and on a Saturday she was cleaning the furniture, and a splinter of the wood went in between the nail and the flesh. The following Sabbath was her day to get out, when she went to Musselburgh, to see her mother. On Monday she was complaining of her head and jaws, and could not eat her food well. As she complained, her mother did not allow her to return that day. She continued to get worse, and gradually her jaws came down and locked. Medical men were got in to her, but they could do nothing for her; and she had them locked twenty-four hours only when she died. This made a deep impression upon my mind. There, my school companion, and no other, taken away by a locked jaw of twenty-four hours’ duration; and I, her companion, who have had the same now thirteen different times, and for nine days at a time, yet spared. How wonderfully striking is the hand of the Lord to be seen in my case!”
(To be Continued.)
The Conflict in the Saints.—The conflict that is in saints is a constant conflict. Though sin and grace were not born in the heart of a saint together, and though they shall not die together, yet whilst a believer lives, they must conflict together. Paul had been fourteen years converted when he cried out, “I have a law in my members rebelling against the law of my mind, and leading me captive to the law of sin.”—THOMAS BROOK.