Written by herself some years before her death, and now taken from her original Copy with great care and diligence.
“Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.”—PSALM lxvi. 16.
“As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts.”—PSALM xlviii. 8.
“Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”—2 COR. iii. 18.
(Continued from page 313.)
ANOTHER bitter ingredient in this trial was, that though the Lord had mercifully frustrated the rebels in their designs against those who had both the laws of truth, reason, and government on their side, yet, after all, for one of these rebels to get leave to exercise his cruelty against a poor family, and that before the eyes of our carnal neighbours, that joined with them in that rebellion—oh, I thought this would harden them in their sin, and fill them with more prejudice at religion.
At this time unbelief greatly overcame me, for though the Lord had appeared of old for our family in the time of persecution, when my parents were then cast out of house and shelter and stripped of all they had in the world for their adhering to the truth, yet God provided for them and their small family, and ever since we have been provided without being a burden to any. This case calls for faith on the promises about temporal things, but alas! I was so stripped of sensible help that neither sense of duty nor reflection on former experiences of the Lord’s appearances for both my parents and myself could bring me to one act of faith; hence I learn that neither habitual grace nor reflection on former experiences can bring the soul to one act of faith without the breathings of the Divine Spirit. All this passed in the two-and-thirtieth year of my life.
The next year began with sore desertion, yet mixed with some discernible actings of faith, and even under counteracting-like providences and daily trials, which here I shall not mention.
About the middle of this year I had an opportunity of partaking of the Lord’s Supper, and the Sabbath Day was a good day to my soul, for I was well entertained in time of partaking, and I heard two sermons upon that word, “Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is far off.”—(Isa. xxxiii. 17.) In hearing of those sermons I was not only confirmed of former experiences, but had also soul-refreshing and elevating blinks of the glory of the King Himself and the land that is afar off; and at even in secret prayer my soul was filled with delight in the King, and with blinks of divine light that discovered to my soul rays of His hidden glory.
After this it pleased the Lord to smite me with a long fever for the time of two months. The first month I had great hopes of death, and yet there was nothing like it about me, for during that time my sickness was very easy, and I arose once a day; but in the second month I relapsed in the fever, and lay seventeen days without the least recovery.
On the third day of this fever I had a glorious discovery of the covenant of redemption and grace with a view of my name in it. Oh, what a blessed revelation was this to my soul! Oh, I thought I could have been content to have lived to eternity on this view. So I lived all those seventeen days in the view of death and blessed eternity without the least cloud, and I endeavoured to realise death every moment.
One singular act of mercy I desire to remark, which was this—I had the use of all my natural senses as distinctly all the time of this fever as ever I had in my life, although I was under great weakness, for I would have slept not but few minutes for several days and nights together. Thus it pleased my gracious God to make my bed in my sickness, and death the object of desire, and life the matter of patience. Oh, here I was brought, as it were, to the river’s side and allowed to look over to Immanuel’s land, and got such sights of it as I shall not here mark down. Oh, this made me cry out for a bringing down of a body of death with a body of flesh together; but, alas! like Israel in the wilderness, after they were brought very near the promised land, they were turned back to the wilderness; so it pleased the Lord to recover me. But oh, I could not get my mind brought to a submission to live; my spirits were like to burst asunder in the thoughts of my being returned to fight with a body of death, and with temptations from the devil and the world, after such views of the victory attained. So it pleased a sovereign Lord to recover my body to health and to hide Himself from my soul. It was my request all the time of the fever that the body of sin and death might be brought down with my body of flesh and blood, so during this time I felt little of its opposition; but no sooner came I out of my bed than I found a resurrection of this man of sin and a withholding of the power of grace to oppose and batter it down.
Ah! every thing in the world was wearisome and strange-like to me; I could not get my mind brought to a submission to live, for I could see no use I was for in the world. Oh, I thought I would have reckoned my sickness easy, and even though my body should have been dissolved in a fiery furnace, if at the end I could have got in to the possession and enjoyment of glorious Christ.
After this I was three months (as to my sensible feelings) that I had not one blink, but dark desertion; yea, so pained were my spirits as if they had been wrung in pieces, when, as to my apprehension, I had not the least view of Immanuel’s land, so that I could not prize the mercies of life and health. After this I returned back to service in the place where I had enjoyed many sweet gospel days, viz., Stirling.
After these three months of dark desertion it pleased a holy, wise, and sovereign God, in a blessed Daysman, to pay me another visit after this manner: He shined into my soul, with which I was so enlightened as to see matter of conviction, reproof, and humiliation, and in this light I was led back through the last three years, and was made to meet them all, step by step; and though in these three years I had distinct pieces of experience and sensible pledges of the Lord’s love, as already hinted, yet for the most part the time of these three years was full of contradicting providences as to present sense and feeling. This did so overcome my faith, and I was so filled with unbelief and harsh conclusions, both with respect to the promises, and of my kind and gracious Lord’s providential dispensations towards me, with many a bitter complaint, saying still, Why was it thus? while in the meantime it became me to have put my mouth in the dust, saying, “It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth good to Him.”
All this and much more was laid before me in this light, on the back of which I felt a humbling stroke of power that laid my soul at the feet of mercy, and also drew out my soul, and so quickened all the habits of grace, whereby I was enabled to take hold of the promises with particular application, betaking myself to the blood of sprinkling for taking away all the guilt of those years bygone, with an eye also to the Holy Spirit for purging away the filth and pollution of all those sins I had been guilty of.
After this I found a reviving of soul and earnest desires after renewed manifestations of the Lord’s love; so after this I had blinks of divine light, with a felt power that set the faculties of my soul in an orderly acting and grace in a regular exercise. This much for the thirty-and-third year of my life.
After this I lived about two months with some kind of satisfaction, and had some sweet tastes of manifested love, and on the third month I had an opportunity of partaking of the Lord’s Supper, where I saw God present with ministers, and also found a power on my soul, yet came away complaining of my case, which proceeded from evil to worse, so that I communicated no more that year, although I had opportunity to do it.
After this I was sore stripped, both as to the exercise of grace and duty. I am not able to express the bitterness of soul I underwent, many a time uttering that expression, “Oh that my name as a Christian had never been known,” for my melancholy countenance was like to shame religion. Oh, how bitter, weary, and various is my case when thus deserted! Sometimes I find the bitter streams coming from original corruption like to overrun my soul, and also a withholding of that power of grace to oppose and batter it down. Oh, how do my spirits rave against God’s way of dealing with me now, and in like cases formerly.
(To be continued.)