murmured Shenac. They were ever coming into her mind—bits of the psalms she had been hearing so much lately; and they brought comfort, though sometimes she hesitated to take it to her heart as she might.
But light was near at hand, and peace and comfort were not far away. Afterwards, Shenac always looked back to this night as the beginning of her Christian life. This night she went to the house of prayer, from which her fears for Hamish had for a long time kept her, and there the Lord met her. Oh, how weary in body and mind and heart she was as she sat down among the people! It seemed to her that not one of all the congregation was so hopeless or so helpless as she—that no one in all the world needed a Saviour more. As she sat there in the silence that preceded the opening of the meeting, all her fears and anxieties came over her like a flood, and she felt herself unable to stand up against them in her own strength. She was hardly conscious of putting into words the cry of her heart for help; but words are not needed by Him from whom alone help can come.
God does not always choose the wisest and greatest, even among his own people, to do his noblest work. It was a very humble servant of God through whose voice words of peace were spoken to Shenac. In the midst of her trouble she heard a voice—an old man’s weak, quavering voice—saying,—
“Praise God. The Lord praise, O my soul.
I’ll praise God while I live;
While I have being to my God
In songs I’ll praises give.
Trust not in princes;”
and so on to the fifth verse, which he called the key-note of the psalm:—
“O happy is that man and blest,
Whom Jacob’s God doth aid;
Whose hope upon the Lord doth rest,
And on his God is stay’d;”
and so on to the end of the 146th Psalm, pausing on every verse to tell, in plain and simple words, why it is that they who trust in God are so blessed.
I daresay there were some in the kirk that night who grew weary of the old man’s talk, and would fain have listened to words more fitly chosen; but Shenac was not one of these. As she listened, there came upon her a sense of her utter sinfulness and helplessness, and then an inexpressible longing for the help of Him who is almighty. And I cannot tell how it came to pass, but even as she sat there she felt her heaviest burdens roll away; the clouds that had hung over her so long, hiding the light, seemed to disperse; and she saw, as it were, face to face, Him who came to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and thenceforth all was well with her.
Well in the best sense. Not that her troubles and cares were at an end. She had many of these yet; but after this she lived always in the knowledge that she had none that were not of God’s sending, so she no longer wearied herself by trying to bear her burdens alone.
It was not that life was changed to her. She was changed. The same Spirit who, through God’s Word and the example and influence of her brother, made her dissatisfied with her own doings, still wrought in her, enlightening her conscience, quickening her heart, and filling her with love to Him who first loved her.