"And how did you come to change your views as to the Bible?"
"One evening, while I was sitting alone, bemoaning my hapless condition, and mourning over the fruitless efforts I had made to regain mental tranquillity, the sense of conscious guilt became very, very acute, and very oppressive. It weighed down my spirit. It was at this time attended with some degree of alarm and dread. I began to think it possible that God would bring me before him in judgment. This was a new idea. I trembled when thinking of the probable issue—lost, lost for ever! At this eventful moment, when the dread of such a terrible issue was wringing and torturing my spirit, a sudden impulse, accompanied by a ray of celestial light—though then I knew not that it was celestial light—produced a deep conviction of the necessity of an atonement to expiate human guilt; and then I at once admitted the reality of the atonement made by Jesus Christ."
"Did these new discoveries of truth minister to your relief?"
"Not immediately; I was still bewildered and unhappy. I was trying to make myself good—trying to work out my own righteousness. But I could make no satisfactory progress. I thought at times that my heart was getting worse instead of better. I was treading on the verge of overwhelming despondency. I felt an outcast. In this state of extreme perplexity and mental torture, I betook myself to the Bible; but I did so more to divert my mind from its miseries than with an expectation of gaining relief. The Divine Spirit directed my attention to the passage—'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world' (1 John ii. 1, 2). Had the Lord spoken to me from heaven, I might have been more startled; but there was such a sweet consolatory power accompanying the reading of the passage, that I felt it came from him. I was in a moment, in a calm of ecstatic emotion. I shall never forget the sensation. It was a sudden transition from torture to ease. I then felt, and for the first time, an intense glow of love to Jesus Christ."
"Did not the reading of that passage," said Miss Chester, "with its hallowed accompaniments, bring you on your knees before the Lord with weeping and supplication?"
"It did; but for a while, and rather a long while, surprise was the most predominant emotion of my heart. I was surprised that I had never previously felt myself to be a guilty and helpless sinner needing an Almighty Saviour. I was surprised that I should ever have felt a loathing and hostility to a scheme of salvation which is such a sweet and rich manifestation of the loving-kindness of God. And I was surprised that I could have lived so long without feeling a supreme love for Jesus Christ."
"Your experience, my dear Miss Osbourne," said Miss Chester, "is a fresh confirmation of a remark I heard a good minister of Jesus Christ make not long since:—A sense of NEED must precede all intense concern for our salvation, and all right apprehensions of the relation in which Jesus Christ stands to us. When this is felt, the veil of mysticism is taken off the truth which is deposited in the Bible; and it becomes intelligible and powerful. As our Lord says: 'They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick' (Matt. ix. 12)."
Several months elapsed before I had another interview with Miss Osbourne; but I noticed that her attendance at the chapel was regular and punctual. She listened with marked attention to the pulpit ministrations; but there was a pensiveness in her look, which still indicated mental disquietude. At the request of Miss Chester, I again visited Miss Osbourne, along with her. On expressing a hope that she was making progress in the path of life, she said, "I am still in a state of painful bewilderment, and still unhappy. I no sooner get over one spiritual difficulty than I feel perplexed and entangled by another. I find that the pursuit after truth lies through a thorny maze."
"I trust you are now thoroughly established in your belief of the supreme divinity of the Son of God, and of the reality and efficacy of his atonement?"