“I cannot tell how it was, but the reality of Christ’s death for us was borne in upon me as it had never been before. The story of Jesus had always seemed more like a beautiful dream, or myth, somehow, to me; perhaps I had not felt the need of a Saviour. But now, oh! Maggie, I can only wonder that I have been blind so long. I feel like a child when it first opens its eyes upon the world, and notices the beauties it contains. I had so often wished I could feel as you did, and draw the same comfort from religion, but I never could. And last Sunday evening it was as if Christ revealed Himself to me all at once, showing me my need of a Saviour, and asking only my love in return. All the week I have been thinking of it, Maggie, but the only prayer I could find to say was, ‘Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!’”
“Oh, Jack! my Jack! If you only knew how I have prayed for this, and what it means to me!” cried Maggie, flinging her arms round her husband as she burst into a very passion of tears—tears of joy, not sorrow.
Drawing her head down to the shelter of his breast, John Duncan held his wife very tightly to him, as he said, in a voice which shook with emotion:
“You will help me, won’t you, my darling? I want help so much, and we can speak of these things together now. I am groping in the dark yet.”
“Nay, John,” said Margaret, smiling through her tears, “I think you are just dazzled with the light. But all the help I can give is yours, you know, my dear one.”
Hand in hand, for the first time during their married lives, these two knelt that night at the feet of their heavenly Father, while Margaret prayed for strength and guidance for them both; and John Duncan was not a whit surprised when, in concluding, his wife added a petition for a blessing upon the dear girl who had been God’s instrument in effecting the longed-for change in her husband.
“It was just like Maggie,” he reflected, as he helped her to rise from her knees, and thought, as he kissed her, that she had never looked so fair in his eyes.
Happiness is a great beautifier, as we all know, and it was a very happy Margaret Duncan who laid her head on her pillow that Easter Eve.
(To be continued.)