The commencement of the year 1827 forms an epoch in the spiritual history of Lady Huntly. She and her husband were on the Continent with two nieces, when one of them died suddenly at Naples. The bereavement was keenly felt, but greatly sanctified. About this time she read Leighton on Peter, to which she attributed a great deepening of the work of grace; and she afterwards wrote—“Pray keep Leighton for my sake, for I have a particular value for that copy. I truly rejoice to find that you can read Leighton with pleasure. I know by experience it is a test of the state of the mind.”
When placed in a situation which required the heart to be hot like a furnace, and the lip to be burning like a live coal, she found that grace was proportioned to duty. To the first period of her Christian life she thus refers: “In my own case, I believe that for two years I was a saved sinner, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet that during all that time I did not see the exceeding sinfulness of sin. I believed in a general way that I was a sinner who deserved the punishment of a righteous God; I believed that whosoever came to Jesus Christ should be saved; but I had no deep sense of sin,—of my sin. Since then, I believe I have passed through almost every phase of Christian experience that I have ever read or heard of; and now I have such a sense of my utter vileness and unworthiness, that I feel that the great and holy God might well set His heel on me, so to speak, and crush me into nothing.” So marked was the growth of grace at this time that she used to talk of it as a second conversion. For several years she had apprehended Christ as her title to heaven; but she now saw that He was also her meetness for heaven, and was filled with peace and joy.
At her departure from Huntly Lodge, to Gordon Castle, she received what we must call a token from God. With some other ladies, she paid a visit to the old castle at Huntly, on the banks of the Deveron, and within the fair demesne which she was to leave for a time. In an ancient hall, with carved escutcheons on its walls, they were attracted by an inscription on a scroll high above them, which neither the Duchess nor her visitors could decipher. They moved on, but she remained gazing at the carved figures. Suddenly the sun burst out from behind a cloud, and she read in the light of its rays these words:
TO . THAES . THAT . LOVE . GOD . AL . THINGIS . VIRKIS .
TO . THE . BEST .
It was as if a voice from heaven had spoken. She had gotten a motto for her future life; and ever after, Romans viii. 28, was one of the pillars that upheld the temple of God in her heart—one of the elements that leavened her spiritual life.
OPEN-AIR SERVICES.
On the Saturday before her first communion as a Presbyterian, it was evident that the church would be too small on the following Lord’s-day. The Duchess therefore immediately placed the broad green area of what had been the old castle court at the service of the congregation. A naval captain with two or three visitors set up some military tents, and the ancient fortress was turned into a temple. The soldiers’ tents, with their white canvas and scarlet mountings, had a very picturesque appearance. On the Sabbath morning a large congregation assembled under the blue vault of heaven.
“Then did we worship in that fane
By God to mankind given;