The covenanters knew the value of Uncle Tom's text. Among the heroic
records of Scotland's terrible ordeal, nothing is more impressive or
affecting than the desperate way in which persecuted men and women clung
with both hands to the golden hope enshrined in that majestic word. It
was in a Scottish kirk that Macaulay discovered its splendor; but even
Macaulay failed to see in it all that _they_ saw.
It was a beautiful May morning when Major Windram rode into Wigton and
demanded the surrender, to him and his soldiers, of two women who had
been convicted of attending a conventicle. One of them was Margaret
Wilson, a fair young girl of eighteen. She was condemned to be lashed to
a stake at low tide in such a way that the rising waters would slowly
overwhelm her. In hope of shaking her fidelity, and saving her life, it
was ordained that her companion should be fastened to a stake a little
farther out. 'It may be,' said her persecutors, 'that, as Mistress
Margaret watches the waves go over the widow before her, she will
relent!' The ruse, however, had the opposite effect. When Margaret saw
the fortitude with which the elder woman yielded her soul to the
incoming tide, she began to sing a paraphrase of the twenty-fifth Psalm,
and those on the beach took up the strain. The soldiers angrily silenced
them, and Margaret's mother, rushing into the waters, begged her to save
her life by making the declaration that the authorities desired. But
tantalized and tormented, she never flinched; and, as the waves lapped
her face she was heard to repeat, again and again, the triumphant words:
'_I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord._'
As a representative of the _men_ of that stern time, we may cite John
Bruce. When that sturdy veteran, after a long life of faithful testimony
and incessant suffering, lay dying, he beckoned his daughter to the
chair beside his bed. He told her, in broken sentences and failing
voice, of the goodness and mercy that had followed him all the days of
his life; and then, pausing suddenly, he exclaimed: 'Hark, lass, the
Master calls! Fetch the Buik!' She brought the Bible to his side.
'Turn,' he said, 'to the eighth of Romans and put my finger on these
words: "_Who can separate us from the love of Christ? For I am persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord._" Now,' he continued, as soon as
she had found the place, 'put my finger on the words and hold it there!'
And with his finger there, pointing even in death to the ground of all
his confidence, the old man passed away.