IN THE MANOR HOUSE.
In the château at Nyon Jean De La Fléchère was keeping his tenth
birthday (September 12th, 1739). Away in old England the Lord of the
Manor of Leytonstone, Essex, was giving his first caresses to a tiny
baby girl, later to be known as little Mary Bosanquet, and forty years
later still as the wife of the saintly John Fletcher, Vicar of
Madeley.
Mary was but a four-year-old baby when she received her first definite
conviction that God hears and answers prayer. She was a timid little
maiden, and the greatest comfort she had in the world was the fact
that she possessed a real Father in Heaven, strong, mighty, and
willing to protect and help her. Sunday evenings in Forest House--as
the Bosanquet mansion was called--were devoted to the children. On
those occasions Mary's father taught her sister and herself the Church
catechism. At five years old his youngest daughter asked questions
concerning true Christians according to the Word of God, which might
well have encouraged evasion on the part of her parent. She reasoned
out everything told her; but her eager and earnest questions being so
constantly put carelessly by, gave her childish mind the impression
that the Bible did not mean all it said, therefore a sensible person
would make due allowance for its threatenings.
As this thought began to take well hold of Mary, a Methodist girl
entered the household as nurse, whose conversations with the children
were a great enlightenment to them both.
In a year or two the nurse left them, but not before she had implanted
in little Mary's mind the truth that it was not being united to any
church or people which would save her, but that she must be converted
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the fruits of
believing in Him as a personal Saviour would be power to love and
serve God with a holy heart. That was excellent, but it had not been
so explained to the child that she could understand the process either
of "faith" or of "conversion." The result was perplexity.
Not a few children in bygone days have had to suffer long Sunday
afternoon agonies over the harrowing pictures of Foxe's "Book of
Martyrs," this being then considered a profitable and bracing Sabbatic
"exercise" for hundreds of sensitive little ones whose dreams were
haunted, and whose waking hours in the dark were rendered terrific by
vivid imaginings of racked, tortured, and burning saints. Mary was one
of these. Yet so troubled was her little heart over the ungrasped
subject of faith that one day, while gazing upon these fearful
pictures, she exclaimed to herself, "Oh! oh! I do think it would be
easier to _burn_ than to _believe!_"
Mary seems to have been busy with these thoughts for nearly two years.
She had not passed her eighth birthday when we find her sitting by
herself for "a good think," and wondering "_What_ can it mean to
have faith in Jesus?"
Vexed with the mystery of the subject, her childish soul rose in
rebellion against God for having chosen so hard a way into salvation,
and she exclaimed aloud--
"Oh, if I had to die a martyr, I could do it; or give away all I have,
I could do that; or when I grow up to have to be a servant, that
would be easy; but I shall never, never, _never_ know how to
believe!"
Two lines of an old hymn drifted instantly through her mind--
Who on Jesus relies, without money or price,
The pearl of forgiveness and holiness buys.
It was the light she needed. The Spirit of Love had taken pity upon
the little girl. From that moment the plan of salvation was clear to
her, and she cried out--
"I do, I do rely on Jesus; yes, I _do_ rely on Jesus; and God
counts me righteous for all He has done and suffered, and hath
forgiven all my sins!"
She felt that a great weight had been lifted from her heart. Before
this it seemed that everything in the world was easier than to
believe, now it appeared the simplest plan God could have devised. Had
there been but a kindly and understanding person near to whom Mary
could talk freely, she might have been a happy, trusting little
Soldier of Jesus from that hour, but there was no one to help her into
the sunshine of a child's daily faith and love and service, and
religion became to her rather a subject for morbid thought. Terribly
afraid of sin, not understanding temptation, wholly uninstructed how
to get victory over her temper and other failings, she grew
discouraged, and feared she had sadly grieved God. With all this shut
up in her soul, perhaps it was no wonder that her mother should
sometimes exclaim: "That girl is the most perverse creature that ever
lived; I cannot think what has come to her."