In one of Edna Lyall’s novels, We Two, we have the story of Erica Raeburn. Erica is the daughter of Luke Raeburn, the sceptic; and she has been taught from infancy to despise all holy things. But as life, with its stress and struggle, goes on, she finds that she cannot satisfy her soul with denials and negations, * At last,’ Edna Lyall says, ‘ Erica’s hopelessness, her sheer desperation, drove her to cry to the Possibly Existent.’ She stood at the open
window of her little room, looking out into the summer night. Before she knew what had happened, she was praying !
‘O God,’ she cried, ‘I have no reason to think that Thou art, except that there is such fearful need of Thee. I can see no single proof in all the world that Thou art here. But af Thou art, O Father, 7f Thou art, help me to know Thee! Show me what is true!’
A few days later the answer came. Erica was at the British Museum, making some extracts, in the ordinary course of her business, from the Lrfe of Livingstone. All at once she came upon the extract from Livingstone’s Journal in which he speaks of his absolute reliance upon the text, ‘Lo, I am with you alway.’ ‘It is the word,’ says Livingstone, ‘ it is the word of a gentleman of the strictest and most sacred honour, and there’s an end of it!’ The words profoundly affected Erica. * Lo, I am with you alway!’ ‘They represented, not a Moral Principle, nor a Logical Proposition, but a Living Presence !
Exactly how it came to her, Erica never knew, nor could she put in words the story of the next few minutes. When God’s great sunrise finds us out, we have need of something higher than human speech: there are no words for it. All in a moment, the Christ who had been to her merely a noble character of ancient history became to her the most real and vital of all living realities. It was like coming into a new world ; even dingy Bloomsbury seemed beautiful. Her face was so bright, so like the face of a happy child, that more than one passer-by was startled by it, lifted for a moment from sordid cares into a purer atmosphere.1
Muckle Kate Not a very ordinary name! But then, Muckle Kate, or Big Kate, or Kate-Mhor, or Kate of Lochcarron was not a very ordinary woman! The actual day of her salvation is difficult to trace to its sunrising, but being such a glorious day as it was, we simply wish to relate something of what shone forth in the redeemed life of that "ill-looking woman without any beauty in the sight of God or man." Muckle Kate was born and lived in Lochcarron in the county of Ross-shire. By the time she had lived her life to its eighty-fifth year she had well-earned the reputation of having committed every known sin against the Law of God with the exception murder. Speaking after the manner of men, if it took "Grace Abounding" to save a hardened sinner like John Bunyan, it was going to take "Grace Much More Abounding" to save Muckle Kate. However, Grace is Sovereign and cannot be thwarted when God sends it on the errand of salvation, and even the method used in bri...
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