Fletcher of Madeley | Page 3

fellow opened wide his clear, truthful eyes, into which there crept a deepening look of trouble--trouble rather than fear; big tears rolled down his pinafore, and when tucked away for the night, Jean Guillaume De La Fl??ch?��re crept out of his cosy cot, sank upon his knees, and began the first real prayer of his life: "O God, forgive me!" Nor would he be interrupted until the inward sense of pardon comforted his sorrowing little heart. Many years later he described this time as the shedding abroad of the love of God within him.
Colonel De La Fl??ch?��re's family mansion commanded as fine a view of Swiss scenery as could be found in the neighbourhood. "Hill and dale, vineyards and pastures, stretched right away to the distant Jura mountains. At a few paces from the ch?��teau was a terrace overlooking Lake Leman, with its clear blue waters and its gracefully curved and richly-wooded bays. On the right hand, at a distance of fifteen miles, was Geneva, the cradle of the Reformation in Switzerland; on the left, Lausanne and the celebrated Castle of Chillon. High up in the heavens were Alpine peaks, embosoming scenes the most beautiful; and not far away was Mont Blanc, 'robed in perpetual and unsullied snow.'" (Tyerman.)
In this earthly paradise the little Jean received his first unconscious training, breathing not only the clear mountain air into his lungs, but a no less important atmosphere of refinement, of culture, and of nobility into his mental and moral being.
He was devoted to his mother, who could never say he wilfully disobeyed her. One day, however, she deemed him lacking in reverence for her, because, when rebuking a member of the family over-sharply, John turned upon her a long look of evident reproof. She promptly boxed his ears, but was more than mollified when the boy lifted his clear eyes to hers, brimful of tenderness, and said simply, "Mother, when I am smitten on one cheek, and especially by a hand I love so well, I am taught to turn the other also."
It was not priggishness, but submissive affection, and she read it aright.
CHAPTER II.
IN THE MANOR HOUSE.

In the ch?��teau at Nyon Jean De La Fl??ch?��re 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