Fletcher of Madeley | Page 3

a fine old Swiss castle, on the shores of Lake Leman,
stood a small boy of seven, confronted by his white-capped nurse.
"You are a naughty boy!" she exclaimed. "Do you not know that the
devil is to take away all naughty children?"
The little 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 Fléchère 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 Fléchère'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 château 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 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,