A Maid Meets Her Master
It was on this day, December 6. 1680. that a young twenty year old maid stood before the Anglican court in Scotland. Her judicial examination and subsequent martyrdom for her Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, was for the terrible crime—are you ready for this reader—attending a worship service in a Scottish pasture, and subsequently giving testimony that she adhered to the truths of the Lord Jesus, avowing Him to be King in Zion and the only head of the Church.
Marion Harvey, the subject of this post, was reared in a home where her father had cast his lot in with those adhering to the National Covenant of Scotland and the Solemn League and Covenant. However, his religious convictions did not, for his daughter, permeate her character and conduct until she was in her mid-teens. Up to then, according to her own testimony, she lived according to the world, engaging in breaking the Sabbath and blaspheming the Name of God for her own pleasures. But a decided change had taken place in her heart and soul in that middling teenager. Whether by curiosity or by just following the crowds, she began to attend the outdoor worship services in the fields and moors, listening to those ministers who had been ejected from their pulpits and parishes. Listening to the preached Word of God, she “left off hearing the curates, whose ministry she formerly attended without scruple. She now venerated the name of God, which she had formerly blasphemed; she sanctified the Sabbath, which she had formerly desecrated; and she delighted in the Bible, which she had formerly neglected and undervalued.” (from The Ladies on the Covenant). In truth, regeneration had occurred in her soul.
It would be five years later when she was arrested by the government’s soldiers as she left a field worship service. Thrown into prison, it was the beginning of the end on this earth for her, a trial of her convictions which began with a series of inquisitions by the Anglican government.
After one lengthy examination, she returned to her cell, already aware that on January 26, she would be hung for her religious views. She left a testimony in that cell in Edinburgh prison which said,
“I, being to lay down my life on Wednesday next, January 26, I thought it fit to let it be known to the world wherefore I lay down my life, and to let it be seen that I die not as a fool, or an evil-doer, or as a busy-body, in other men’s matters. No, it is for adhering to the truth of Jesus Christ, and avowing him to be King in Zion, and head of His church, and the testimony against these ungodly laws of men, and their robbing Christ of His rights, and usurping his prerogative royal, which I durst not but testify against.”
On the 26th of January,. she along with another woman were martyred and went joyfully into the presence of the Lord Jesus.
Words to Live By:
At this very time, there are countless fellow Christians, being members of the persecuted twenty-first century Church, who are experiencing the same kind of suffering and death which Marion Harvey experienced in her day. Are you aware of that, Christian? Do you ever think of them, and pray for them in their hour of trial? Ask your pastor for a list of the names of the countries which still persecute the church today? The list begins with China, North Korea, and continues all across the ten-forty window. Thousands of believers are in jail and inhuman conditions for no other reason than for worshiping whom you worship today. We need to pray for them.
We need to make their cause our cause. Certainly you would want all these responses by others if you were the ones suffering for the Savior today.
O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us,
thou hast been displeased; O turn thyself to us again.
Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it:
heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.
Thou hast shewed thy people hard things:
thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee,
that it may be displayed because of the truth.
Selah
—Psalm 60:1-4, KJV
