In Seeking, They Found

In Seeking, They Found

They had never met but were so alike.

ISABEL ALISON grew up in Perth, Scotland, where she listened eagerly to the preaching of Donald Cargill, the leader of the persecuted Presbyterians called Covenanters. She loved Jesus and defended his gospel in a day when King Charles II of England was trying to snuff out Scotland’s Presbyterian Church. In 1680, after speaking out against the severe punishment inflicted on those who would not conform to the Anglican Church, Isabel was arrested in Perth and sent to Edinburgh for trial.

About the same time, near Borrowstounness, Scottish soldiers laid a trap to catch Donald Cargill. They caught instead a twenty-year-old maidservant, Marion Harvie, who had been converted under the preaching of Richard Cameron. Marion, too, was sent to Edinburgh for trial and indicted as a Covenanter.

After two months of examination under threat of torture, Isabel and Marion were brought from their cells to the bishop of Edinburgh’s chambers for their final hearing. He told Marion that although she had insisted that she would never listen to an Anglican clergyman pray, he was now going to force her to. But she outsmarted him and said to her fellow prisoner, “Come, Isabel, let us sing the Twenty-third Psalm,” and their singing drowned out the priest’s prayer.

With their song still ringing in the chamber, the bishop read a single indictment condemning both Isabel and Marion to death by hanging. Marion returned to her cell and wrote:

I desire to bless the Lord for my lot. . . . It was but little I knew of Him before I came to prison; but now He has said to me, because He lives, I shall live also. . . . Kind has He been to me since He brought me out to witness for Him. I have never sought anything from Him but that was for His glory since I came to prison, but He granted me my desire. I have found Him in everything that hath come my way, ordering it to Himself for His own glory. And how I bless Him that thoughts of death are not terrible to me. He hath made me as willing to lay down my life for Him as ever I was willing to live in this world.

In her separate cell, Isabel wrote:

I lay down my life for owning and adhering to Jesus Christ. . . . But what shall I say to the commendation of Christ and His cross? I bless the Lord, praise to His holy name, that hath made my prison a palace to me. . . . Oh! How great is His love to me that He hath brought me forth to testify against the abominations of the times, and kept me from fainting hitherto, and hath made me rejoice in Him! Now I bless the Lord that ever He gave me a life to lay down for Him.

Isabel Alison and Marion Harvie laid down their lives together on the Grassmarket scaffold on January 26, 1681.

As Isabel went up the ladder she said, “Oh, ye His enemies, what will ye do, whither will ye fly in that day? For now there is a dreadful day coming on all the enemies of Jesus Christ.”

Marion Harvie’s words on the scaffold were, “I am come here today for avowing Christ to be head of his church and King in Zion. Oh! Seek Him, sirs; seek Him and ye shall find Him. I sought Him and found Him; I held Him and would not let Him go.”

Reflection

Can you think of a time that you sought God? Did you find him? If you didn’t, keep seeking him, and you will. Once you have found him, seek to know him even better.

Keep on asking, and you will be given what you ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And the door is opened to everyone who knocks.

Matthew 7:7-8