Now I have told you Rebecca Ann was brought up by her grandfather Osterhort to believe in Calvinistic Presbyterian doctrine. To believe in the elect and the reprobate, and from the fact of the anguish of heart the little motherless girl suffered, and that as she wept and prayed by the grave of her mother, it seemed to her God did not care. God did not love her. She came to accept the sad belief that she herself in spite of anything she could do, was reprobate. Strange, we can but say, that God should so unmistakably direct Walter Haight to choose such a girl for his wife. We can but say with Paul in Romans 11:33, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God., How unsearchable are His judgements and His ways past finding out.”
That the knowledge of God was perfect and His guiding hand safe to trust in was very blessedly proven in the years of the lives of Walter and Rebecca Haight.
It is true Walter shed many tears over the fact that Rebecca felt it impossible for her to become a Christian. He had his family worship always and she repeated with him “Our Father which art in Heaven.” As children came to them she early taught them to pray, and she prayed with and for them. If Father was absent from home she herself reverently thanked the Lord for the food, but so strong was her belief that it was not for her to be saved that she urged Father not to grieve over it, urging, “Let us be as happy as we can together here on Earth since we must be separated through eternity.” “I believe God will help me to be a good wife to you and a good mother to our children, though He cannot save my soul.” Father kept praying and believing God.
Now it was about the year 1868 when Mother became truly awakened to the thought of what it really might mean to be lost. Before this she seemed entirely indifferent, but now her ears were unstopped. Her eyes were opened, and she saw herself deliberately refusing offered mercy. She saw the Saviour with bleeding out-stretched hands pleading, “Come unto me all ye ends of the earth and be ye saved.” Flashing before her like words of fire were the words, “Whosoever will, let him come and partake of the waters of life freely.”
A minister by the name of Rev. Lester Clark had come to their neighborhood and was holding revival meetings. He was a Protestant Methodist, but that matters little what his church relationship. He was a man of God and refused not to declare the whole connate of God. Mother heard sermons from such texts as those quoted above and also, “The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God,” and again, “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” No, it was no unusual thing for her to hear sermons from such texts as these, but before this her soul seemed to slumber. Now she was truly awakened and she sought the Lord, who to know aright is everlasting life. She was about 26 years old when the transforming power of grace was wrought in her soul and from that hour she walked with God.