CHAPTER VIII.
EXTENDS HER LABORS.
After about a dozen and a quarter years the Arnold place lost the meetings both of the circuit and of the society.
The changes of business and travel left the place quite one side, and the meetings had been gradually removed to more central and convenient locations. Mr. Arnold had been called by the church to hold meetings as an exhorter, and had sought out some destitute neighborhoods as his chosen field. It was natural and appropriate for his wife to accompany him.
They were both good singers, and had sung together a third of a century. They were ready speakers and mighty in prayer, and in the quiet way of lay workers they went from house to house, and to a family in a place they presented the great salvation in conversation and psalm, and commended the people to God in prayer.
It was not long before they collected in congregations; and while the "licensed" exhorter, who really "preached many things to the people in his exhortations," always led the meetings, the real exhorter followed with cutting appeals. This destitute region was thus visited occasionally for several years, and this couple had the honor of being its successful pioneers in Christian evangelism. In a central position has long stood a Methodist Episcopal church, and members of its society, fifty years after these humble labors, acknowledged them in the hearing of the writer as the means of their salvation.
Elizabeth was now between fifty and sixty years of age, was no longer the nimble rider, but somewhat heavy and clumsy; she preferred the carriage seat to the saddle, but still in her numerous visits to the sick and such as she could bless by religious calls she continued her old method, as being more independent. Many wondered at the ease and skill with which a woman of her age and size would spring on and off and manage her horse. She would modestly reply, "My dear father taught me how, and I have always liked it."
She early became a skillful nurse, and was for many years a diligent visitor of the sick, especially among the poor and the ignorant. Her saddle horns were hung with budgets of medicinal herbs and little comforts, and she would find out the sick and suffering, and administer both to their physical and spiritual wants, and return to her household duties almost before her family knew she had been gone.
About this time a new field of labor was providentially opened to this Christian worker. The Presbyterian and Baptist churches in that town began to employ "evangelists" to hold "revival meetings" of a new order; but when the people appeared to be thoughtful, and they got them into the "anxious meetings," they found it almost impossible to get them to praying or the church to praying for them directly and earnestly, especially the sisterhood of the Presbyterian church; so the deacons and elders, in their strait, begged Mrs. Arnold to "come over into Macedonia and help." Much as she had suffered in her early religious life from predestinarianism, she never was a bigot, and so she, like Paul, "gathered assuredly" that the call was of the Lord, and "without gainsaying" went and helped them publicly and from house to house as best she could. The result was that during the balance of her active life she was urged into and did much of this inter-church work in their periodical revivals, and obviously with good effect.
But, grateful as were these churches for such help, and encouraging to her heart as the fruit appeared, she ever labored in these Calvinistic associations under more or less embarrassment. To be at once true to her principles and true to interdenominational courtesy left her rather a narrow platform to work upon; but, limited as it was, she would not transcend it in either direction. When, however, she could find revival work within reach among her own people she ever gave such calls the preference; and from their arrival in the new country down to the retirement of infirm old age, more than a quarter of a century, "Sister Arnold" was known for many miles around as "an excellent revival laborer."
Several allusions have been made in this narrative to her shouting; but it should be understood that she was not in the habit of "shouting before getting out of the swamp." The order of her work was solemn, steady, earnest, and in mighty faith; but when the struggle was over, the victory gained, sometimes that solemn countenance would become suddenly luminous and her shrill shouts would pierce the very heavens. These loud exultations, however, were indulged in in no meetings but those of her own people, and grew less frequent as age crept on, giving place to tears of joy and whispers of praise.