"DIOSSY,—
"Give this wench a hundred lashes with the long whip this afternoon. Wash her down well, and when she is fit to work, put her into the cotton field.
"ABRAM TURNER."
Oh, let us weep, dear children, for the poor girl, who, for no crime at all, not even a misdeed, was made to bare her tender skin to such shameless cruelty. No friend was there to help her, to plead for her, to deliver her from the relentless, violent hand of the wicked oppressor. She was left all alone to her terrible suffering. Can we wonder that she felt that even the Lord had forgotten her?
That night there was scarcely an inch of flesh from her neck to her feet that was not torn, raw, and bleeding. The salt brine, which is used to heal the wounds, although when first applied it seems to aggravate the torture, was poured pitilessly over her, and writhing with agony, fainting, and almost dead, she was borne to a wretched hut, and laid on a hard pallet. Three weeks she lay there, sick and helpless; but she cried unto the Lord in her distress, and he heard her, and prepared to deliver her, though the time of her deliverance was not yet fully come. She had been brought low, but her eyes were not yet opened to her true needs, and she had not yet learned the prayer God would have her offer, "Be merciful to me, a SINNER."
Children, when you pray, do not be discouraged, if God does not answer you INSTANTLY. His way is not as our way; and though he hears us, and means to answer us, he may see that we are not yet ready to receive and appreciate the blessing we seek. Besides, there is no TIME with God as we count time. WE reckon by days and weeks, by months and years, but with him all is "one, eternal NOW;" and he goes steadily on, executing his purposes of love and mercy, without regard to those points and measures of time which seem so important to us. We must remember, too, that it takes longer to do some things than others. A praying woman whose faith was greatly tried, once asked her minister what this verse meant,—Luke xviii. 8: "I tell you that he will avenge them SPEEDILY." He replied, "If you make a loaf of bread in ten minutes, you think you have done your work speedily. Supposing a steam-engine is to be built. The pattern must be drafted, the iron brought, the parts cast, fitted, polished, tried,—it will take months to complete it, and then you may consider it SPEEDILY executed. So, when we ask God to do something for us, he may see a good deal of preparation to be necessary,—obstacles are to be removed, stepping-stones to be laid,—in the words of the Bible, the rough places are to be made plain, and the crooked ways straight, before the way of the Lord is prepared, and he can come directly with the thing we have asked."
It was thus with Tidy. She kept praying all the time to be free, but the Lord, who meant to give her a larger and better freedom than she asked, led her through such rough and crooked paths that she was quite discouraged, and nearly gave up all for lost.
This was her painful condition when she was driven, for the first time in her life, with a gang of men and women to work in the cotton-field.