"I said to her, 'My dear, your sufferings are great.' 'Don't,' said she, 'don't mention them; they have been nothing—nothing.' After a severe spasm, that seemed to convulse her whole frame, she exclaimed, 'O the pains, the groans, the dying strife! The spirit seems to be struggling and fluttering to get free from this cumbersome body.' She had, during most of her sickness, bright views of the perfections of God. 'His awful holiness,' she said, 'appeared the most lovely of all his attributes.' At one time she said she wanted words to express her views of the majesty and glory of Christ. 'It seems,' she said, 'that if all other glory were annihilated, and nothing left but his lone self, it would be enough—it would be a universe of glory.'
"The day before her death she was asked if she wished to see her child. 'Not now,' said she; 'I am too much exhausted. I fear it would overcome me. I will see him by and by.' After she had rested a while, she said now she would see the babe. It was brought into the room. 'Let my husband,' she said, 'bring him to me.' I carried the child to her. She took it in one arm, and with the other embraced my neck. After a moment she looked up to the spectators with a smile, and said, 'Here is my family—my treasure—my earthly all. I cheerfully resign them into the hands of God.' On the morning of the day she expired I asked if she wished to send any particular message to any of her friends. She replied she did, and asked me to write what she dictated.
"Thus, my dear parents, I have finished the account of our beloved Elizabeth's last pains and joys in the flesh. Who can wish her back to earth? If any other one has reason to cherish such a wish, I have more. But severe as the stroke is upon me, I rejoice that her conflict with sin and suffering is over, and she is with her Redeemer. To know that she departed thus, triumphing in God her Savior, must afford you, as it does me, great consolation in the midst of the affliction which the news of her death will produce. But you, who knew her amiable disposition, her humble, prayerful, self-denying, holy life, have a better testimony that it is well with her now, than her dying deportment, whatever it might be, could give. She lived unto the Lord, she died unto the Lord; and there can be no doubt that she is now the Lord's.
"Last Sabbath evening Rev. Mr. Allen preached a sermon in the chapel, on the occasion of her death, from Romans xiv. 8. Since then I have learned that one careless man appears to have been awakened by the account that was given of her peaceful and triumphant death. Perhaps her prayers are about to be answered in a revival of religion here. The Lord grant that it may be so!"
When a beloved fellow-laborer dies at home; when the place of some dear one is vacated by death; when the hand of labor ceases to move and the heart of sympathy ceases to beat,—all around are saddened by the event: gloom covers the weeping church, and all who knew the fallen one bend in tearful silence over the grave. But when a missionary dies we can form no opinion of the feelings of those who are left in sorrow. Away from home and all the endeared scenes of early life, they become more strongly and firmly attached to each other. Between the members of the little band are formed the most tender ties, the most hallowed relations; and when one only departs, all hearts grieve and bleed as if the dearest earthly object had been removed.
Mrs. Hervey was buried near the scene of her labors—on heathen soil. The solemn funeral service and the pang of death were calculated to deepen the impression upon the minds of the converted and unconverted people; and the hymn, as it sent its mournful echo along the borders of the field of graves and sounded like the song of an angel amid the homes of the living, turned many a thought forward to that haven where the saint shall break from the repose of death, and come forth to the resurrection of the just, a new and glorified form.
"Why do we mourn departing friends,
Or shake at death's alarms?
Us but the voice that Jesus sends
To call them to his arms."
Did we not have implicit confidence in the ways of God and in his special providence,—did we not feel that he is too wise to err, too good to be unkind,—our hearts would often faint as we hear of our devoted missionaries falling into the grave ere they have been permitted to labor to any considerable degree for the conversion of the heathen. Did we not feel perfectly satisfied in relation to the wisdom and mercy of the great Head of the church, we might well fold our hands and ask, "Will God be angry forever?" But who does not know that Jehovah is able to accomplish more by our deaths than we are able to accomplish by our lives? Who does not know that, from the very ashes of the tomb, he can send up a voice which will echo amid the shades of night and thrill the cold hearts of degraded men?
They who despond, as the tidings of woe come borne to us on almost every breeze which sweeps across the ocean, have lost sight of Him who holds in his hand the issues of life and the awful realities of death. These have drawn their eyes from the immutable promises and the ever-present Helper, and fixed them on the tomb, and the corpse, and the pale mementoes of mortality. They have ceased to reason like Christian men, and look at God's providence through the misty vision of scepticism and doubt.
Men admit that certain laws control the world of planets, the world of animal life, the world of intellect and reason; but seem not to have the idea that the providences are all under God's control, and regulated by fixed and certain laws. The sparrow that flits from bush to tree, and the mighty angel that wheels in everlasting circles around God's throne, are alike under divine protection. The feeblest insect which creeps upon the earth, and the highest archangel which ministers to God above, are equally safe beneath the divine protection. The Being who holds the universe, who keeps worlds in their places, is also employed to count the feathers of the young raven's wing, and number the hairs which cluster upon the human head.