The tidings came echoing across the deep, and in our homes the story of death was told; and sadness filled the pious heart as the thought that another servant of God, another heroine of the church, had fallen at her post, a martyr in the cause of truth. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions felt deeply the loss which had been sustained, and mourned for one whose piety, intellect, and labors were abundant.
Here endeth the missionary toils of two years and four months; and, uttering words of peace to the fallen, we bid farewell to her memory until death shall call us to join the blessed throng of the ransomed whose names are recorded on high.
"Who would not wish to die like those
Whom God's own Spirit deigns to bless?
To sink into that soft repose,
Then wake to perfect happiness."
VI.
ELEANOR MACOMBER, OF BURMAH.
Almost all the heroines who have gone forth from the churches of America to dot heathen soil with their lowly graves have been attended by some stronger arm than that of weak, defenceless woman. Many of them have had husbands on whom they relied for support and protection, and to whom they could turn with the assurance of sympathy in hours of anguish and gloom.
But Miss Macomber went out attended by no such kind companion. She resolved on a missionary life, without the offer of marriage being connected with it. No husband helped her decide the momentous question; and when she resolved, it was to go alone. Impelled by the Christian's high and holy motives, she determined on a course which would involve her in a thousand perplexities and load her with a thousand cares. With none to share these cares and perplexities, with no heart to keep time with the wild beatings of her own, she crossed, a friendless woman, the deep, dark ocean, and on soil never trodden by the feet of Christian men erected the banner of the cross.
Eleanor Macomber was born at Lake Pleasant, Hamilton county, New York. Here her childhood and youth were passed, and here was her mind prepared for that career of usefulness which in after years made her an ornament to her sex, to the church, and to the world.
From Lake Pleasant she removed to Albany, where her heart was brought into subjection to the divine will and her mind impressed with the great truths of revelation. She became a convert to the religion of the cross. She became a convert to tears, to prayers, to self-denying labors, to a life of sacrifice and devotion. Her piety was from henceforth of the highest character, and all her daily deportment gave evidence of her love to the Savior.
In 1830 she was sent out by the Missionary Board, of the Baptist denomination, as a teacher among the Ojibwas, at Sault de Ste. Marie, in Michigan. This was her first missionary work, and she continued engaged in it nearly four years, when, in the mysterious providence of God, her health failed, and she was obliged to return to her friends. But the great Head of the church, in removing her from one field of labor, was only preparing her for another. In 1836 she became connected with the Karen mission, and a more extended field of usefulness was thrown open before her. She sailed from this country in the ship Louvre, and arrived in Maulmain in the autumn of the same year.