A Sketch of the Life of Elizabeth T. Stone and of Her Persecutions / With an Appendix of Her Treatment and Sufferings While in the Charlestown McLean Assylum, Where She Was Confined Under the Pretence of Insanity

by Elizabeth T. Stone

CLOSING REMARKS TO CHRISTIANS.

Christian reader, whatever name you may bear, I address you, you who have got the spirit of Christ witnessing with your spirit that you are born of God. You have read what I have stated and you may be ready to say you don't believe it; but lend me a listening ear with an enlightened understanding, both by the spirit and knowledge, for I have put forth this effort to make known this knowledge to the world, to save you from the awful outrage of the wicked at the present day, for you are liable yet to have the cry raised about you that you are insane and to be taken and imprisoned as I have been, where violence is used to force medicine down your throat which kills or destroys the spirit of Christ in you. You are ignorant, I know, that this knowledge is upon the earth, and the Bible does not give any account of it, excepting in Heb. Chapt. vi. verse 4, 6; and St. Paul does not say how it can be done. Christian reader it is you that ought to be interested in what I say, and before you say that it is derangment, and give strength to the wicked in the greatest crime that can be committed upon an immortal being, condsider well what a crime you hold up. Why should I wish to start such a thing before the world if it was not so? for gladly would I kneel and lift up my voice in prayer to God and leave behind the things that are behind and press on towards the mark for the prize. Persecution to a christian is like water to a plant; what is called derangement by some, or delirious about religion, can be removed by medicine by the Dr.'s at the Charlestown Hospital. The pains and distress of the operation cannot be found upon the annals of cruelty of any nation, and then the distressed situation it leaves one in,—neither love to God nor fellow beings. Dear christian reader, what I tell you is the truth. Ask yourself the question, what did Dr. Bell urge me to relate my christian experience for? why did he ask me how much I read the Bible, more than any other book? What if one of our missionaries were taken and imprisoned, and when they should be taken out and come to tell of their sufferings and what was said to them before the medicine was given to them, would it not show that the crime was in accordance with the whole drift of their conversation. Why did Dr. Fox say that I "must not think I was so filled with the spirit; any minister would laugh at me." I had not told him I was. Why was I shut up and no one allowed to see me?

Reader, make it your own case to be put in prison in a well state of health among some of the worst characters, entire strangers, and about three months in a stone dungeon, a poor unprotected girl.—Would it not almost make you deranged? Had a poor persecuted christian ought to be consigned into the hands of unconverted rough men? What criminal ever was executed in our land but if they made the request to see some minister or pious friend it was allowed them; but no, I was a poor persecuted christian; I asked to see some minister, Mr. Winslow I particularly asked to see; but no, the last and fatal blow must be struck upon me. If I had violated the laws of our country, why not give me a lawful trial in a court of justice and let me suffer the penalty attached to the laws which I had violated? If I was in a weak state and tryed about my spiritual state, was it right to shut me up away from all my dear associates and godly influence? At first I thought I was in a house of ill-fame. O, God only knows what I suffered and what I afterwards had to go through. Had I been deceived into such a house it would have been nothing to what my situation is, and what my sufferings have been.

Dear christian reader, I will show you by the Bible where I was when I was carried into Charlestown Hospital. When I was converted I had a strong hope to support me against the wind and tide of this world. As an anchor is to a ship so is a hope in Christ Jesus to a person in this world. They are saved from the pollution of the world through the washing of regeneration; saved from the corruption that is in their own heart and the temptations around them. There is but one religion that is good for any thing, or one's religion is as good as another's. But why is all this contention about religion? it must mean something. One soul saved from sinning by being washed in the blood of Christ is of more value than all this world. Dear reader, have patience and I will soon bring you to the point that I wish you to understand. If holiness is liable to become a disease, as they pretend to say it does, and man has found out how to give medicine to take away from a person what they call derangement and the agony is so great and then it leaves the person in a state of suffering here of body and without the spirit of Christ, a person must suffer forever, for out of Christ God is a consuming fire; but in Christ a person can bless and praise God amidst the burning flames. When a person is converted they are turned from persuing the love of this world and seek after that holy love that is in them which is Christ and let all their actions be constrained by that love. After a person is converted they commence running after a prize, which is Christ, and in Christ is all the Godhead bodily, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Again, Christ will thoroughly purge his floor, cast out unclean spirits out of your heart and you enter the second time without sin unto salvation. Again to all who look for him he will appear the second time without sin unto salvation, change their vile bodies and make them like unto his most glorious body, or baptize them with fire and with the Holy Ghost, or being clothed upon with our house from heaven, which is eternal, immortal and full of glory.

Christian reader, I had embraced the views that are agitated at the present day, that the world is soon to be destroyed, or what is called Miller's doctrine. All I aimed at was to get out of sin, or being obliged to go with the multitude to commit sin, as I hated wrong and unholy actions, and to get ready to go up to meet the Lord in the air as every one that has this hope within himself purifies even as he is pure; for it is by grace which you are saved and not of yourself, it is the gift of God. What to me was gain I counted loss and dross; yea, dung, if I could but win Christ. I so run as to obtain the prize in six years. The prize is winning Christ, and in Christ Jesus is all the Godhead bodily, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is the crown which is immortal, eternal and full of glory. Truly I was full of the Holy Ghost, entered into the holy city and had right to the tree of life, which the leaves thereof are for the healing of the nations. Holiness belongs to the heart, not to days, months, or years. The people of God are to be the holy in all their actions and thoughts; they are saved from following sin by having the spirit of Christ.

Christian reader, I know you must read this with mingled emotions; and it must wring your heart with grief to think that the Son of God has been crucified; but it leaves the person that was in possession of this heavenly treasure of course to be forever in distress, for there remaineth no more sacrifice, which must add double grief to you in perusing these pages; or are you ready to throw it back upon me, saying it is all a delusion; that man cannot destroy the soul; man's power is not greater than God's. But, christian reader, it is knowledge that man has obtained of chemistry. By putting two substances together a third is produced unlike both. What the medicine is I know not, but I think I could tell it if I saw it.—Christian reader, you have never thought it to be very strange that a person could be poisoned to death. In that case it seperates spirit from matter; and in this case it seperates God's Holy Spirit from matter, for you know it is not only a belief, for the Devils believe and tremble. But it is having Jesus in you, the hope of glory, a praying spirit; and I wish you to understand it is that praying spirit that can be taken from you by medicine. The medicine hardens or petrifies the brain. In my case it is the brain that lays in the back part of my head that is destroyed, where the faculties of affection are located; for the volume of nature and revelation agree. I refer now to the science of Phrenology, as there is truth in it whether you believe it or not. The fifth Chapt. of Gallations tells what you are by nature, and what you must be in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. By sowing to the spirit, I crucified my affections and lusts, ceased to do the works of the flesh. You may think this is not in this world, but it is only winning the prize for the high calling which is in Christ, or entering in upon the seventh Sabbath.—As Dr. Bell has given me medicine that has killed that spirit in me I have no idea of holiness or hatred to sin, and I have no idea of worship, for we worship what we supremely love and bring all our actions to bear upon that object on which our affections are set.—But the idea of love is gone from me, and my body is void of happiness, both carnal and spiritual.

Let there be a mighty cry made by the public, and search into the iniquity of Charlestown McLean Assylum. I know it is held up by what is called the popular class, but it is a combination of men, a system that is worse than slavery, and any crime can be done there and covered up under the garb of derangement, and no one interfere. Dear Christian reader, I have put forth this appeal to let the christian world know that this knowledge is known upon the earth, and it is in the hands of the wicked. Why is the public so silent upon the sufferings of a poor girl? If I had been taken by the uncivilized red man of the woods and not half so cruelly treated, the papers would have been full of it. If I had led a low, debasing life, and had been murdered like an Ellen Jewett, the public would have been roused and the papers would have been full of it from east to west, and from north to south; but a more horrid crime has been done. O! THAT A DAGGER had been plunged into my HEART in the midnight hour; it would have been but momentary suffering and then my immortal mind growing and expanding throughout the countless ages of eternity in the knowledge and wisdom of God.

Reader, you may be ready to throw it back upon me, saying it is derangement, I expect it; let me once have heard of such a thing and I don't know but I should have thought it derangement. But, christian reader, it is you and you only that can understand a part of my language, speaking about my spiritual life. All who formerly knew me, who see me now, say that some cruelty has been done to me. My old neighbors that knew me from a child, say that I am so altered they hardly know me. My old New Hampton school mates that I have met with since I was taken out of the Hospital, start back with surprise and say that they can hardly trace a look in me that I once had, and not a trait in my deportment that I once possessed. They say "that countenance that once was lit up with happiness is now marked with deep sorrow; those eyes that once sparkled with joy are now dead and sunken with grief, and the language, and the voice are so different that some destruction has come upon you;" and when I tell them what it is, my long imprisonment, sixteen months and twenty days, not allowed to see any one that I ever saw before, only three of my folks during the time, nor allowed to write; how my happiness is taken from me, my body racked and tortured, the distressed situation that I am in, they are bathed in tears. "O tell me not, Elizabeth, that you are lost; you was once so happy in the love of God," and the deep loud sob bursts from their full hearts, "Can this be Elizabeth Stone; can this crime be done and this cruelty practised here in the midst of us and covered up and nothing said about it?"

Is this the state of our country, that the rights of a poor female are trampled upon, and the laws of our country, where there has been so much blood spilt to work out the liberty of every free born son and daughter of America. And because I endeavor to make known to the world this crime, I am threatened with a second imprisonment, by my brother Eben. If it is a crazy story surely it will do no harm, and if it is not, why had it not ought to come out. Let a council of physicians be held upon my body and see if I am a person that can enjoy life. I think that minds that understand the organization of the human body and its functions will say that some outrage has been commited upon me. If I had lost my reason is it right to take the advantage of a crazy person and destroy happiness. Charlestown McLean Assylum is to a weak excited person as a grog-shop is to an intemperate man, or a house of ill-fame, to a licentious person; they can be completely ruined. I hope this will be looked into before another one is destroyed, and that those still remaining in that awful place of imprisonment, weeping their hours away, may be relieved by seeing their friends soon. May God awaken the mind of the public to the sufferings of the helpless.