Now that we have lost her who was wont to pray for us, and to be a common helper to us, let us pray so much the more one for another, and be so much the more helpful one to another, especially in the things that pertain to the kingdom of heaven; and let all our bonds of unity be strengthened and confirmed, and let it be our constant endeavor, each of us in our place, to be mutually serviceable to each other's comfort and welfare, and jointly serviceable to the glory of God and to the comfort of the Church, for Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for the Church.
When we unbosom ourselves, He lets His love stream richly and gloriously into our hearts. From day to day, our sister seemed to realize how strongly and truly Christ loved the Church, and herself, as an individual member of it. The sacrificial death of the Saviour was to her not simply an historical fact, but a living reality. The sweet peace and pure pleasure she daily enjoyed was the result of His death. For, "He hath made peace through the blood of His cross." And since He had made her the happy recipient of His grace, it was her daily delight to walk in the path of obedience. Christ was to her the door of salvation, and she went in and out and found pasture, in ministering to the poor and indigent and dying, and in this line of Christian toil she possessed a remarkable faculty.
She told me on one occasion, during one of my pastoral visits, that she visited a dying woman and endeavored to point her to Jesus. And when a clergyman of the Church of Rome, who happened to be present, was retiring, she suggested that they should have a word of prayer together. He replied, "That while he enjoyed her religious conversation, he could not pray with her, as she did not belong to his church."
At this remark she was deeply affected, and said, with great emphasis and deep solemnity: "I thought there was but one fold and one shepherd."
When she sent around, or rather, came herself for me, to the church on Friday, the prayer-meeting night, to come and see her dear dying husband, she seemed to be troubled when I asked him, "Are you still trusting in Jesus?" as I observed he was rapidly sinking, I put the question that I might employ his blessed testimony for my own good, and the good of the congregation. He quickly responded very emphatically in the affirmative, "Yes! yes!" and I think those were the last audible words he uttered. But she was troubled because she had such faith in the consistency of the Christian life of her husband, that she knew full well that he feared no evil, for Christ was with him.
Oh, how tenderly and lovingly she would step up to his bed-side and kiss his heated brow. When he became unconscious or rather, when his speech failed him and he would point to his parched lips to have them moistened, she would tearfully exclaim, "My dear, dear husband, can you not speak to me? Have you not a word for Esther? My dear husband, how can I live without you?"
I endeavored to console her on the sorrowful occasion, until after midnight, by reading the Scriptures, and prayer, and general conversation about heavenly things, and more especially the precious promises of Jesus concerning the many mansions, I remember reading 2 Corinthians, v. 1: "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
About midnight she became perfectly resigned to the will of God, and felt that life, even amid affliction, is the gift of God, and is a valuable endowment.
In this she was like Christ, "For me to live is Christ," seemed to be her motto to the last. I left the house about two in the morning. I called again between eight and nine a.m., the same day, after her husband's death, to see how she was bearing her trouble. But oh, how changed! Her tears were all dried; and as she sat by the bedside where her husband suffered his last illness, her countenance wore an expression of perfect peace and Christian fortitude. Like her Saviour amid the hoary olives of Gethsemane, she could tranquilly exclaim: "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done!"
The first words she uttered when I entered the room were: "My dear husband has gone to glory." These words were uttered very quietly, and very solemnly. Ah, little did she think that in just one week and two hours from that time, she also was to pass away from earth to heaven, "To see the King in his beauty, and be forever with the Lord."