“I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,
And when my voice is lost in death
Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne’er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures!”
CHAPTER XXII.
Life at Madeley
When a post-chaise drove up to Cross Hall on January and, the crack of the whip made sweet music in the ears of Mrs. Fletcher, for behind those horses she was to make her bridal journey to Madeley, where they were to take up their work together in the name of the Lord.
Cries the praiseful diary:—
“How shall I find language to express the goodness of the Lord! I know no want but that of more grace I have a husband in everything suited to me He bears with all my faults and failings in a manner that continually reminds me of the text, ’Love your wives as Christ loved the church.’ His constant endeavour is to make me happy; his strongest desire is for my spiritual growth He is, in every sense of the word, the man my highest reason chooses to obey.”
Fletcher himself had greatly changed his opinion since the indictment of his “Reasons for and against Matrimony.” To a friend he wrote his new sentiments thus:—
“God declared it was not good that man, a social being, should live alone, and therefore He gave him a helpmeet for him For the same reason our Lord sent forth His disciples, two and two. Had I searched the three kingdoms I could not have found one brother willing to share gratis my weal, woe, and labours, and complaisant enough to unite his fortunes to mine; but God has found me a partner, a sister, a wife, to use St. Paul’s language, who is not afraid to face with me the colliers and bargemen of my parish, until death part us.
“Buried together in our country village, we shall help one another to trim our lamps, and wait for the coming of the Heavenly Bridegroom.”