“In the desert God will teach thee,
What the God that thou has found:
Patient, gracious, powerful, holy,
All His grace shall there abound.”
FOR about ten years Lizzie was allowed to go in and out among the poor people, of whose homes and ways of getting a living our last chapters may have helped you, dear young readers, to form some idea.
Busy and I believe happy, Lizzie took a real delight in her work. And then—ah! then—the Savior- friend, who though unseen was ever near, saw it best for His own glory, best, too, we may be sure for Lizzie, that another page in the lesson book of her life should be turned for her by His own wise, loving hand. She had never been strong; ten years of almost constant work, for her holidays were short and by no means frequent ones, had told greatly upon her constitution. Perhaps, like many another busy worker, she had sometimes forgotten that the body is "the Lord's," and should be rested as well as used for His will and pleasure. The same Lord who of old said to His disciples "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while" (Mark 6:3131And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. (Mark 6:31)) was about to take Lizzie apart to a lonely place, to the quiet of a sick room, away from the busy mothers who had attended her sewing classes, away from the factory and watercress girls who had so often heard in her evening school words whereby they might be saved.
For some time her friends had noticed how tired she always looked, and the doctor had said a long holiday, not less than three months, might do her good. But she could not make up her mind to such a long absence from her much-loved work, and as she had a bright color in her cheeks and a pleasant smile and a kind word for every one, no one even guessed at the almost constant pain she suffered, or thought that the day she was to visit her poor people for the last time was very near.
A severe illness from which she never really recovered laid her aside from active work. For some weeks she was so very ill that the doctor, who was, I believe, a Christian man, more than once wished her good-bye, thinking that before his next visit the Lord would most likely take her to be with Himself. I have often heard her speak of the deep, quiet joy of that "waiting time," when she herself thought that for her the time when she should "depart to be with Christ" was so near that at any moment she might be forever with the Lord. Perhaps she may have said, in the words of another—
“I took the rest and stillness,
From His own hand,
And felt this present illness
Was what He planned.”
But the love that makes no mistakes knew that Lizzie's lessons were not all learned, her work on earth not done. It was quite a disappointment, she used to say, when a turn in her illness led the doctor to say, "Well, you are not going to leave us yet; you will pull through, but you will never be strong enough to visit or work as you have done." And then the most trying part of an illness that lasted for more than twenty years began. Days that soon grew into weeks and weeks into months and years of pain and weakness. Her circumstances, too, were trying, for having left her father's house for Christ's sake, she did not feel free to return to it an invalid, who could only give trouble, even if her friends had invited her to do so.
She was in lodgings, and as the person in whose house she lodged would not or could not undertake to nurse her, or even to carry out the orders of the doctor, and as she could not at that time afford to pay for the help of a trained nurse, she suffered much from the want of proper care and attention; but day by day she was learning never-to-be-forgotten lessons of the love and care of her heavenly Father.
After two or three lonely years a friend much younger than herself began to visit her. We will call this friend Ivy, as I do not think she would like me to tell you her real name.
Ivy had, when quite a little girl, been through grace led to trust in the Lord Jesus as her own precious Savior. She had been a lonely, thoughtful child. Perhaps it was her longing for sympathy rather than any deep sense of her lost condition as a sinner that at first the Lord used in bringing her to Himself; but she came, and it is not the way in which we come, but the One to whom we come that saves us.
Unlike in many things, they were sisters in Christ. At last the friendship that sprang up between the two lonely women grew so strong that they decided on making their home together—an arrangement that proved good for both.