“See the shadows lengthen round us,
Soon the day-dawn will begin;
Can you leave them lost and lonely?
Christ is coming—call them in.”
MORE nurses and more visitors were required when the cholera broke out. Christian women seemed wanted everywhere, in the hospitals and in the homes of the sick poor. Lizzie knew that she might take the cholera from some one she visited, and be very ill, or perhaps die, but she knew, too, whose she was and whom she served. Knew, too, that death, if it came, could only set the spirit free to go home to her heavenly Father's house, where she would be forever with the Lord, who had bought her with His own precious blood, and as she thought of the many who were dying without God and without hope, the love of Christ constrained her, and she went forth, not only to carry food, medicine and other things sent to the sick by many kind friends, but to speak to them of One in whom her own soul was resting and rejoicing—her own loving, living Lord and Savior.
Her work began in Limehouse, a thickly-peopled district in East London, and I have often heard her speak of one sorrowful day when, on entering N— Street, the closed shutters or lowered window blind of nearly every house told that death had been very busy.
I am not going to tell you of all the sad things Lizzie saw and heard. But while there was much to sadden, there was also much to cheer. Many who had been living thoughtless, careless lives began to read their Bibles, and asked, "What must we do to be saved?" And though when the cholera outbreak was over a few of these went back to their old ways, showing plainly that they had never really tasted the converting grace of God, there were others who gave proof by changed lives that for them old things had passed away, that they had passed from death unto life.
Forty years ago very little was done to make the homes of the very poor comfortable or even healthy. What is now known as hygiene, or the law of health, seems to have been very little known or attended to, and Lizzie was often grieved by the untidy ways of the people she visited. It seemed so hard to persuade some of the mothers that it was wrong to allow a pool of dirty water to remain just outside their front door, or that the smell arising from a heap of potato parings, cabbage leaves, etc., was enough to make any one ill. But time and patience, with the blessing of the Lord, did much, and those who had known N— Street in the past said it looked more clean and tidy than it had done before the cholera visited it.
One of the mothers Lizzie visited interested her greatly. Mrs. M., as we will call her, was a Christian. Her marriage had not been disobedience to the word of God, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers" (2 Cor. 6:14), for when she became a wife it would have been hard to say whether her husband or herself was most careless as to divine things; but, about a year after, "the grace of God that bringeth salvation" (Titus 2:2) appeared to her, and she was truly converted. The Spirit of God puts new desires into the hearts of those who belong to Christ, and the great desire of Mrs. M.'s heart was that her husband might become a partaker of like precious faith, and she made it a matter of daily prayer.
But God, whose ways are not as our ways, saw it would be good for her to be kept waiting. For forty long years she went on praying, often sorely tried, but with a faith that never seemed to waver. Lizzie often united with her in prayer, and Mrs. M. would say, "Yes, miss, it does seem a long time, but I don't mind, for the answer will come—my husband will be saved. I cannot exactly tell you how I know, but I do feel quite sure of it.”
And in God's own time and way the answer came, though, as far as we know, the eyes of the faithful wife did not see it. Very suddenly, and only after one hour's illness, the Lord took her to be with Himself, and words spoken at her grave were used of the Lord to Mr. M.'s conversion.
After about four years of consistent Christian life he, too, fell asleep in Christ.
Mrs. M.'s true story will, I hope, encourage some of us who have begun to pray for unconverted relatives and friends to keep on praying, remembering the Master's words: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Luke 11:9.)