Last Days of Mrs. Wilson: A Missionary in India.
On his return from his tour to the northward, Mr. Wilson found his beloved partner in a state of great weakness. Her health was but too evidently impaired to such an extent as to excite alarm. Still she was unwilling to relax in her exertions. On Sunday, the 29th March, she attended the Bombay Sunday School, taught a class as usual, catechized the girls of her native school, and went twice to Church. In the evening she proposed again attending divine service, and on her husband attempting to dissuade her from it, as she seemed to be much fatigued, “Do let me go once more,” said she, “and I shall not again insist when I appear weak.” This was the last occasion on which she was privileged to attend a service. During the week she continued gradually to become worse; and on Monday, the 6th of April, she was confined to bed. The symptoms were of a very serious kind, but her mind was calm and serene. In the full conviction that her dying hour was at hand, she gave minute directions about the publication of her Marathi translations and compositions, some papers which she wished to appear in the “Oriental Christian Spectator,” and the disposal of her female schools. Her dying experience we give in the words of Dr. Wilson. She stated that on looking back on her intercourse with the natives, and her efforts for their instruction and improvement, she could not blame herself for indolence, but that she had much reason to lament her impatience and unbelief. “India,” she exclaimed, “is dark, dark; but speedily it will be light! God will most assuredly fulfill his promises, and give the heathen to His Son for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession.” “Go on your way rejoicing,” she said to me two days before her death, “and take care that no evil be mixed up with the Lord’s work.”
“God has enabled you to do much, and to manifest yourself to me as the kindest husband. Often, often, have I prayed for you that you may be supported in your solitude, and that this affliction may be blessed to the Church.” “I see much,” she observed, in a spirit of humility well becoming even the most devoted of the Lord’s servants, “which has been amiss in my past labors―pride, display, impatience, and unbelief; but I look entirely away from myself. My confidence rests entirely on the finished and accepted work of my Redeemer.” “I cannot say,” she remarked afterward to me, “that I have not served the Lord, for His grace to me has been great; but this I do say, that I have not served Him as I ought. May He yet bless my labors!”
In the silence of midnight, when she thought no human eye was upon her, and no human ear within the compass of her voice, and with the expectation of immediately entering into the Eternal World, she repeated aloud the following lines, with an earnestness which I can never forget:―
“The hour of my departure’s come,
I hear the voice that calls me home;
At last, O Lord! let trouble cease,
And let Thy servant die in peace.”
The race appointed I have run;
The combat’s o’er, the prize is won;
And now my witness is on high,
And now my record’s in the sky.
Not in my innocence I trust
I bow before Thee in the dust;
And through my Saviour’s blood alone
I look for mercy at Thy throne.
I leave the world without a tear,
Save for the friends I held so dear.
To heal their sorrows, Lord, descend,
And to the friendless prove a Friend.
Another hymn of great beauty, which I think was one of her own composition, she repeated a short time after this. On observing her in a state of extreme weakness, I wrote down on a piece of paper the lines,
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear.
and presented them to her. She read them aloud, and tried to continue the hymn. Memory seems to have failed her, but her Christian feeling and poetical imagination had not. She completed the stanza by a new and beautiful thought.
The Bible, infinitely precious to her through life, was the source of delight and joy in her last days. “Give me the Bible, that blessed book,” was her constant request. Even when under the delirium of disease, she called upon us repeatedly to bring her the Word of God. The perusal of a few of its sentences hardly ever failed in enabling her to collect her wandering thoughts, and to concentrate the powers of her mind after addressing the Saviour in earnest prayer. One evening, when she thought herself dying, she repeated aloud a portion of the song of Solomon, “I sat down under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to my taste.” “Read to me,” she would say, “the forty-third chapter of Isaiah; I like to hear the promise, ‘When thou passeth through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt, neither shall the fire kindle upon thee; for I am the Lord Thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.’” The last two chapters of Revelation afforded her the greatest delight. After I had read them, at her own request, she exclaimed, “How glorious is this description of Heaven!” Shortly after she took hold of my Bible, and commenced reading. When she laid it down, she said, “I have read the greater part of Revelation; and O, how glorious!”
The Epistle to the Ephesians she poured over with a devout interest, ascribing praise to God for the grace which she had experienced, and which she viewed as similar to that received by those to whom the Epistle was addressed. On my repeating to her the twenty-third Psalm, she said, “Now I can from the heart adopt every word of that psalm.”
When she found death coming near to her, she said, “The Lord is hearing my prayers, O, how gracious He is to my soul!” Her anticipations of eternal glory were expressed in language the most beautiful and affecting. “Tomorrow ‘s sun,” she exclaimed, “will rise—though not upon me. But I shall behold Him who is as the sun shining forth in his strength — Him who is the sun of righteousness; and I shall be ravished by His infinite glory. He will never go down upon my soul. ‘The earth, and the work thereof, shall be burnt up,’ but I shall not perish. How strange, how marvelous! ‘O, death, where is thy sting? O, grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’” Never, during the whole of her illness, did she express, as many eminent Christians may have done, the slightest doubt of her acceptance with Christ. “Is it possible,” she said the day before her departure, “that I, a child of God; can die in this manner?” Fearing that a cloud was about to pass over her mind, I pointed her to the lines:
“Who then can e’er divide us more
From Jesus and His love,
Or break the sacred charm that binds
The earth to heaven above?
Let troubles rise, and terrors frown,
And days of darkness fall;
Through Him all dangers we’ll defy.
And more than conquer all.”
“I feel all this,” she said, “but my anxiety is about showing it to the world.” It was her wish to die praising the Lord. “I am afraid,” she said on another occasion.” Are you afraid, “I asked,” of death.” “No,” “was her reply,” I am afraid of speaking nonsense when the noise comes into my ears.” She felt quite resigned on this point when I repeated to her the lines:
“To human weakness not severe,
Is our High Priest above.”
“I am happy,” she said, “all the glory is taken away from me — a poor, erring creature.” On another occasion I heard her exclaim “I cannot look steadily―I cannot look steadily!” Thinking that she was complaining of her want of faith, I observed to her, “Christ, though He may try you my love, will never suffer your faith to fail.” “You mistake me,” was her reply, “It is the glory sparkling behind the cloud which overpowers me, but soon shall it burst forth upon my soul, and I shall be enabled to bear it and drink up its beams.”
On the morning before her death she was quite collected, but extremely weak. She recognized the kind friends who were around her bed, and mentioned their names, but was unable to converse with them. She traced along with them several passages in the Psalms, into the devotion of which she seemed fully to enter. As the day proceeded I perceived that the happy spirit would soon put off its earthly tabernacle that it might be clothed with its house which is from heaven. It did not need a human ministration to its comfort, its peace, or its joys; for the communicants of the divine grace to it were very abundant. It appeared to animate the decaying and dissolving body with undiminished power. As the shades of evening were drawing on, when I presented to my dearest wife the last communication I made to her “The Lord Jesus is with Thee”―her response was, “And with thee, my beloved one.” I was recognized-by her on several occasions during the night; but though she attempted to address me she could not speak so as I could understand her. The last words I heard from her lips were, “The Kingdom of the Saviour;” but in what connection they were used I do not know. At eight o’clock on the morning of Sunday, the 19th of April, 1836, sacred to the commemoration of the Redeemer’s triumph over the grave, she died without a struggle, and her soul winged its flight to that glorious abode where He lives and reigns.