A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. HavilandHaviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Religion
A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland
Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Freed persons; Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith), 1808-1898; Underground Railroad
I read to her the readiness of the Lord Jesus to forgive sin. "How
ready to bless the humble and contrite heart! Only believe this with
all thy heart, and the blood of Jesus is sufficient to wash away every
stain that sin has made. Though they be as scarlet, he will make them
white as snow." We knelt together, and she too offered earnest prayer
for strength to live the new life, which she firmly resolved to do.
I saw her a week later, and she said she informed those men with whom
she had committed those darkest of sins of her firm resolution to live
a virtuous life, and she locked her door; but they persisted in
troubling her through the night, threatening to tear her house down or
burn it.
"Three nights I suffered from them. But by constant prayer, believing
God would take care of me, I was delivered from them. And I have plenty
of washing, ironing, and house-cleaning to do; and I get along so much
better than I expected I could. I do want to go to meeting; but so many
know of my wicked life I am afraid to go inside of a church."
I told her to go to whichever Church she felt most at home, and the
Lord would open the way for her, and enable her to bring up her little
girl of eight years in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
At the close of my school I left this field, so white to the harvest,
to enter, as I supposed, upon a field of home missions. At the
expiration of a year I visited Toledo, and inquired of one who
occasionally employed Dutch Mary, but knew nothing of my experience
with her, how she was prospering. The cheering reply was, "Splendidly;
I haven't heard a disparaging word of her for months, and there used to
be hard stories about her." I heard she had united with the Baptist
Church, and I think she is trying to live a Christian. If she had not
left town on a visit to her friends I should have seen her, but the
report I heard of her was heart-cheering. May God bless her, and all
who are receiving life-giving power who were dead in trespasses and sin.
CHAPTER VIII.
FUGITIVES IN CANADA.
While visiting friends in Detroit and Canada previous to reopening
Raisin Institute, as I designed, I was earnestly solicited by Henry
Bibb, Horace Hallack, and Rev. Chas. C. Foote, the committee authorized
to employ a teacher, to open a school in a new settlement of fugitives,
eight miles back of Windsor, where the Refugee Association had
purchased government land, on long and easy terms, for fugitive slaves.
They had erected a frame house for school and meeting purposes. The
settlers had built for themselves small log-houses, and cleared from
one to five acres each on their heavily timbered land, and raised corn,
potatoes, and other garden vegetables. A few had put in two and three
acres of wheat, and were doing well for their first year.
After prayerful consideration, I reached the conclusion to defer for
another year my home work, and enter this new field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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