Elizabeth: the Disinherited Daughter: By E. Ben Ez-erArnold, Ebenezer
Religion
Elizabeth: the Disinherited Daughter: By E. Ben Ez-er
Arnold, Ebenezer
Arnold, Elizabeth Ward, 1778-1865; Methodist women -- United States -- Biography
Among the church privileges which had cost this disinherited daughter so
dearly few ever equaled in sweet enjoyment this cottage chapel arrangement.
She no longer had to steal away and snatch a few minutes once or twice a
month to associate with the advocates of free grace, as she once did, nor
be shut entirely away from their beloved society, as for nearly a year, in
that terrible season of persecution and despair. The church she loved came
to her door. Her home echoed their prayers, songs, testimonies, and shouts.
She lived, toiled, ate, and slept under the shadow of the hallowed "upper
room," so often, like the one in Jerusalem, "filled with the Holy Ghost."
She knew, as no one else could, how much such privileges had cost her, but
still insisted that they never cost a tithe of what they were worth. Nor
was the gratification of this ardent lover of Methodism the chief result of
this chapel arrangement. There the Church found asylum from persecution;
and if we may estimate the value of such a refuge from the alarm of the
enemy it must have proved a precious boon. Often were the pious band
obliged to come early and lock themselves in to escape the fury of the mob,
which would curse and mock without. But sometimes, unable to reach them or
seriously to annoy them by their howlings, they would vent their spite
upon the premises. Now it would be by breaking windows. Again, finding the
windows guarded with thick board blinds, they would tear down fences, fill
the well with wood, etc. In several instances it came out in one way and
another that some attendant of the "standing order" furnished the rum that
stimulated the rabble to make these attempts to drive off these "deceivers
of the last days, that should deceive the very elect." But "the more they
afflicted them the more they multiplied and grew;" so that in a few years
the place became "too strait for them." Even members of the mob of one
meeting would be "awakened" while listening for something to mock, and
scarcely able to restrain themselves, while with their comrades they would
come early to the next meeting, get fastened in with the pious and the
penitent, and, making humble confession, seek and find salvation, and
become lively members of the church they had persecuted.
Who can estimate the amount of good done in that "upper room" at the dawn
of the nineteenth century? "When God writeth up his people" of how many
will it be counted, "This man was born there?" Who can stand on the hill
where once stood that unpretending home with a "meeting house" on the top
of it, and look over to University Hill, crowned with those Methodist halls
of science and art, and see no connection between the humble seed-sowing
and the waving harvest?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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