Mary and I: Forty Years with the SiouxRiggs, Stephen Return
History
Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux
Riggs, Stephen Return
Dakota Indians -- Missions; Riggs, Stephen Return, 1812-1883
"4. Nor, again, is the strangely beautiful life wasted because
cut short so early in its course. The ointment most precious
was never more so than when its box was broken and the odor of
it filled all the house. This that this young missionary has
done, animated by the love of the Master and a sacred passion
for lifting up the lowly, will be spoken of as a memorial of
her in all the churches; and in not a few homes, of the rich as
of the poor, will be felt the sweet constraint of her
beautiful, joyous, consecrated life. She was not alone; there
are many more like her; and, best of all, there are to be
vastly more yet, who will not be deaf to 'the high calling.'
The Master has need of them. The way, on the whole, is
infinitely attractive. Thanks for the life of this woman who
did so much, from first to last, to make it appear so!
"And thanks too for such a death, which, coming in the sweetest
and completest blooming of life's beauty, when not a fault had
stayed to mar it, and no wasting had ever touched it--an ending
which transfigures all that came before it, and which now, in
the mingling of retrospect and prospect, helps those who knew
her to a deeply surprised sense of the fact that,
'To Death it is given,
To see how this world is embosomed in heaven.'"
To us, who are blind and cannot see afar off, it is impossible to
perceive, and difficult to believe, that the taking away in the vigor
of womanhood of one who was showing such a capacity and adaptability
for the work of elevating the Teetons can be made to subserve the
furtherance of the cause of Christ. But we must believe that God, who
sees the end from the beginning, and who makes no mistakes, will bring
out of this sore bereavement a harvest of joy; and that that grave
under the window of the mission house in Peoria bottom will be a
testimony to the love of Jesus and the power of his Gospel, that will
thrill and uplift many hearts from Bangor to Fort Sully. It was a
beautiful life of faith and service; and it has only gone to be
perfected in the shadow of the Tree of Life.
S. R. R.
REV. GIDEON H. POND.
A SUCCESSFUL LIFE.
Born and brought up in Litchfield county, in a town adjoining
Washington, Connecticut, Rev. George Bushnell visited that hill
country in his youth, and was deeply impressed with the manifest and
pervading religious element in the community. Taken there by a special
providence, more than a quarter of a century ago, and enjoying the
privilege of a visit in some of the families, it seemed to me that it
had been a good place to raise men. This was on the line of the
impression made upon me years before that. When I first met, in the
land of the Dakotas, the brothers Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond, they
were both over six feet high, and "seemed the children of a king."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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