Mary: The Queen of the House of David and Mother of Jesus: The Story of Her LifeWalsh, A. Stewart (Alexander Stewart)
Religion
Mary: The Queen of the House of David and Mother of Jesus: The Story of Her Life
Walsh, A. Stewart (Alexander Stewart)
Biographical fiction; Christian fiction; Christian women saints -- Fiction; Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Fiction
No one as well as a woman can handle the poor. There are hundreds and
thousands of them in all our cities. There is a kind of work that men
cannot do for the destitute. Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough
way, and it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes
down so heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to
gather it. But woman glides so softly into the house of want, and finds
out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the
table, that all the family come out on the front steps as she departs,
expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go
right up to Heaven, from whence she seems to have come down. O, Christian
young woman, if you would make yourself happy and win the blessings of
Christ, go out among the poor! A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may
make a homely load to carry, but the angels of God will come out to
watch, and the Lord Almighty will give His messenger hosts a charge,
saying, “Look after that woman, canopy her with your wings, and shelter
her from all harm.” And while you are seated in the house of destitution
and suffering, the little ones around the room will whisper, “Who is she?
is she not beautiful?” and if you will listen right sharply, you will
hear dripping through the leaky roof, and rolling over the broken stairs,
the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace and good will to man.” Can you tell why a Christian woman,
going down among the haunts of iniquity on a Christian errand, seldom
meets with any indignity?
I stood in the chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated
Dr. Chalmers, in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburg; and I
said to her, as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that
place, “Do you come here nights to hold a service?” “Oh, yes,” she said;
“I take my lantern and I go through all these haunts of sin, the darkest
and the worst; and I ask all the men and women to come to the chapel, and
then I sing for them, and I pray for them, and I talk to them.” I said,
“Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while performing
this Christian errand?” “Never,” she said; “never.” That young woman,
who has her father by her side, walking down the street, and an armed
policeman at each corner is not so well defended as that Christian woman
who goes forth on Gospel work into the haunts of iniquity carrying the
Bible and bread.
Some one said, “I dislike very much to see that Christian woman teaching
these bad boys in the mission school. I am afraid to have her instruct
them.” “So,” said another man, “I am afraid too.” Said the first, “I am
afraid they will use vile language before they leave the place.” “Ah,”
said the other man, “I am not afraid of that; what I am afraid of is,
that if any of those boys should use a bad word in her presence, the
other boys would tear him to pieces—killing him on the spot.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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