Memorial of Mrs. Lucy Gilpatrick Marsh delivered June 22, 1868.Thompson, A. C. (Augustus Charles)
Religion
Memorial of Mrs. Lucy Gilpatrick Marsh delivered June 22, 1868.
Thompson, A. C. (Augustus Charles)
Funeral sermons; Marsh, Lucy Gilpatrick, 1792-1868 -- Death and burial -- Sermons; Sermons, American
Look at her record for the last year only. Besides being almoner of
other comforts and delicacies for the sick and destitute, she
distributed more than one thousand two hundred garments and other
articles to the needy; more than two thousand religious tracts, papers,
books, and the like; and made rising of three thousand visits; which,
owing to lameness, was a number less by one thousand than that of the
year previous.
It should be stated that in early life her constitution and her health
seemed not to be firm; and that frequently her toils have been
prosecuted amidst no small amount of weakness and even suffering. Hers
is one of the cases going to show that nothing conduces more to
longevity than benevolent industry.
It should also be stated that this perseverance in Christian toil did
not stand connected with personal necessities. Children had urged her to
withdraw from these labors, and at more than one of their homes is an
apartment called "Mother's Room," which has for years stood waiting for
her. Loyalty to the Master demanded, as she believed, that all remaining
strength should, no less than in former years, be devoted to him. Her
life was, to its close, a protest against the prevailing spirit of
self-indulgence. Though fully aware that the hour of departure hastened
on, she could not bring herself to the pitiful work of merely saving her
own soul. There are certain of woman's rights which she strenuously yet
modestly vindicated,--her right to quiet benevolent activity, her right
to be a ministering angel. You may have noticed that trees and plants,
when they feel the approach of decay, sometimes seem to hasten their
fruitage just at the last. She was aware that her time was short, and
she hastened to make the most of it. And it would be an important
omission if the statement were not made that in her views of duty and in
her Christian sympathies there was no narrowness. This work of city
evangelization was no pet employment. It proceeded from genuine
principle, which is always expansive and liberalizing. Her heart went
out with special interest to the Home Missionary Society, and yet more
toward the foreign fields of the American Board.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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