Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great BritainCharlotte Elizabeth
Religion
Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great Britain
Charlotte Elizabeth
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Charlotte Elizabeth, 1790-1846
For four months I persevered in the work, devoting from four to six
hours every day to it; and though I never in the smallest degree
concealed or compromised the truth, or failed to place in the strongest
light its contrast with the falsehoods taught them, I never experienced
a disrespectful or unkind look from one among the hundreds, the
thousands who knew me as the enemy of their religion, but the loving
friend of their country and of their souls. Often, when I went to visit
and relieve some poor dying creature in a cellar or garret, where a
dozen wholly unconnected with the sufferer were lodged in the same
apartment, have I gathered them all about me by speaking of Ireland with
the affection I really feel for it, and then shown them, from the
Scriptures, in English, or by means of an Irish reader sometimes
accompanying me, the only way of salvation, pointing out how very
different was that by which they vainly sought it. My plan was to
discover such as were too ill to go to the dispensary for relief, or to
select the most distressed objects whom I met there, and to take the
bread of life along with the bread that perisheth into their wretched
abodes. I was most ably and zealously helped by that benevolent
physician who had always been foremost in every good and compassionate
work for the Irish poor; and to whose indefatigable zeal it is chiefly
owing that at this day the poor lambs of that distressed flock are still
gathered and taught in the schools which it was Donald's supreme delight
to superintend. I cannot pass over in silence the devotion of Dr.
Pidduck, through many years, to an office the most laborious, the most
repulsive, and in many respects the most thankless that a professional
man can be engaged in--that of ministering to the diseased and filthy
population of the district. But many a soul that he has taught in the
knowledge of Him whom to know is life eternal, will be found to rejoice
him in the day when their poor bodies shall arise to meet the Lord.
The schools in George-street, to which I have alluded, are the main
blessing of the place: they were established long before the gospel in
Irish was ever introduced there; and they survive the Irish ministry
which, alas, has been withdrawn from the spot where God enabled me to
plant it. Those schools are a bud of promise in the desolate wilderness,
which may the Lord in his own good time cause to blossom again. * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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