Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
After this happy Easter, the Bishop continued his route to Trichinopoly,
where he preached and confirmed on the Sunday, but complained of a slight
headache, and allowed himself to be persuaded not to go to the native
service in the evening, though he spent a good deal of time conversing
with Mr. Robinson, who was unwell enough to be lying in bed.
On Monday, the 3rd of April, he went at daybreak to hold a Tamul
confirmation at the poor little neglected native church; then looked at
the schools, but found that the want of ventilation rendered them too
oppressive for him to remain; and afterwards received and graciously
answered an address from the poor Christians, praying him to send them a
pastor, for they had been without one for two years. He came back, still
in his robes, to Mr. Robinson's bedroom, and, with great eagerness,
talked over what he had seen and heard; speaking of the destitution of
this poor church, and of the needfulness that a Bishop should receive
regular reports of every station; also mentioning a Danish missionary
whom he intended to appoint. He then went to his own room, and,
according to Indian habit after exertion, went out in order to bathe. The
bath was in a separate building. It was fifteen feet long, eight broad,
and with stone steps descending into it to a depth of seven feet, and it
was perfectly full of water. The servant sitting outside wondered at the
length of time and unbroken silence, and at last looked in; but Reginald
Heber had, by that time, long been lifeless in the cold bath!
He was only in his forty-fourth year; but medical opinion declared that
there had been, unsuspected, the seeds of fatal disease, accelerated by
climate, exertion, and excitement, and such as would probably have caused
long helplessness and inaction, unless thus suddenly developed.
He was buried the next day at Trichinopoly church, where the mural
tablet, with most touching and appropriate simplicity, bears no
inscription in laudation, but merely the holy words, "Be ye also ready."
Thus ended a life of inward and outward brightness, which comes like a
stream of sunshine among the shadows through which most of the labourers
had to struggle, either for want of means of education, or from poverty
or melancholy, and yet as true and as exhilarating a course as was ever
one of theirs. May we not read his description in the verse:--
"And there are souls that seem to dwell
Above this earth--so rich a spell
Floats round their steps where'er they move,
Of hopes fulfilled, and mutual love:
Such, if on high their hopes are set,
Nor in the stream the source forget;
If, prompt to quit the bliss they know,
Following the Lamb where'er He go,
By purest pleasures unbeguiled
To idolize or wife or child,
Such wedded souls our God shall own
For faultless virgins round His throne."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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