Woman and Her Saviour in Persia: By a Returned MissionaryLaurie, Thomas
History
Woman and Her Saviour in Persia: By a Returned Missionary
Laurie, Thomas
Church of the East -- Missions; Missions -- Iran; Women missionaries
Perhaps bereaved missionary mothers In Persia do not realize how much
their patient suffering has done for their poor Nestorian sisters. The
short lives of those twenty missionary children, who lie in Persian
graves, were a precious offering to Christ. They were all missionaries,
and did not go home till their work was done. Each one had a place to
fill among the instrumentalities employed by the Master to promote his
kingdom in Persia. There was no waste in the breaking of those
alabaster boxes of precious ointment. Nestorian parents looked on, to
learn how to lay their children into the arms of Jesus, and become more
Christ-like themselves. No years of mature toil have been more blessed
than the years of those thus early called home; and in this truth their
bereaved parents may find abundant consolation. There are influences
too deep and silent to be fully understood; but they are none the less
real and powerful; and the mother who to-day misses the little feet,
the loving eyes, and the pleasant voice, which God had lent to gladden
her earthly home for a season, may rejoice in the assurance that her
loving submission to a Father's hand is teaching a lesson to the people
whom she loves, such as they could never learn from words.
During the revival of 1846, a little child of Dr. Perkins died; and as
the missionaries laid it away, in the hope of a glorious resurrection,
it helped them to point others to him who is the Resurrection and the
Life. It was buried on a snowy Sabbath day, and the faces of the young
converts, who stood in silence around the grave, showed that to them
the associations of death were no longer fearful. Turning away from the
cemetery, Mr. Stoddard, feeling that he could not be separated from
those young disciples even in death, said, "Do you not hope that you
shall rest here to rise with these to everlasting life?"[1] Little did
they who heard him know how soon that cemetery at Seir would become
more sacred as his own resting place. [Footnote 1: See Nestorian
Biography, page 242.]
Before leaving this topic, we insert a letter from Sarah, daughter of
Joseph, a former pupil in the Seminary, and the oldest of four sisters.
The death of little Deborah seemed to draw her heart very closely to
her Saviour, and she now sleeps by her side, doubtless understanding
better the meaning of those arms of love that here she believed "folded
her little sister in his own bosom."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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