CHAPTER XI.

THE SISTER OF CHARITY.

DORCAS.

Good sisters,

How they toiled from day to day,

Till many weeks had rolled their weary way;
Each one in crowded marts of business stood,
And plead for means as hunger pleads for food.

''Twas woman's plea ;

But how it won its way!

For hearts o'er purses e'en can hold the sway;
The crowd of business fled before their face,
And sternest men gave audience to their grace.

Each day

The merchant stood behind the shelf;

They entered in; he gently bowed himself;

He thought their custom his, till calmly told

They sought not silks, but sought his well-earned gold.

His hopes were dashed;

And bows, he'd none to make;

Excuse he made, but that they did not take;
Their pleas unite, and on his heart prevail,
Their object gained, again they set their sail.

And so they went,

Through city wide and long,

Weak in their sex, but in their errand strong.
The work was done; the needed sum was raised;
Long may they live, and longer still be praised!

Life done,

And better than the pastor's lay

Shall they receive who worked to win the day.
"Well done!" their Father echoes from above,
"Come, bask forever in a heaven of love!"

NOW THERE WAS AT JOPPA A CERTAIN DISCIPLE NAMED TABITHA, WHICH BY INTERPRETATION IS CALLED DORCAS: THIS

WOMAN WAS FULL OF GOOD WORKS AND ALMS DEEDS WHICH SHE DID. AND IT CAME TO PASS IN THOSE DAYS, THAT SHE WAS SICK, AND DIED; WHOM WHEN THEY HAD WASHED, THEY LAID HER IN AN UPPER CHAMBER. * * THEN PETER AROSE, AND WENT WITH THEM. WHEN HE WAS COME,

*

THEY BROUGHT HIM INTO THE UPPER CHAMBER: AND ALL THE WIDOWS STOOD BY HIM, WEEPING, AND SHOWING THE COATS AND GARMENTS WHICH DORCAS MADE WHILE SHE WAS WITH Acts 9; 36, 37, 39.

THEM.

DORCAS was a Christian woman, who abode at Joppa, who was very benevolent to the poor, and who spent much of her time in useful employments for the good of others. She was a sister of charity, whose case has deserved a record in the word of God. She sickened and died, and was raised to life by the prayers of Peter, who knew her well, and who had often experienced her bounty. She was a working Christian, who delighted far more to secure the good of others

than to seek her own ease and gratification, and who endeared herself to all who loved the Lord in those days.

Without dwelling on the case of Dorcas, we take her as an illustration of a large class of noble women who are found in the world, who are making great sacrifices for the glory of God and the souls of the lost. They are often humble in life, despised by the world. They live unknown to fame, for their deeds are quiet, and their course is often obscure.

sad at heart, and

The Romish church has its Sisters of Charity. They are women whom disappointment or sin has driven from the world, and they have devoted their lives to retirement, solitude, and charity. Though convent life doubtless leads to the foulest wrongs, there are many of the Romish Sisters of Charity whose hearts are alive to the highest impulses of goodness, and whose deeds are worthy to be recorded in the annals of the church. The Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul are known all over the world for their humble, unostentatious goodness and charity. Their lives are pure, their deportment gentle, and their deeds heavenly.

But there is a larger class, a purer body of women, sisters of charity, who live in the world, and strive to save it-mothers and daughters, wives and sisters, who love God, and the suffering

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poor. The Protestant sister of charity has no pharisaic title, no sounding name; she wears no nunnish habit, nor do the cross, and beads, and skull, dangle from her waist; but she goes forth alone, weeping for the woes of the living throng, saying to those who ask her of her dead,

"Better that those for whom I weep
Were lying in their graves asleep!
O, no! I weep not for the dead;
My tears are for the living shed!"

HARRIET NEWELL and ANN H. JUDSON represent one class of these sisters of charity—the missionary sisterhood. Long ere the calls of the world had awakened the slumbering church, those gentle women resolved to forsake home, and friends, and native land, to go out amid untold and undescribed dangers, to do all they could to save the heathen world from death. It was not romance that led them; it was not a love of novelty that inspired them. They went forth with high, pure motives, and sublime conceptions of what is duty. One soon fell a victim to her noble heroism, and found a grave on heathen soil; the other lived long, to suffer and labor for the lost; but both are noble in their lives and deaths. Mrs. Judson, in her voluminous correspondence, gives us glimpses into the beauty and self-sacrifice of

her spirit. Before her real sorrows began, she wrote to her friends at home, "Not more refreshing to the thirsty lips of the sons of Afric is the cooling stream, not more luxurious to the meagre, half-starved, native Andaman is a morsel of food, than your letters to our weary and almost famished social feelings. Two long years and a half had elapsed since we left our native country, without our hearing one word from any of our American friends. Thirteen months of this have been spent in the cruel, avaricious, benighted country of Burmah, without a single Christian friend, or female companion of any kind."

And ere long, on her poor, defenceless head fell the bitter storm of persecution; but she did not falter, or turn back. She followed her husband to prison and torture, speaking all the way the words of life to the heathen crowds. When urged to remain in this country, to which she once returned, to regain her health, she replied,

"The sultry climes of India I still choose;

There would I toil, and sinners' bonds unloose;
There would I live, and spend my latest breath,
And in my Jesus' service meet a stingless death."

ELIZABETH, wife of John Bunyan, is the repre

sentative of another class of noble women.

She