HIS CHRISTIAN LABOURS.

Having become a subject of saving grace, Mr. Ellerthorpe felt an earnest desire that others should participate in the same benefit. Nor was there any object so dear to his heart, and upon which he was at all times so ready to speak, as the conversion of sinners. He knew he did not possess the requisite ability for preaching the gospel, and therefore he sought out a humbler sphere in which his new-born zeal might spend its fires, and in that sphere he laboured, with remarkable success, during a quarter of a century. I now refer to the sick chamber.

During all that time he took a deep interest in the sick and the dying; and for several years after his conversion, having much time at his disposal, he would often visit as many as twenty families per day, for weeks together. When Cholera, that mysterious disease, with its sudden attacks, its racking cramps, its icy cold touch, and its almost resistless progress, swept through the town of Hull, in the year 1849, leaving one thousand eight hundred and sixty, or one in forty of the entire population, dead, our friend was at any one’s call, and never refused a single application; indeed, he was known as a great visitor of the sick and dying, and was often called in extreme cases to visit those from whom others shrank lest they should catch the contagion of the disorder. The scenes of suffering and distress which he witnessed baffled description. On one occasion he entered a room where a whole family were smitten with cholera. The wife lay cold and dead in one corner of the room, a child had just expired in another corner, and the husband and father was dying, amidst excruciating pain, in the middle of the room. John knelt down and spoke words of Christian comfort to the man, who died in a few moments.

For years, he was in the habit of accompanying Mr. Jones, when visiting the miserable garrets, obscure yards, and wretched alleys in Hull, and was considered his ‘right hand man,’ in helping to hold open-air services. They often went in company to such wretched localities as ‘Leadenhall Square,’ then the greatest cesspool of vice in the Port, and, well supplied with tracts, visited every house. During the intervals of public worship, on the Sabbath day, when he might have been enjoying himself in the circle of his family, on a clean hearth, before a bright fire, he was pointing perishing sinners to the Lamb of God. When our new and beautiful chapel in Great Thornton Street was discovered to be on fire, at noon, March, 1856, he was at the bedside of an afflicted woman, Mrs. Wright, speaking to her of her past sins and of a precious Saviour. He had spent some time with her daily for months, but just at this time he became Foreman of the Victoria Dock and could no longer pay his daily visits to the sick, which greatly distressed Mrs. Wright and others; but duty called him elsewhere and he obeyed its voice. He says, ’I durst not make any fresh engagements to visit the sick, and up to the present time (1867) I have rarely been able to visit, except on the Sabbath day, all my time being required at the dock gates. But on the Sabbath I love to get to the bedside of the sick; nothing does me more good; there my soul is often refreshed and my zeal invigorated.’

Those who are most averse to religion in life, generally desire to share its benefits in death. Their religion is very much like the great coats which persons of delicate health wear in this changeable climate, and which they use in foul weather, but lay aside when it is fair. ‘Lord,’ says David, ’in trouble they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them.’

Nor would we intimate that none truly repent of their sins and obtain forgiveness, under such circumstances. Though late repentance is seldom genuine, yet, as Mr. Jay remarks, genuine repentance is never too late. God can pardon the sins of a century as easily as those of a day. Our friend was the means, in the hand of God, of leading many, when worn by sickness and at the eleventh hour of life, to the Lamb of God. His carefully kept diary records many such instances. We give one. He says, ’I remember one Sunday coming from Hessle with the Rev. C. Jones. Our “hearts burned within us as we talked by the way,” and when we got to Coultam Street, a number of well-dressed young men overheard our conversation, and began to shout after us and call us approbrious names. Mr. J. talked with them, but to no purpose. Four months after, Mr. Jones and myself went, as usual, to visit the inmates of the infirmary; Mr. J. took one side and I the other, and when I came to a person who needed special counsel and advice, I used to call my friend to my aid. Well, we met with a young man who burst into a flood of tears, and casting an imploring look towards Mr. Jones, he said, “O sir, do forgive me.” “Forgive you what?” said Mr. J. “what have you done that you should ask me to forgive you?” “Sir,” said he, “I am one of those young men who were so impertinent to you one Sunday when you were returning from Hessle; do forgive me, sir.” “I freely forgive you,” replied my friend, “you must ask God to forgive you, for it is against him you have sinned.” We then prayed with him, and asked God to forgive him. He was suffering from a broken leg, and I often used to visit him after our first interview. He obtained pardon, and rejoiced in Christ as his Saviour. He was a brand plucked from the burning.’

But Mr. Ellerthorpe also tells us that though he visited, during twenty-five years, hundreds of persons who cried aloud for mercy and professed to obtain forgiveness, on what was feared would be their dying beds, yet, he did not remember more than five or six who, on being restored to health, lived so as to prove their conversion genuine. The rest returned ’like the dog to its vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.’ The Sabbath-breaker forgot his vows and promises, and returned to his Sunday pleasures. The swearer allowed his tongue to move as unchecked in insulting his Maker as before. The drunkard thirsted for his intoxicating cups and returned to the scenes of his former dissipations; and the profligate, who avowed himself a ‘changed man,’ when health was fully restored, laughed at religion as a fancy, and hastened to wallow in the mire of pollution. He had scarcely a particle of faith in sick-bed repentances, but believed that in most instances they are solemn farces.

Deeply affecting and admonitory are some of the instances he records. He says, ’One night an engineer called me out of bed to visit his wife, who was attacked with cholera. While I was praying with her, he was seized with the complaint. I visited them again the next day, when the woman died, but the husband, after a long affliction, recovered. He seemed sincerely penitent and made great promises of amendment. But, alas! like hundreds more whom I visited, he no sooner recovered, than he sought to shun me. At length he left the part of the town where he resided when I first visited him, as he said, “to get out of my way.” But at that time, I visited in all parts of the town, and I often met him, and it used to pain me to see the dodges he had recourse to in order to avoid meeting me in the street.’

He also records the case of a carter who resided in Collier Street. He was attacked with small pox, and was horrible to look at and infectious to come near, but being urged to visit him, ’I went to see him daily for a long time,’ says John. ’One day when I called I found him, his wife, and child bathed in tears, for the doctor had just told them that the husband and father would be dead in a few hours. We all prayed that God would spare him, and spared he was. I continued to visit him thrice a day, and he promised that he would accompany me to class when he got better. At that time he seemed as though he would have had me ever with him. One day, as I entered his room, he said, “O Mr. Ellerthorpe, how I love to hear your foot coming into my house.” I replied, ’Do you think it possible that there will come a time when you will rather see any one’s face and hear any one’s voice than mine?’ “Never, no never,” was his reply. I answered, ’Well, I wish and hope it may never happen as I have supposed.’ Now, what followed? He went once to class, but I could not attend that night, having to watch the tide, and he never went again. I have seen him in the streets when he would go anywhere, or turn down any passage, rather than meet me; and when compelled to meet me he would look up at the sky or survey the chimney tops rather than see me.’

’On one occasion, when visiting at the Infirmary, going from ward to ward, and from bed to bed, I met with a young man, S. B . He was very bad, and was afraid he was going to die. I talked with him often and long, pointing him to the Saviour, and prayed with him. With penitential tears and earnest cries he sought mercy, and at length professed to obtain salvation. He recovered. One Sunday, when at Hessle, visiting my dying mother, I met this young man, and I shall never forget his agitated frame, and terrified appearance, when he saw me. He looked this way and that way; I said, ’Well, B , are you all right? Have you kept the promises you made to the Lord?’ A blush of shame covered his face. I said ‘Why do you look so sad? Have I injured you?’ ‘No, Sir.’ ’Have you injured me?’ ‘I hope not,’ was his reply. ’Then look me in the face; are you beyond God’s reach, or do you think that because he has restored your health once, he will not afflict you again? Ah! my boy, the next time may be much worse than the last. And do you think God will believe you if you again promise to serve him? He looked round him and seemed as though he would have leaped over a drain that was close by.’

Conscience is a busy power within the breast of the most desperate, and when roused by the prospect of death and judgment, it speaks in terrible tones. The notorious Muller denied the murder of Mr. Briggs, until, with cap on his face and the rope round his neck, he submitted to the final appeal and acknowledged, as he launched into eternity, ’Yes, I have done it.’ But the cries of these persons seem to have arisen, not from an abhorrence of sin, but from a dread of punishment; they feared hell, and hence they wished for heaven; they desired to be saved from the consequences of sin, but were not delivered from the love of it. Need we wonder that our friend had but little faith in a sick-bed repentance? Scripture and reason alike warn us against trusting to such repentance, ’Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.’

While our friend felt that he would have been unworthy the name of a Christian had he not felt more for the spiritual than for the temporal woes of his fellow creatures, yet the latter were not forgotten by him; and it sometimes grieved him that he could not more largely minister to the temporal wants of the poor, the fatherless, the orphans, and the widows, whom he visited.

And perhaps one of the most painful trials a visitor of the sick endures is, to go moneyless to a chamber that has been crossed by want, and whose inmate is utterly unable to supply his own necessities; but when the visitor can relieve the physical as well as the spiritual necessities of the sufferer, with what a buoyant step and cheerful heart he enters the abode of poverty and suffering! And his words, instead of falling like icicles on the sufferer’s soul, fall on it as refreshing as a summer rain, warm as the tempered ray, and welcome as a mother’s love. Such a visitor has often chased despair from the abode of wretchedness, and filled it with the atmosphere of hope.

Hence, that he might participate in this joy, and have wherewith to relieve the needy, Mr. Ellerthorpe abstained from the use of tobacco, of which, at one period of his life, he was an immoderate consumer. One Sabbath morning, while he and Mr. Harrison were visiting the sick, they met two wretched-looking boys, fearfully marked with small pox (from an attack of which complaint they were beginning to recover), and crying for a drink of milk. Their father, who was far advanced in life, could not supply their wants. John’s heart was touched, and he thought, ’Here am I, possessed of health, food, and raiment, while these poor children are festering with disease, but scantily clothed, and not half fed. A sixpence, a basin of milk, or a loaf of bread, would be a boon to them. Can I help them?’ He gave the old man sixpence, while he and Mr. Harrison told the milkman to leave a quantity of milk at the man’s house daily, for which they would pay. It was with a radiant face, and a tremble of glad emotion in his voice, that our friend, in relating this circumstance to us one day, said: ’I felt a throb of pleasure when I did that little act of kindness, such as I had never felt before,’ when, quick as lightning, the thought crossed his mind, ’Why I smoke six pennyworth of tobacco every week!’ and there and then he resolved to give up the practice. On the next Friday, when Mrs. Ellerthorpe was setting down on paper a list of the groceries wanted, she proceeded, as usual, to say, ‘Tea Coffee Sugar Tobacco ,’ ‘Stop,’ said her husband, ‘I’ve done with that. I’ll have no more.’ Now, Mrs. E. had always enjoyed seeing her husband smoke; it had often proved a powerful sedative to him when wearied with the cares of life, and the numberless irritations of his trying vocation, and therefore she replied, ’Nonsense, you will soon repent of that whim. I shall get two ounces as usual, and I know you’ll smoke it.’ ‘I shall never touch it again,’ was his firm reply, and ever after kept his word.

A world full of misery, both temporal and spiritual, surrounds us, and which might be effectually relieved, were all Christians, many of whom are laggard in effort and niggard in bounty, to manifest a tithe of the self-denial which Mr. Ellerthorpe practiced. ’What maintains one vice, would support two children.’ Robert Hall says: It is the practice of self-denial in a thousand little instances which forms the truest test of character.’ Mr. Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, was on one occasion driven close for means to discharge the claims of the poor, when he said to his wife, ’O Polly, can we not do without beer? Let us drink water, and eat less meat. Let our necessities give way to the extremities of the poor.’ And at a meeting held the other night, a donation was announced thus: ’A poor man’s savings from tobacco, L5.’ And are there not tens of thousands of professors who could present similar offerings if they, in the name and spirit of their great Master, tried? Do we not often come in contact with men who complain that they cannot contribute to the cause of God and humanity, who, at the same time, indulge in the use of snuff, tobacco, or intoxicating drinks; all of which might be laid aside to the gain of God’s cause, and without at all lessening either the health, reputation, or happiness of the consumer? And are there not others, of good social position, who do not give as much to relieve the temporal sufferings of their fellow creatures, during twelve months, as it costs them to provide a single feast for a few well-to-do friends? The merchant who sold his chips and shavings, and presented the proceeds to the cause of God, while he kept the solid timber for himself, is the type of too many professors of religion!