Thanksgiving After Recovery from the Small-pox

Sally Wesley before she was scarred by smallpox.Sing to the Prince of life and peace
Let every tongue my Saviour bless
So strong to help in danger’s hour, 
So present in His healing power,
And from the margin of the grave
So good a dying worm to save.

Can I forget the solemn day
When grappling with my foe I lay?
O’er my weak flesh from foot to head
The loathsome leprosy was spread,
The foulest plague our race can feel, 
The deadliest fruity of sin and hell.

The poison boil’d in every vein,
The fire broke out in raging pain,
I sunk oppress’d through all my powers,
With bruises, wounds and putrid sores,
My body racked in every part, 
And sick to death my fainting heart.

Jesus beheld my last distress,
And turn’d the current of disease,
He stopp’d my spirit on the wing,
And chased away the grisly king;
His wonder-working arm I own,
And give the praise to God alone.

He in the kind physician came,
(Bow all to Jesus’ balmy name!)
Amidst my weeping friends He stood,
And mix’d the cordial with His blood,
Display’d His head-reviving art,
And pour’d his life into my heart.

Brought from the gates of death, I give
My life to Him by whom I live;
Raised from a restless bed of pain,
I render Him my strength again,
And only wait to prove His grace,
And only breathe to breath His praise.

—Charles Wesley

This hymn was written a few years after Charles Wesley’s wife Sally nearly died of smallpox. (They lost their toddler son to this disease at the same time.) It’s a thanksgiving hymn I’ll never have occasion to sing—and that’s something to be thankful for, too.

Kim Shay’s post quoting Richard Baxter reminded me of Charles and Sally Wesley. In the quote, Baxter advises men not to put too much value on physical beauty when seeking a wife, but to “[b]ear in mind what work the pox or any other withering sickness will make with that silly beauty you so admire.” 

According to Michael Haykin, after she recovered from small pox, Sally Wesley’s face was “deeply marred” by scars, and she “looked twice her age.” If you’re curious about the damage small pox can do to the skin (I’ll admit I was.), here’s a photo.

Charles Wesley, by the way, continued to call his wife beautiful, even with the pox scars.

I recommend Michael Haykin’s lecture on the marriage of Charles and Sally Wesley. (There’s also a transcript, if you prefer reading to listening.)

Reading Biographies: Spurgeon

I’m reading Arnold Dallimore’s Spurgeon along with Tim Challies and others. This week’s reading included chapters 15-17 of this biography of Charles Spurgeon, with the first chapter dealing with the daily life of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the second with the 10 peak years of Spurgeon’s minstry, and the last with some of the features of Spurgeon’s personality. I’ve got a busy day, so I’m just going to mention a couple of things that interested me

Chapter 15 dispels any notion that the Metropolitan Tabernacle was just a place for Sunday services. It was a very busy place with things happening there all day and evening every day of the week. It was very much a working church, with an awe-inspiring number of fruitful tasks accomplished in it.

I did have one question: What is a Bible nurse? Mrs. Spurgeon, we’re told, “maintained a Bible nurse at her own expense, and other such nurses also functioned from the Tabernacle.” Can you enlighten me?

Nearly half of the seventeenth chapter titled Personal Characteristics is an explanation of Spurgeon’s drinking and smoking habits. Yes, as you probably already know, Spurgeon smoked cigars and drank beer and ale. That he writes so much on this explains more about Dallimore, I think, than it does about Spurgeon. He concludes his bit on these “bad habits” by saying:

I reported these matters regarding Spurgeon with much reluctance. They seem sadly regrettable in the life of so righteous a man, yet in the name of either Christian honesty or scholarly accuracy they could not be omitted.

Dallimore explains that “these two practices” show us that Spurgeon was “a man of his times.” I’m thinking that these comments may show us that Dallimore was also a man of his times.

Update on Friday, August 20, 2010 at 3:12PM by rebecca

Re: Bible nurses, I found this: The History of Nursing – Major Sources in the Metropolitan London Archives (pdf).

Mrs Ellen Ranyard established the London Bible and Domestic Female Mission in 1857 based at her home in Bloomsbury. Working class “Biblewomen” were employed to visit the poor, advise on domestic matters, and to sell Bibles by instalments. They were supervised by middle class female superintendents who read their reports once a week, paid their salaries and ran the mothers’ meetings held in each district.

In 1868 Mrs Ranyard added a nursing branch to the Mission. The Bible nurses, drawn from the respectable working class, were the first trained district nurses in London. Initially a Bible nurse’s training included only three months at a hospital, but by 1893 it had been extended to one year at a general hospital, attendance at a special hospital, then probationary training in the districts. By 1894 the Mission employed 82 nurses who made 215,000 visits to almost 10,000 patients. After 1907 it ceased to train its own nurses. In 1917 the name of the organisation was changed to the Ranyard Mission and its nurses became Ranyard Nurses.

Putting it together, I’m guessing Bible nurses were like an order of nurses that came out of “Biblewomen.”

Reading Biographies: Spurgeon

I’m reading Arnold Dallimore’s Spurgeon along with Tim Challies and others. This week, we read chapters 12-14 of this biography of Charles Spurgeon. Chapter 12 told of the almhouses and orphanages run by Spurgeon and his church. Chapter 13 described the illnesses that both Spurgeon and his wife  Susannah suffered over the years. Chapter 14 focused on Susannah Spurgeon and her ministry work.

Most interesting to me was the description of the orphanage built by Spurgeon:

The orphanage was planned according to certain concepts Spurgeon had developed. It was not to be like the average institution for needy children, with the younsters quartered in a barracklike building, all dressed alike and made to feel they were objects of charity. It was to be several individual homes—the buildings joined together and forming a continuous row—each home to house fourteen boys and to be under the care of a matron who acted as a mother to the lads. There was to be discipline, education, and Christian instruction, with kindness and sport and individuality.

I visited an orphange when I was young, and it was nothing like this. I’m impressed that Spurgeon came up with such an innovative and thoughtful plan for caring for the children. What’s more, Spurgeon was generous with the children in other ways. They had a pool, and everyone learned to swim. Spurgeon knew almost all of them by name. When he visited, he carried pennies and gave each child one of them. It considered it especially important to visit any child who was sick in the infirmary.

What a picture of a man who loved—even needy children—as Christ loved!

Mrs. Spurgeon, too, showed the love of Christ to others. Her ministry was helping poor pastors and their families by sending books, clothing, blankets and money to them.

Now our governments take care of needy children and poor families, and churches (at least any I know) aren’t involved in this kind of service to people right around them to the same extent the Metropolitan Tabernacle was. I’m not sure that’s an unqualified good thing.