The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-11-25
THE LIFE AND LAST DAYS OF MRS
LUCY G. THURsTON
4 Memorial Discourse by REV. WALTER FKEAR.
preached Oct. esd 1876, In Fort 1t. Church.

MARK Z: %, 30. And Jesus answered and said. Verify I
say unto you, There is no man that hath left house. or breth-
reD, or sister, or father, or mother, or wife, or children. or
lands, for my sake. and the gospels,
But be shall receive an hundred fold now in Ihis time,
houses, and brethren, and sisters. and mother, and children,
and lands, with prosecutions and in the world to come eter-
nal life
/ have selected these words in memOriam Of
Mrs. Lucy Goodale Th%urston, because they were
mu ch in her mind in the last weeks of her life,
and because she realized that they had been re-
markably fulfilled to her. The varied expert
ences, in view of which she appropriated to her
self these words of her Saviour, were vivid in
her memory. Her thoughts went back over the
past a good deal. She thought Of the old home
in Marlborough, Massachusetts,, where she was
born on the Doth of this month, 1895. She
thought Of the large circle of friends of the
father, and of the eight or nine brothers and
sisters, and Of the numerous respectable and
godly uncles and aunts and cousins that she had
left, and of all the pleasant associations that she
had forsaken and then her thoughts would
dwell on the portion that she had received on
these far-off islands, and the grateful feeling
would arise that it had been far better for her
that she had left all. For some months, and l
might say years, she had been living quite largely
in her "reminiscences. Her pen had been busy
with them. The scenes of earlier times were
before her mind daily. She lived over again the
experiences through which she had passed to an
unusual degree 50 that it was with more than
an ordinary significance that she with clear re-
membrance, and in direct reference to all that
she had lost and gained, suffered and enjoyed,
opened her Bible a few weeks ago, and pointing
with hpr FINGER In this Gaid 70 M
" This has all been true in my case"
Let us see how true it has been.
1t was in a literal sense that she left houses
and friends and country for Christ's sake. She,
at the time, had no thought of the mild and
healthful breezes of Hawaii, that now invite
so many from the colder climate of the States.
She had no thought of the grand mountains and
volcanoes that now attract the tourist, and are
counted among the wonders of the earth. There
was no anticipation OF the delightful homes and
genial society that in late years have given to
these islands a charm. She left a land and home
to which she was greatly endeared, to go by long
and dangerous voyage, to enc of the most remote
and least known parts of the earth. to a people
in the greatest of heathenish darkness, a people
among whom life was cheap, and that offered
human sacrifices, and had fearful regulations of
tabu, and were naked sayages. She and all on
board the brig Thdddeus, as DIR. Anderson
says, Expected a protracted and perilous conflict
with pagan rites, human sacrifices and bloody
affairs for no intimation had been received that
the idols and affairs of superstition had been over
thrown We can also readily imagine with
what a grave appreciation and consciousness of
the magnitude of the sacred mission, she gave
herself to be a missionary. | doubt if ever a
missionary surrendered home and friends, to take
up so great and critical a work for Christ, with
a deeper sense of what we might ca. the ideal
proprietes of so high a calling. 1t was doubt
less this serious sense of prophecies in the cir
cumstances, that accounts for her having been so
deeply affected when she first read the ~facetious
allusion to the way in which she became a mis-
sionary's wife. in the memories of her less seri-
GUS yet deeply spiritual cousin, DIR. Goodell. 1t
was a shock to her that brought on the attack
that for the last six or seven months has proven
ted her from lying down, and has kept her sitting
upright day and night in her chair; and from
the effects of all which she has passed away.
Probably not many others would have been so
affected by such an allusion, but it touched upon
one of the deepest characteristics of her nature.
1t seemed to her to do a violence to the very
spirit in which she had entered upon the great
and solemn work of carrying the Gospel of life
to benighted people who knew nothing Of Christ
and his salvation. To her it seemed not merely
to reflect on her maidenly modesty, but to do
away with the deep toned conviction OF what
was becoming in one about to leave country
and friends for Christ's sake. 1t was in a spirit
far from all leyity, and in which human loves
had but n second place while Christ had the first,
that she was not disobedient unto the heavenly
call. 1t was in a seriousness and a heroism that
takes ones life in his hands that she left the CON-
forts of a pleasant home, expecting a rude hut to
be her habitation, and that what had been neces-
saries of life were henceforth to be her Iuxu-
ries. In place of the refinements of society, she
was to come in contact with gross ignorance,
disgusting vices, british drunkenness and all
~unnameable immoralities. Thus she forsook all.
Among other things in leaving all for Christ
and the Gospels sake, she at that time gave up
the thought of a long life. Her stronger brothers
and sisters were around her. She was thought
to be the frailest of them all. She had already
had premonition of early disease in the lungs,
with attacks of hemorrhage. Her doubt was,
whether she could long endure the tropical heats
exposures to which she expected to be sub
iected. 1t was thought that amid the hardships
priyations there she would find an early
grave. When speaking of this passage of scrip
ture and it's fulfllment TO her, she said to me,
all at home thought that Lucy would be the
10 die" She herself thought SO. They all
had no other thought, than that in that heather
land her life would go first. They babe her
as one whom they never expected to see
again on earth. She would be in heaven long
before the rest of them. " But - said she, - here
am still, spared the longest of them all. All