The Story of Mary Neil

Poverty has not only many learned disciples, but also many hidden saints
and martyrs. There are humble tenements that are tabernacles, and
desolate, wretched rooms that are the quarries of the Almighty--where
with toil and weariness and suffering the souls He loves are being
prepared for the heavenly temple.

This is the light that relieves the deep shadow of that awful cloud of
poverty which ever hangs over this rich and prosperous city. I have been
within that cloud, wet with its rain of tears, chilled with its gloomy
darkness, "made free" of its innermost recesses; therefore I speak with
authority when I say that even here a little child may walk and not
stumble, if Jesus lead the way or hold the hand.

Nay, but children walk where strong men fall down, and young maidens
enter the kingdom while yet their parents are stumbling where no light
from the Golden City and "the Land very far off" reaches them. Last
winter I became very much interested in such a case. I was going to
write "Poor Mary Neil!" but that would have been the strangest misnomer.
Happy Mary Neil! rises impetuously from my heart to contradict my pen.

And yet when I first became acquainted with her condition, she was
"poor" in every bitter sense of the word.

A drunkard's eldest daughter, "the child of misery baptized with tears,"
what had her seventeen years been but sad and evil ones? Cold and
hunger, cares and labors far beyond her strength sowed the seeds of
early death. For two years she struggled amid such suffering as dying
lungs entail to help her mother and younger brothers and sisters, but at
last she was compelled to make her bed amid sorrow and suffering which
she could no longer assuage by her helpful hands and gentle words.

Her religious education had not been quite neglected, and she dimly
comprehended that through the narrow valley which lay between Time and
Eternity she would need a surer and more infallible guide than her own
sadly precocious intellect. Then God sent her just the help she
needed--a tender, pitiful, hopeful woman full of the love of Jesus.

Souls ripen quickly in the atmosphere of the Border Land, and very soon
Mary had learned how to walk without fearing any evil. Certain passages
of Scripture burned with a supernatural glory, and made the darkness
light; and there were also a few hymns which struck the finest chords
in her heart, and

"'Mid days of keenest anguish
And nights devoid of ease,
Filled all her soul with music
Of wondrous melodies."

As she neared the deeper darkness of death, this was especially
remarkable of that extraordinary hymn called "The Light of Death," by
Dr. Faber. From