Sarah Ellis, the faithful organizer of the Cincinnati Post Office
Mission, and the pioneer in that admirable form of the ministry of
Unitarian doctrine through the writing of letters and the
circulation of religious literature, "went up higher" from her
sick-bed, on Sunday evening, December 27. There are many, East and
West, to whom her wise guidance in spiritual perplexities has been
as a strong hand lifting them from confusion and doubt concerning
all religion, into tranquil joy, who will read that she is dead,
with the shock which comes with an unforewarned calamity. For
almost up to her last hour she was carrying on her correspondence
with the wide circle of men and women to whom she periodically sent
glad tidings of a reasonable faith, and never giving intimation to
the most regular of these correspondents that she was any less
vigorous of health than usual. For many months her friends had seen
the end approaching, and very likely she herself had understood
that "the task was great, the day short, and it was not incumbent
upon her to complete the work." But her inexorable conscience,
blended with her delight in having found at last, within this
recent five years, a work needing to be done, and calling into use
her store of admirable wisdom for such business, kept her at her
duty until the body ceased to obey the will.
Only the people who knew Miss Ellis well could understand her rare
fitness for her office, through long and ripe study of Unitarian
religious literature, and through her genius for apprehending at
once what special reading and counsel her various applicants for
light upon their darkened ways of the spirit needed to
receive,--only those to whom she spoke the word in season, or those
nearer home to whom she was a quiet exemplar in holy things, can
appreciate the quality of virtue enclosed in that fragile and
infirm body, which shines on earth only "in minds made better by
its presence," but shines with renewed honor elsewhere in the house
of many mansions.
* * * * *
It was not my good fortune to know Miss Ellis personally, but her
works have praised her East as well as West. Her death is a great
calamity to the cause, as well as a great sorrow to her friends;
but she has put life and power into a good instrument of influence,
and it will live.