AN UNFORTUNATE PURCHASE.
Mary Bosanquet was doomed to suffer through her friends. She was
greatly tried by interfering advisers, and through ill-given counsel
she took steps which caused anxieties to thicken and debts to
accumulate. It was anything but an easy life, yet it was illuminated
by wonderful answers to prayer. On one occasion she had to find a
large sum of money in the course of a day or two.
"You had better borrow it until your own half-yearly cheque comes in,"
said Mrs. Ryan.
They tried, but were unsuccessful. Miss Bosanquet went to prayer, and
it seemed to her as if the Lord Jesus Christ stood by her side and
repeated some words she had lately read: "Christ charges Himself with
all your temporal affairs, while you charge yourself with those that
relate to His glory." Such power accompanied the utterance as "wiped
away every care," as she put it to herself. While yet she thanked her
Lord for His promise a knock came to her door. A man had called to
bring her just the amount she needed.
Not a little trouble came to Mary Bosanquet through a Miss Lewen who
stayed in her house, received much good, and was nursed through an
illness which proved unto death.
Many ill-natured persons credited the kindly hostess with an effort to
secure Miss Lewen's fortune for her work, but the reverse was the
case, she having cost the little House of Mercy many pounds without
contributing anything towards it.
A man named Richard Taylor was her next trial--a debtor and
improvident, with a wife and family of small children. Being
recommended to her good graces, he stayed for a time in her household
while trying to arrange with his creditors. He accompanied Miss
Bosanquet, Mrs. Ryan, and Mrs. Crosby upon a troublesome journey to
Yorkshire, taken with the double purpose of benefiting Sarah Ryan's
fast-failing health, and of seeking a larger and more suitable Orphan
Home than the one in Leytonstone. The latter object was accomplished,
but Mrs. Ryan gradually sank, and to her friend's great sorrow they
had to bury her in the old churchyard of Leeds.
The northern Home involved three times the work required by the other;
wheat had to be ground to flour before home-made bread could be baked,
cows managed and milked, men-servants overlooked; all the details, in
fact, of a country house and a large household came under review. This
alone would have brought more than enough responsibility, but on the
advice of Richard Taylor and another Yorkshire friend, Miss Bosanquet
unfortunately bought a farm with malt-kilns attached, and began to
build a house suitable for the size of her family.
The investment turned out an unhappy failure. The work of God
prospered mightily, but the settling of Taylor's affairs cost her
between £200 and £300; the house was an inn-of-call for all Methodists
travelling through the district (which could not be without incurring
much expense); the farm and kilns swallowed increasingly large sums of
money, and Taylor was an extravagant manager.
Had it not been for the unfailing kindness and help of a gentleman who
many times proposed to Miss Bosanquet in vain, she would have come out
of the affair penniless. Friends greatly urged this marriage upon her.
Her rule in these cases was to ask herself, "Should I be holier or
happier with this man?" The answer was invariably "No!" and in this
particular instance the thought of her saintly friend at Madeley arose
to make the idea doubly disagreeable to her.
In great distress, she began to live on bread and water in order to
economise, and go no further into debt, but the night following this
forlorn effort God came very near and comforted her with the promise
of deliverance in a way she knew not. She says:--
"He showed me (by a light on my understanding) that all my trials were
appointed by Himself; that they were laid on by weight and measure,
and should go no farther than they would work for my good. . . . I had
depended on creatures for help, and therefore He had let me feel the
weight of my burdens, that I might be constrained to cast them afresh
on Him; and that, when He had proved and tried me, He would deliver me
from all my outward burdens. As a pledge of the inward liberty He
would afterwards bring me into, and that the ways and means of my
deliverance were in His own hands, and should appear in the appointed
time, those words were again brought powerfully to my mind--'If thou
...put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.... Yea, the Almighty
shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver...and
shalt lift up thy face unto God.... Thou shalt also decree a thing,
and it shall be established unto thee; and the light shall shine upon
thy ways.'...It was a profitable and melting time."
Thus, even in the midst of her troubles, was Mary Bosanquet comforted
of God.