The
hired nurses who attended her through her last illness heard her often
muttering to herself, as if her enfeebled brain was possessed by one
idea, "If any will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross daily, and follow Me." The words haunted her, and once she said,
in an awed voice and with a look of pain, "He that taketh not up his
cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me." "Not worthy of me!"
she repeated, mournfully, "not worthy of me!"
The rector of Upton and his wife have dwelt among their own people again
for some years. Though the story is still sometimes told of Mrs.
Chantrey's sin, the life she leads among them is a better lesson than
perhaps it could have been had she never fallen. They see in her one who
has not merely been tempted, but who has conquered and escaped from the
tyranny of a vice shamefully common among us. There is hope for the
feeblest and the most degraded when they hear of her, or when they learn
the story from her own lips. For if by the sorrowful confession she can
help any one, she does not shrink from making it, with tears often, but
with a profound thankfulness for the deliverance wrought out for her by
those who made themselves "fellow-workers with God.
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