MEMORIAL

OF

MRS. LUCY GILPATRICK MARSH.

A FUNERAL ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE ELIOT CHURCH, BOSTON HIGHLANDS,
MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1868.

BY

REV. A. C. THOMPSON, D.D.

PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE ELIOT
CITY MISSION SOCIETY.

BOSTON:
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
59 WASHINGTON STREET.
1868.

FUNERAL ADDRESS.

When the Lord removed his servant Moses, there was but one mourner, and that mourner was all Israel. To-day a whole community is the mourner. A mother—may I not say, the mother—in Israel has been taken from us. A woman, a whole woman, an aged woman, a thoroughly Christian woman,—one worthy to have sat with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary "over against the sepulchre," to have returned with them, that she might assist in preparing sweet spices, and, when the Sabbath was past, to have come back again to the tomb,—is herself to be laid away to-day. We glance at her career and character.

It is of small moment where she was born,—it was in the town of Biddeford, Maine; of small moment that it was on July 3d, 1792; of small moment that she was the youngest of twelve children, none of whom now survive. But it is a point of interest to us, that, when a little past twenty years of age, she became by renewing grace a child of God; that the chief reason for leaving home, fifty years ago, was a persistent opposition, on the part of friends, to her Christian activity; that afterwards she left for a time her field of usefulness in this city to attend upon her mother in her last

sickness, and then had the satisfaction of rejoicing over the conversion of that parent at the same age she has now herself departed this life. Still later, and under the same circumstances, she performed a similar kind service for her father in his closing sickness, and was cheered by the hope of his conversion too, when just verging upon fourscore. Being in Biddeford at that time for ten months, she established a female prayer-meeting, and several conversions followed. She also, after much opposition, opened a Sabbath school, having obtained permission to occupy a school-house, but at the same time being forbidden to use wood belonging to the town. That, it was supposed, would prevent the attendance of children. But the noble woman was not to be baffled thus. In her own arms she carried fuel from her house. Of course the Sabbath school was a success.

She had previously had tempting offers, to the extent even of the homestead to be secured to her, if she would remain there; but Providence, as she believed, evidently called her to Christian labors in this city, and to her mind that was decisive. Pecuniary considerations might not divert her from the Master's service here. How far from a sinecure was that! While acting indefatigably as matron of a reformatory institution, she attended the prayer-meetings of the church to which she belonged, and a private devotional meeting preparatory to each of them. In addition to her regular Sabbath-school exercise, she once a week taught a class of colored children, and spent Saturday afternoons in visiting members of the same, besides paying weekly visits to persons in the House of Correction.

One of the senior members of this church hands me, by request, the following memorandum:[Footnote: Rev R. Anderson, D.D.]—

"I have known Mrs. Marsh since the year 1820, or about forty-eight years. In that year I came to Boston from the Andover Seminary,