The Life And Testimony Of Elizabeth Vaughan

Gospel Standard 1890:

Death. On March 21^st, 1890, Elizabeth Vaughan, Widow Of The Late William Vaughan, For Twenty-Seven Years Pastor Of The Church At Bradford, Yorkshire. 

A close friendship and correspondence having been kept up between myself and the deceased for nearly half a century, I feel my mind led to state a few particulars respecting her during her pilgrimage journey in this vale of tears. The poet in a few words well describes her experience where he says, “A rough and thorny path we tread in hopes to see his face;” though at times she had her bright gainings, and could leave her all in the Lord’s hands, saying, “Father, thy will be done.” Her correspondence generally, both in prose and verae, as also her conversation upon eternal realities were sweet and savoury, she being in possession of that inner key that alone can unlock and open up the precious treasures of God’s Word.

Her father, John Bennett, was deacon of the church of God at Liverpool for upwards of twenty-five years. (The Lord took him home in the year 1855.) He was a man my soul dearly loved on account of the grace of God that shone so brightly in him. I believe the Lord especially raised him up as the means in bis hands to take the lead in again restoring, or having the gospel preached in all its fulness, both in doctrine, practice, and experience from the legal strain that the church at Liverpool had crept into after the death of that man of God, Samuel Medley, in 1799.

About the year 1840, the church at Liverpool gave the late William Giles a call to settle over them as their Pastor, which he accepted, and from a letter I have now before me, I see that he was called under the ministry of that highly-favoured servant of the Lord, William Gadsby, whom he addresses as “My highly-esteemed father in Christ.” It was under William Giles ministry that our late friend, Mrs. Vaughan, was first convicted of her state as a sinner. A short extract from a letter she wrote to him, dated June, 1840, states,

“On that evening, which I shall never forget, something like a two-edged sword entered my conscience which told me I was the greatest sinner that ever lived; and just at that moment I heard you say, ‘Perhaps there may be some poor soul here to night that feels himself or herself the greatest sinner that ever lived; but I do not care how great his or her sins may appear. Look at Manasseh, Mary Magdalene, the dying thief, and others, who were all very great sinners.’ And thus you went on all the evening; and as fast as thoughts came into my mind you repeated them; but all this did not comfort me. It was then I was led to cry, ‘O that I had never been born!’ I saw that I was the vilest of the vile, and thought hell and damnation must be my portion. O the horror of my mind no tongue can tell. It was there for the first time I was led to cry, ‘Lord, save, or I perish.’ ‘Lord, if thon wilt, thou canst make me clean;’ and so on. The people of God, seeing me in great distress, at times tried to comfort me by quoting different portions of God’s Word; but I thought they were only for the Lord’s people and not for me. But I must say that since then I have had a little comfort and encouragement under the word preached. One text especially seemed to be entirely for me. It was this: ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.'”

In December of the same year, 1840, she again writes:

“My much-esteemed Friend I have long had a desire to thank you for your kind and comforting letter. It was indeed an encouraging one to my poor weary, heavy-laden soul; for it came in a time when I was ready to give up ail for lost. I had called on the Lord time after time for mercy, and seemed to get no answer. I thought, ‘The prayers of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord;’ but when I read those words: ‘Wait on the Lord; be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord,’ I thought what encouraging words they were. Your letter was nothing but comfort and encouragement all through. It enabled me to go on crying and sighing for mercy and for pardon, and now I am brought to say, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him;’ for I find there is no one else in whom I can trust. I hear of Christ being a great Saviour, and I can truly say I am a great sinner, and nothing short of a great Saviour will satisfy me. I want One who can proclaim pardon to the guilty, open the prison door and let the captive prisoner free, give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, One who can raise up the poor and the needy, and the beggar from the dunghill, and set him amongst princes. Oh it is just such a Saviour as this that I stand in need of! Therefore, as I said before, ‘though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ I am often led to say, ‘O that I knew where I might find him!’ I once had a desire to be saved merely to escape hell; but now my desire to escape hell is not half so great as it is to obtain heaven. No; I long to be found amidst that happy throng, ‘who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,’ and to be able to call God my Father and my Friend; yea, a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother; and I want to be ‘an heir of God, and a joint heir with Christ.’ ‘My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning; I say, more than they that watch for the morning:’

” I thirst, and faint, and die to prove

The greatness of redeeming love

The love of Christ to me.’

“But at other times I feel:

‘”If I love, why am I thus?

Why this dull and lifeless frame? ‘

“Then I am led to cry, ‘Lord, decide the doubtful case.’ I read a piece in this month’s, ‘Standard’ called, ‘The Tarrying Vision and the Watching Soul Sweetly Brought Together after Thirty-six Years Waiting.’ If you have not seen it I must show it to you when you come. I desire to be still remembered by you at a throne of grace. My dear parents send their kind love, with that of your

“Very affectionate Friend,

“E. BENNETT.”

One marked circumstance I cannot pass by without relating, which she stated tome as follows: When she was about the age of seventeen she was learning a “business” from home, and Mr. A. Taylor being engaged to supply at Liverpool on a week-evening she had a great desire to hear him, bat feared her mistress would not let her leave before the usual time. At last she prevailed upon her mistress so to do, and when she arrived at the room the minister was just giving out for his text Acts 4:23: “And being let go they went to their own company.” This text and sermon was so fitted to her case that it was sealed upon her heart to her dying day. Now, after a period of fifty years from the time the former letters were written, she wrote to her niece at Southport on Jan. 14th, 1890, about two months’ previous to her decease, as follows:

“My Dear Niece, As you wish to have a letter, I think I had better try and write at once. lam very glad to hear that Mr. Turner’s ministry is made such a blessing to you, and is a means of raising your mind above this world. 0 how I miss the ministry of your dear uncle! How he used to trace out my path better than I could myself, and how I have been tempted to believe that there was nothing about me anything like a Christian. But I must leave off writing until to-morrow, as the pain has come on so badly in my side, that I shall have to rest.”

“Wednesday, I have just got up and feel a little better after a very bad night, being so feverish, and the old enemy telling me I was going to have a very bad fever, and should have to be taken to the hospital, as there would be no room for me at home. I tossed about, not knowing what to do; but at last I felt my mind drawn a little heavenward, and I said ‘Well, Lord; if I am taken to the hospital, thon canst go with me and visit me there as well as at home.’ I then felt a little relief, and had a little more sleep; but O, my dear niece, no one can tell the power the enemy has upon the mind but those who have felt it! How I did beg of the Lord not to let the devil get a fast hold on me, or I should be quite unfitted for my daily work! O what an enemy he is to the Lord’s people! How true it is he worries those he cannot devour, or 1 think he would have devoured me long ago! I am travelling in a very strange path, and am being weaned from all beneath the sun. Every pin seems to be loosening, and I hope it is that I may soon fly away to my eternal home, which I think at times is not far off. O may the Lord prepare me for it, that whenever the summons comes I may be able to say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.’ This is the fervent prayer of your poor tried aunt,

“E. VAUGHAN.”

On the morning of her decease, her daughter being with her in the bedroom and perceiving her breathing while asleep was a little more difficult than usual, she wont nearer to her bed-side, and while so doing she gave a long, heavy sigh, when the spirit took its flight, and the Lord let her go to her own company, never more to separate from them throughout the countless ages of a never-ending eternity. Thus passed away in her sleep my much beloved and esteemed friend, without much pain of body in her last moments, showing how true it is that the Lord is often better to his children than all their fears, as, during her life, she often feared the pains of death. It may be truly said of her that she was indeed a helpmeet to her beloved husband, not only as a prudent house-wife and mother to her offspring, but also to him as a minister of the Gospel.

One of the ancients says, “As a believer’s dying day is his triumphing day; so a believer’s dying day is his marriage day. In this life we are only betrothed to Christ; in the life to come we shall be married to Christ. Death dissolves that marriage-knot that is knit between man and wife; but death nor devil can never dissolve the marriage knot that is knit between Christ and the believing soul.”

James Knight

Southport