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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, September 24, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 15

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Obituary Notices.

By Joseph Bates

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.
DIED, of consumption, in Otsego, Allegan Co., Mich., Sept. 9, 1867, sister Rocksilda, wife of Bro. George Leighton, aged fifty-five years. In 1854 she enlisted in the cause of God. About eleven years since she with her husband fully embraced the keeping of the commandments of God and faith of Jesus as taught in the message of the third angel of Rev. xiv, 12, under the teachings of Bro. M. E. Cornell. She was then, and had been for several years deeply afflicted with a cancer in her face. One day while presenting her pitiable case before the Lord she said “If it be thy will, O Lord, that I should be eaten up alive of this cancer I am willing, but if it be thy will for me to live, I have faith to believe thou wilt heal me.”
From that time she affirmed to many of her friends, that the progress of the cancer was stayed with all its excruciating pains, after which another form of disease appeared from which she was raised more than once or twice by the Lord, in answer to the prayer of faith by her brethren. She loved the precious truths of the angel messages, and we believe that God loved her. Well may it be said of her, “she hath done what she could.” God’s dear people always found a welcome at her house and table. The church have lost a covenant-keeping sister; the husband a dear companion; the only son a dear and affectionate mother, who was often pleading with God for his salvation. For herself she prayed, “not my will but thine be done, O Lord.” Some four months before her death she requested if she died, to be laid out in the reform dress, which was complied with. The evening before her death she wanted prayer offered to the Lord to smooth her passage. Her last words were, I want to go home! I want to see Jesus. Bro. L. left the room for a moment; when he returned he found that her spirit of the breath of life had gone to God who gave it.
Her funeral solemnities were held in the Baptist meeting-house in Otsego village the 16th inst., with a discourse from these words, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth,” &c. Rev. xiv, 13.
JOSEPH BATES. Monterey, Sept. 15, 1867.