A Singing Cripple

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 5, 1911

A Singing Cripple

A TOUCHING story is told in connection with the work of the Countess of Huntingdon among the colliers in the Black Country. Finding that many of these poor miners had never heard the gospel, she sent out preachers to hold meetings among them in the open air. Whitefield, Venn, and the Wesleys were among her helpers.

In a cabin on her estate there was a crippled blind girl, named Eliza Poulard, who heard of this great work. She was carried to the castle, having asked to meet Lady Huntingdon. “Can I help?” she inquired humbly; “I never have done anything for God.”

The servants would have driven her away, but the countess interfered. “She is lame and blind, and scared at her own voice,” they said. “God calls his own messengers,” replied the countess. “Carry her to the meeting to-night.” “Now,” says the old chronicler, “Eliza, in her solitude, had learned many hymns, and her voice was of that tone that it would wring the heart of a beast. When she sang of Christ upon the cross, the women cried out and the men wept sore. No words of the preachers were so powerful as the song of the poor cripple, lying on her pallet. They carried her from one place to another, and many people were converted by her.”

It is said that when Lady Huntingdon told her of the souls she had influenced for good, her face grew as beautiful as an angel’s. “Who would have thought He would have chosen me?” she said. Let us each seek out our work, and do it “as unto the Lord.”—Selected.