Delighting in Her Heavenly Bridegroom: The Memoirs of Harriet Newell, Teenage Missionary Wife

When missionary Samuel Newell asked for Harriet Atwood's hand in marriage, Harriet wrote, “Providence now gives me an opportunity to go myself to the heathen. Shall I refuse the offer? Shall I love the glittering toys of this dying world so well that I cannot relinquish them for God? Forbid it heaven! Yes, I will go. However weak and unqualified I am, there is an all-sufficient Savior ready to support me. In God alone is my hope. I will trust His promises and consider it one of the highest privileges that could be conferred upon me to be permitted to engage in His glorious service among the wretched inhabitants of India. . . . I go . . . to assist one of Christ's dear ministers in carrying the glad tidings of salvation to the perishing heathen of Asia.” Harriet left the shores of America with the certain expectation of death. Yet for Harriet, death was not loss, but gain. What makes death “gain” to a Christian teenager? The same thing that makes it gain to every believer—the full, unveiled presence of Christ. Harriet recognized death as the passageway to receiving the fullness of what she had longed for all her life—Christ. It was a price to pay that truly cost her nothing—it was gain! When Christ called, she was enabled to look death in the face with joy, and like a radiant bride, she hastened it, eager to be embraced by her Heavenly Bridegroom to “behold the light of His countenance.” Some of her dying words were: “Tell my dear brothers and sisters how much I love them. Tell them from the dying lips of their affectionate sister that the world is vain and worthless, and that there is nothing but religion worth living for. The eldest of them will be anxious to know my views of missions at this time. Tell them—assure them, that I approve on my dying bed the course I have taken. I have never repented leaving all for Christ.”