Have you ever felt inadequate to help people going through a really terrible trial? Have you been at a loss for words, afraid to go to them because you’re not at all sure you’d offer any comfort, and conscious of a clumsy lack of understanding of their situation? So you hesitate, mindful of duty, grieving for them, but fearful of causing further distress? Many a Christian has been in this quandary before. Sometimes we go to the sufferer, and do our best for them in spite of ourselves. Other times we stay away, ashamed of ourselves. How can we gain the wisdom and the empathy to be a real comforter? To be sure, some have been given a special gift for this – but the truth is, we all need to learn how to weep with those who weep – and to offer wise consolation. God teaches us this.

And how is this? He puts us through trials! Compassion and wisdom come when we experience trials first-hand and learn to deal with them with His help. Experiencing something first-hand gives us the equipment to help others in the same situation. Sufferers can trust someone who has been through the same affliction as they are going through right now – we all know a fellow-sufferer will understand! This is how 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 is worked out:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

Her Background⤒🔗

The story of Elizabeth Prentiss illustrates this truth exactly. We know Elizabeth, a Presbyterian minister’s wife, as the writer of that captivating novel, Stepping Heavenward, and of the hymn “More Love to Thee, O Christ.” But as a Christian woman she was a sweet, impulsively-loving friend to those whose lives she touched. She had a particular ability to comfort the suffering – and there were many who drew strength from her help. But it was in the depths of her own trials – common ones, yet severe – that Elizabeth learned the compassion and empathy to give this help.

Elizabeth was born into a Christian family. Her father was Edward Payson, a much-loved Congregational minister in Maine, the northern­ most seaboard state of the United States. Mr Payson was part of a long tradition of faithful, godly Calvinistic ministers – the Congregational churches were those founded by the Puritans who came from England in the 17^th century. Edward was a fine preacher and a man of prayer. He was a gentle man who loved all his children and brought them up to love and serve the Saviour. Little Elizabeth doted on her father, and whenever he was away she longed for his return. She really was “Daddy’s girl.” But in 1827, when Elizabeth was only 9 years old, Edward died after a long and painful illness (perhaps cancer). He was a most loving pastor, and near the time of his death he asked for congregational members to meet with him at his house. Here he urged them, as one about to die, to take great care about the state of their souls. “O! my friends! Do, do love this glorious Being. Do seek the salvation of your immortal souls. Hear the voice of your dying minister, while he entreats you to care for your souls.” This left a great impression on many hearts; not least on his little daughter.

The Effect of her Father’s Death←⤒🔗

Her father’s death had a major and lasting effect on the family’s life. They had to find a much more modest house to live in. Certainly, the family was not as well off as before. Mrs Payson, a woman of much faith, was nevertheless often weighed down and anxious about the difficulties of maintaining the household. Despite the loss of her father, however, both Elizabeth and her sister had a good education, one that developed her taste for good reading and her gift for writing. She also had an aptitude for languages: for the rest of her life she kept up the habit of reading theological and other religious works in both French and German. Her fluency with her pen was one important way Elizabeth was able to pass on to others the help that God gave her in her afflictions.

Though brought up to believe, in a believing family, young Elizabeth was in her twenties before she gained assurance of salvation. This certainty followed a period of deepening conviction of sin. As she describes the time, it is almost in the language of Jonathan Edwards, her New England forebear in the faith. She wrote to a friend full of love and praise for Christ as the “chiefest of ten thousand” and as One “altogether lovely.” At this time Elizabeth was working as a teacher in Richmond, Virginia. She delighted in giving herself, heart and soul, to guiding and training the young girls entrusted to her care. It was not easy work: sometimes it took all her natural charm and wittiness to win their hearts and make them learn! But it seems she was a successful teacher, and taught them well.

Her Marriage←⤒🔗

Not long afterwards she met George Prentiss, a young Presbyterian minister, and the man she was to marry. All we know about Elizabeth’s life comes from his biography and collection of her letters, which he published shortly after her death.¹ This, while a wonderful record, is also quite frustrating. George must have been a somewhat reticent man. The only reference to their romance and engagement in this book is that “The records of the next year and a half are very abundant. But they are mostly of too private a character to furnish materials for this narrative, belonging to what she called ‘the deep story of my heart.’” George seems to have no appreciation of what interests female readers – or perhaps he is warning us not to be too inquisitive?

In 1845 the young minister and his new wife moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a seafaring town from which whaling ships set off to distant oceans in search of whales. Some even came as far as New Zealand. (It is the town in which the beginning of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick is set.) About five years later, George was called to Newark, New Jersey; and a few months after that to a church in New York City. There they spent the rest of their lives. George worked hard as a pastor­ and Elizabeth was a faithful and useful minister’s wife; encouraging of her husband, and a kind friend to many needy souls in their congregation.

Deep Personal Suffering←⤒🔗

It was in their first few years in New York that deep personal suffering marked their lives. Their little three-year old son, Eddy, sickened and died one winter; and a few months after that their newborn daughter, Bessie, contracted erysipelas and died a frightful death. Elizabeth herself nearly died, the shock coming so soon after giving birth. The entries in her journal and the letters she wrote to friends at this time show how sharply the deaths of little ones wound a mother. Her account of their last hours is impossible to read with dry eyes. But it was not as if Elizabeth was lacking in hope for them: for the rest of her life, she was to comfort friends who had lost children in the trust that her Eddy and Bessie would meet them in heaven. Without doubt, the death of these two dear children deepened her faith and made it more useful to others. George wrote of this time: “Never again, was it exactly the same life. She had entered into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, and the new experience wrought a great change in her whole being.”

The striking thing about what Elizabeth was learning, though, is that she did not allow her sufferings to swallow her up in self-absorption. Always, in her letters, we find a wonderful outgoingness, and an ability to feel deeply for others no matter what she herself had suffered or was suffering. To one similarly bereaved friend she wrote:

I never realise my own affliction in the loss of my children as I do when death enters the house of a friend. Then I feel that I can’t have it so. But why should I think I know better than my Divine Master what is good for me, or good for those I love? Dear Carrie, I trust that in this hour of sorrow you have with you that Presence, before which alone sorrow and sighing flee away. God is left, Christ is left; sickness, accident, death cannot touch you there. Is not this a blissful thought?

Sharing their Experience with Others←⤒🔗

Elizabeth also turned this experience into helpful published writings for both children and adults. Children have to live with death sometimes, and they grieve, too. Some of Elizabeth’s most delightful books are written for children, and her Little Susy series, the first of which were written soon after her children’s deaths, are probably the best-known. Susy was a little girl who died when she was six; but before she died she had learned many important spiritual lessons, and was quite a mature and trusting young Christian at the time of her death. As shown in Elizabeth’s stories, Susy’s teachers, Mrs Love, Aunt Patience, Mr Ought, Miss Joy and the angel Faith, were able to make their little pupil ready for heaven through many lessons in daily life. Likewise, Elizabeth’s own experiences of bereavement­ the loss of both her father and her little ones­ gave her the insight to depict the trials of Katy, the heroine of Stepping Heavenward, in a realistic, edifying way. Throughout her life, Elizabeth received a huge correspondence from readers grateful for her delightful, empathetic writings that spoke so compassionately to their hearts.

For most of her life, Elizabeth also suffered physically. From her twenties onwards she had dreadful trouble sleeping; and would often wake up many times during the night – or lie awake, sleepless. She was one of those for whom sleeplessness meant very difficult days afterwards, when exhaustion would make every usual task, including social interaction, very hard going. She called it a “horrid calamity” and wrote, “I know just how one feels, I declare, a good deal of the time pulling words out of me is like pulling out teeth.” Fellow insomniacs, doesn’t this strike a chord?(!)

Neuralgia, a severe pain, often in the face, was also a frequent trial. Imagine suffering this kind of ailment in the days before good pain relief! Yes, Elizabeth knew what it was to be ill. There is no doubt that her early death (due to acute gastro-enteritis) in her late fifties was hastened by the general weakness of her health. But many women have suffered, you might observe. Why choose her, in particular? The reason is that she “improved” her suffering, to use the old expression. She turned it to spiritual benefit, both for herself and for others.

Developing her Gift←⤒🔗

George noticed this especially. He wrote that a time of intense suffering in the early 1860s prepared her for a period of special usefulness in the years following. There were an unusual number of tragic deaths and sicknesses in their congregation during this period, and Elizabeth was always in the homes and at the bedside of those in sore need. She developed her gift with words, always having the right thing to say or write – as from one fellow-sufferer to another. Her letters, preserved by George, are truly remarkable for their sympathy and wisdom. To a beloved sister-in-law, deathly ill on her 25^th wedding anniversary, she wrote,

Dearest Anna, I have thought of you all day with the tenderest sympathy, knowing how you had looked forward to it, and what a contrast it offers to your bridal day twenty-five years ago. But I hope it has not been wholly sad. For I can see, though through your tears you cannot, that the Son of God walks with you in this furnace of affliction, and that He is sanctifying it to your soul, that ages hence you will look on this day as better, sweeter, than the day of your espousals. (Biblical imagery, at her fingertips since the sleepless nights she spent in the Scriptures, is a hallmark of her writing style.)

She also had a jolly good sense of humour, and her friends enjoyed her spirited fun. She used this to good effect in cheering people up as well. To one friend she wrote:

Can’t you do M.S. (another friend) up in your next letter, and send her to me on approbation? Instead of being satisfied that I’ve got you, I want her and everybody else who is really good, to fill up some of the empty rooms in my heart. This is a rambling, scrambling letter, but I don’t care, and don’t believe you do. Well, good-bye, and thank your stars that this bit of paper hasn’t got any arms and can’t hug you!

Yet Quite Reserved←⤒🔗

Yes, Elizabeth Prentiss was a very likeable woman – one can’t help thinking, after reading something from her pen, “I’d love to meet her!” But the truth is, as George tells us, that Elizabeth was underneath quite a shy, and naturally quite reserved, person. It was what the Lord put her through, for His sake, that made her the loveable, useful servant she was. Are you suffering right now? Do you wonder what for? Take heart from Elizabeth. She came to understand some of suffering’s deep purposes, and concluded:

I literally love the house of mourning better than the house of feasting. All my long, long years of suffering and sorrow make sorrow-stricken homes homelike, and I can not but feel, because I know it from experience, that Christ loves to be in such homes.