Bengal Obituary/1848/Obituary of Hannah Marshman

Her removal had been expected for some time; more than once during the last twelve months it was thought her end was at hand. Her's [sic] was a gradual decay; at intervals she rallied but all could see she was slowly sinking into her rest. The delightful nature of religion was beautifully exemplified in her experience when at the near approach of death. Hers was a settled and well-grounded hope, and she realized in her last moments the enjoyment to be derived from religion.

On the 2 March a sudden change had taken place—death had evidently put his seal upon her. Mr. Denham was summoned to her bedside, and found her calm; all her mental powers unimpaired. She addressed him and said she would not long continue a tenant of this world, and then spoke of her trust in the Saviour. She referred with evident delight to the period when she had been brought to a sense of her lost condition, and looked back upon her thoughts and feelings then. Mr. Denham read with her the 43d Psalm, to each verse of which she responded.

At 5pm when Mr. Denham again saw her she was in deep thought; her mind seemed to be in repose. Upon noticing her visitor she addressed him, and uttered several stanzas which, as she informed her daughter, she had committed to memory before she was eighteen years of age. To this period her thoughts seem constantly to be turning; it was then, she said, that Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was so useful to her.

To a question from her daughter, as to whether she had any fears, she energetically answered—"no fears, child, no fears; has He not said that He will save to the uttermost those that come unto him, and will not cast away any?" And then turning to Mr. Denham, she added, "should you speak of me after my death speak to the people and tell them, He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of may waters," she then begged him to read the part where Bunyan describes the pilgrims as having just escaped from drowning in the river Jordan.

The time, the circumstances seemed all to be realized in her case. "I wish myself among them," she repeated with a great deal of feeling and energy. The words of Steadfast seemed to interest her much, and when the reader came to the part where a change was manifested in the appearance of Steadfast, a brightness seemed to spread itself over her countenance; the reader could not proceed and stopped; her spirit had fled, death had taken possession of her without any of her friends perceiving it; she died on the bosom of her daughter.

The deceased had nearly completed her eightieth year and nearly the forty-eighth year of her residence in the country, she was one of that small and devoted band that formed the Baptist Mission in India, and was a Member of the Church which was commenced at Serampore in the year 1804. In her removal the last link of that chain which connected the latter Missionaries with the former brethren has been broken.