1.07.20. Book 7: 20. Cholera
20. CHOLERA
"GOD who has the almighty power sleeps. The Lord Bishop and the Committee have shut up their eyes. The Executive members have lost their consciousness. The Church of Christ at Middletown is daily falling down dead." This candid paragraph concerning a place in the South is from a letter received by the Bishop of Madras in 1893. Lest things should be thus, when converts began to come out in connection with Ragland’s work, and also for the sake of the poor relapsed Christians who were to be found scattered on the Plain, and whom the band had influenced for good, a fine man, C. Every, came out and was welcomed with thanksgiving.
Immediately-a missionary will understand what this meant-Every had to be taken for another need, and when at last he was retrieved it was a relief, for he was getting Tamil well, and had just reached the place where it is possible really, not merely nominally, to lift burdens-"likely to be a very great help and comfort to us," wrote Ragland with a thankful heart. Eleven months later cholera smote him. Once again, as when Fenn went down with typhus, Ragland was alone, and he had never nursed cholera. Swiftly the chill of death came on. Ragland wrapped him in his railway rug, but nothing could help him. Wrapped in that rug he was laid to sleep by the little house then being built where they had hoped to spend the approaching wet season together.
"What a bright holy course he has run, never trifling. The Lord seems to take the best first," and tests to the uttermost those He leaves behind. But help came, another was found to fill the gap, another of choice spiritBarenbrock. Seven months later he too fell, struck down by that same cholera. And as they dug his grave by Every’s, it seemed as if before the next sun set they would have to dig one by his side for Fenn.