The Life And Testimony Of Mary Huxham

Earthen Vessel 1906:

The readers of the Earthen Vessel who can recall the personality and ministry of Mr. R. A. Huxham, who served for several years in the ministry of our section of the Church of Christ, will learn with deep sympathy that his widow, Mrs. Mary Huxham, passed away at Rattlesden on October 18th at the ripe age of eighty years.

During the seven years of his ministry in this village, the writer, whose ministry she attended, had frequent opportunities of conversing with her upon the things of God.

After leaving Aldringham, which was the last sphere of labour filled by her husband, they spent the closing days of his life at Stowmarket. Mrs. Huxham never removed her membership from the Church in that town; and when after her husband’s decease she removed to…[…]…continued to help the Lord’s work at Stowmarket. 

She was a regular attendant and communicant at Rattlesden Chapel, and found among its members staunch and loyal friends, who ministered to her comfort until the last.

Naturally our sister was one who lived in the past. She would dwell lovingly upon the earlier associations of her Christian life at Chelmsford, Aldringham, Borough Green, and other places where Mr. Huxham ministered, and friends in various places corresponded with her to the end, and greatly cheered her declining days.

Mrs. Huxham was baptized in Devon, October 1st, 1859. She was a staunch lover of the doctrines of sovereign grace, and was keenly interested in the welfare of the Churches. Some of the writer’s best moments with her were spent at the mercy-seat, and towards the close of her life she manifested a marked spirit of grateful realisation of the goodness of God to her in the waning days of her pilgrimage. She was never elevated to heights of rapture, and times not a few she mourned this fact, but there was a firm grip of the eternal verities of the covenant of grace, and she passed away knowing Whom she had believed, and shortly before her departure expressed her soul’s trust in the well-known lines:—

“My hope is built on nothing less 

Than Jesus blood and righteousness.”

The funeral took place at Stowmarket Cemetery on Tuesday, October 23rd. Our sister left no relatives, but the Cemetery Chapel was filled with friends connected with the Rattlesden and Stowmarket Churches, and Mr. and Mrs. Cottee, of Chelmsford, the service being conducted by pastors W. F. Edgerton and S. B. Stooker.

On Sunday afternoon, November 4th, a service was held at Rattlesden Chapel, when the pastor preached from Rev. 2:7. As this service was held “In Memoriam” special reference was made to the departed one, and while we sang the beautiful words,

“E’en now by faith we join our hands 

With those that went before,

And greet the blood-besprinkled bands 

On the eternal shore,”

many felt that but a thin veil divides the earth-worn pilgrims from their Father’s home eternal.

Feeling it meet that one so well known and so deservedly respected should not pass away without an appreciative record, the writer sends this brief obituary, not to eulogize the creature, but to magnify the grace of God. 

W. Frew Edgerton

Rattlesden