I would like to introduce you to a man. This man loved God and pursued Him diligently; he was a man who had weaknesses same as you and me, but also a man who had yielded his life to Christ and desired for God to work through him for God’s glory. I have come to admire this man very much. His name was Benjamin Rush.
In Benjamin’s early years he suffered the loss of his father. His mother moved her young family to Philadelphia where she opened a grocery store to provide for her children. Determined that her sons would have a good education, nine year old Benjamin was placed under the tutelage of his uncle, Rev. Dr. Finley. Dr. Finely was the principle of an academy in Nottingdam Maryland.
During the next few years of Benjamin’s young life a foundation …show more content…
As the sounds of frightened people fleeing and the smells of death began to pervade the city, Benjamin sat down to pen a letter to his wife. Despite all of the pleading of friends for him to leave the city for his own preservation Benjamin responded “that he would not abandon the post which Providence had assigned him”; he thought it to be his duty to sacrifice his own pleasures and comforts but if necessary his very life for the safety of his patients.
Benjamin was not ignorant of the dangers, he warned people as he went out on his rounds that they should leave the city as soon as possible. Even physicians fled the city, at one point Dr. Rush was one of three physicians who remained in the city to tend to over six thousand patients.
After pouring over any book that might aid in his attempt to find a cure for the dreaded disease Dr. Rush found one and had the great pleasure of having four out of his first five patients, recover. There was a week in September that Dr. Rush visited and prescribed for 100-120 patients a day. Often times he would not sit down even to eat but would take his meals standing, as he continued prescribing for patients as he …show more content…
He would gather his wife and thirteen children around him every night that he was home and read aloud from God’s word, then approach his King in prayers of humility and adoration.
In January, one year, the Rush’s lost their youngest son to pleurisy, which is an inflammation in the lungs caused by pneumonia. On the second of March Dr Rush fell ill to the same disease. He wavered between life and death for nine days. His recovery he considered a miracle as he penned to a friend, “my recovery is thought the next thing to a miracle. For my own part, I had taken leave of life. I not only settled all my worldly affairs but gave the most minute directions with respect to everything that related to my funeral. It pleased God to enable me to do this with an uncommon degree of composure, for the promises of the Gospel bore up my soul about the ear of death and the horrors of the grave. O! My friend, the religion of Jesus Christ is indeed a reality. It is comfortable in life, but in a near view of the last enemy [death] its value cannot be measure or estimated by the pen or tongue of a
In Benjamin’s early years he suffered the loss of his father. His mother moved her young family to Philadelphia where she opened a grocery store to provide for her children. Determined that her sons would have a good education, nine year old Benjamin was placed under the tutelage of his uncle, Rev. Dr. Finley. Dr. Finely was the principle of an academy in Nottingdam Maryland.
During the next few years of Benjamin’s young life a foundation …show more content…
As the sounds of frightened people fleeing and the smells of death began to pervade the city, Benjamin sat down to pen a letter to his wife. Despite all of the pleading of friends for him to leave the city for his own preservation Benjamin responded “that he would not abandon the post which Providence had assigned him”; he thought it to be his duty to sacrifice his own pleasures and comforts but if necessary his very life for the safety of his patients.
Benjamin was not ignorant of the dangers, he warned people as he went out on his rounds that they should leave the city as soon as possible. Even physicians fled the city, at one point Dr. Rush was one of three physicians who remained in the city to tend to over six thousand patients.
After pouring over any book that might aid in his attempt to find a cure for the dreaded disease Dr. Rush found one and had the great pleasure of having four out of his first five patients, recover. There was a week in September that Dr. Rush visited and prescribed for 100-120 patients a day. Often times he would not sit down even to eat but would take his meals standing, as he continued prescribing for patients as he …show more content…
He would gather his wife and thirteen children around him every night that he was home and read aloud from God’s word, then approach his King in prayers of humility and adoration.
In January, one year, the Rush’s lost their youngest son to pleurisy, which is an inflammation in the lungs caused by pneumonia. On the second of March Dr Rush fell ill to the same disease. He wavered between life and death for nine days. His recovery he considered a miracle as he penned to a friend, “my recovery is thought the next thing to a miracle. For my own part, I had taken leave of life. I not only settled all my worldly affairs but gave the most minute directions with respect to everything that related to my funeral. It pleased God to enable me to do this with an uncommon degree of composure, for the promises of the Gospel bore up my soul about the ear of death and the horrors of the grave. O! My friend, the religion of Jesus Christ is indeed a reality. It is comfortable in life, but in a near view of the last enemy [death] its value cannot be measure or estimated by the pen or tongue of a