Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

her countenance, resignation no longer played over her features, for triumph crested itself upon her brow. She neither withdrew from his approach or welcomed the coming of death, but went forth to meet him. She waited with intense delight every signal of approaching dissolution. Long and anxiously she awaited the coming of her Redeemer; and perhaps, in the whole duration of her being, no sound more grateful will ever break upon her ear than the cry, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh."

CHAPTER XXI.

"A word fitly spoken, is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." SOLOMON.

For several months before her departure, her pastor visited her every day, and sometimes repeated his visits during the day. In these successive visits he had an opportunity of observing the progress of her mind towards a glorified state. Her conversations, which were amazingly brilliant, he often caused to be written down, expecting, for many weeks while he continued this practice, to find occasion to use them soon in her funeral discourse.

I have been indebted to his courtesy for some of the materials for this work, and particularly her last conversations, which may be relied upon as given in her own language as it fell from her lips. The author of the "Elegy in a Country Church-Yard" has said, that " one line written on the spot, is worth ten thousand pages of recollections."

In a conversation with her pastor a few weeks previous to her death, she remarked,

"From the time I experienced religion, I have always had a prevailing desire to die: not from disgust or weariness of things of earth, but from the superior attractions of the joys of heaven. Possibly my physical condition may have contributed in some measure to this state of mind, but I think not very much: for I have always regarded all the innocent enjoyments of earth with a cheerful mind. I do not recollect a day in my life in which I have not experienced a considerable degree of pain; but I have had much deeper suffering from a sense of my own selfishness. My prevailing desire to die, seems to me to have arisen from abhorrence of my own sinfulness, and a deep perception of the purity of heaven. I have longed to depart and be with Christ, which is far better than to be here in the flesh; and I am sure that being with Christ is the Christian's heaven. I know it is a world of purity, for the presence of the Saviour banishes all sin. I think this about pictures out my strictly personal history."

In another conversation with her pastor, she inquired of him

“Do you think it is sinful in me to desire to

If

die, provided I feel the sentiment of the Saviour,
'Not my will, but thine, Oh God! be done?'
it is, with God's help I will repress it and repent
of it. It seems to me no more sinful to desire to
die than to desire to live, provided we bring all
our feelings into subservience to God's will."

The maturity of her faith was evident from the strength and rectitude of her reasoning on every moral question which came before her mind. She borrowed no unnecessary trouble. She says:

"My thoughts are weak and wandering, and often drift far off from God and eternity; but this, I think, is the effect of disease. I need not, I think, write 'bitter things' against myself on this account. If I sometimes, through weakness and distraction of thought, forget my Saviour, I am sure he wont forget me."

She expressed great disapprobation of a sentiment in a letter from a correspondent of Miss Graham, which expressed satisfaction with death as a cessation from suffering.

"I am standing," says Mr. B. "on the awful brink of eternity, and am just about to take the tremendous step; but I cannot think of this step as a release from suffering. My sufferings are

4

all sweetened and sanctified by that God who makes all my bed in my sickness. The only cessation the Christian should think of in death with any pleasure, is a cessation from sin. I go to that world where God is the light of it, and where nothing that is impure can enter. This makes me more than satisfied with death."

She requested her pastor not to pray much that she might be exempted from pain; for, said she,

"I hope God will deal out to me all the sufferings that will be for his glory. I care little about it; I can bear it well, for I know it is dealt out in weight and measure by a perfect being. Shall I talk about suffering when my Saviour suffered so much more for me, and when the celestial city and my crown are full in view ?"

Through her painful decline, she had more than an acquiescence in suffering; she triumphed in it and over it; it was sweetened to her taste by the delightful consciousness that it came from the hand of God. She says:

"It matters little whether my voyage to the desired haven be over a smooth or a turbulent sea: God will glorify himself in either case, and that is enough for me.".

« AnteriorContinuar »