not then how near she was to the perfection of the heavenly rest. But it has since been interpreted to us, by the event, as one of God's peculiar mercies. What made this the more pleasing evidence of grace was, that she did not know her own danger. It was the power of religion poured upon her spirit by Him who was "hastening to make her up among his jewels." At one time, she said—"Oh, yes, pray that the distance between God and me may be taken away." And after uniting, with the most affecting solemnity and tenderness in the prayer which was offered, she at its close expressed aloud her joy in the exercise, (a thing most unusual with her) and her delight in God her Saviour, who draweth nigh. On another occasion, after hearing some of the promises of healing to the body, as collected by Clarke, she seemed for a moment to be musing, she then gently said: "My dear——I am like the poor woman who had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any; but rather grew worse. My hope is in the Great Physician!"

Since we have been calm enough to review the various stages of her last sickness in relation to her religious exercises, it has been a subject of deep regret, and of no little self-reproach, that we had not made the attempt at recording, as they were uttered, some of the deeply affecting expressions of her Christian principles and feelings. But the tumultuous hour of hope and fear, and hurried, anxious watching at the bed of death, is not the time for cool calculation. Some of the most affecting parts of such scenes are incapable of being written down, even by one not interested in the sufferer. Nay, more—like the voices which John heard from heaven in Patmos, the Spirit seems to say of them, "write them not." These are "joys with which the stranger intermeddleth not." (Prov. xiv. 10.) It is a sanctuary which no creature can enter. And then our beloved Friend, who was often afraid to whisper her religious joys to her Saviour, lest she should be found offering "strange fire" on his altar, seldom talked of her hopes, (though often of her sins,) to her nearest friends; and never, by writing them down, put it in the power of posthumous publications to expose them to the view of others. We can only, therefore, illustrate her religious character, at the stage which we now approach, by broken fragments of thoughts and feelings, caught from her lips amidst the awful mercies of a dying hour.

She began at length, visibly to sink, when Dr. Freeman, of Balston, whose skilful and kind attentions she enjoyed, (Dr. Steel, of Saratoga, having himself been recently removed by death,) strongly advised a discontinuance of the use of the waters, and an attempt to reach the Red Sulphur Springs. For now the prevailing type of the disease had become distinctly pulmonary; and the skill of physicians, and the healing waters, and all the help of man were vain. Now, for the first time, we began to discern the dread reality of her approaching dissolution; and had some foretaste of the first anguish of such a loss.[6]

With heavy hearts, but hastened steps, we returned to Princeton; whence almost in despair, yet anxious to try any and all means for so great an end, we hastily set out with our meek sufferer for the Virginia Springs: but as the previous narrative has recited, we were arrested at Philadelphia. Here all was done by the assiduity and skill of her physicians,[7] and the most tender and constant attentions of a great number of friends. But her divine Redeemer claimed her for himself. She returned to Princeton, to bless her household, and to die. On the evening of June the 13th, she reached her children, and her earthly home. On the morning of the 16th, a quarter before ten o'clock, with her reason unclouded, in a frame of calm and holy triumph which marked the dawning of heaven on her soul; with a meek prayer for permission to die, and with but a single pang, she bade the world farewell, and ascended to God!

Her remains were attended to the grave by a very large and deeply affected assembly, after the delivery of the impressive funeral discourse affixed to this Memoir; where they rest by the side of her three little children, two daughters and a son, removed by death before. The like number and of the same sex, two daughters and a son, are left to the surviving parent, to mourn her loss, to treasure and imitate her example, and, by the grace of the Saviour, to follow them to the skies, where the "house now left desolate unto them" shall be restored with added bliss; and the little family thus divided in the midst of life, being reunited in pure and perfect love, be received into everlasting habitations.

A neat marble monument points to the spot where her dust reposes.

CHAPTER III.

CLOSING REFLECTIONS.

Thus it has pleased our Heavenly Father to "take away from us the desire of our eyes, with a stroke." The first impression of such a loss is that of amazement—overwhelming and bewildering the soul, and with strange horror, destroying for a time, the power to feel. "Deep calleth unto deep—all thy waves, and billows have gone over me." Such is the abyss of grief! At such a time, our part is "to be still"—sitting, like the Marys, "over against the sepulchre."

When the disciples of John lost their earthly Master, "they came and took the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus." This ought to be the first act of every mourner, to tell it unto Jesus. With him we shall find both sympathy and support. And more than this: He resolves the death of our friends into his own gracious sovereignty, when he calls it, "the coming of the Son of Man." Death loses its terror when it becomes his act of grace. "The death of his saints is precious in his sight," and is always ordered with a supreme regard to their blessedness, and his glory. So that the feeblest of his dying children may confidently say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me."

There is a feeling about the death of our friends, which is made up in part of unbelief, and in part of that tender regard which is produced by their dependence on us through life. Those endearing relations which make us their protectors, and supports, send their deep sympathies even into the grave. Who of us that is a husband, or a parent, that does not feel the horror of the separation aggravated by the spectacle of our helpless kindred struggling alone in mortal strife with "the king of terrors"? We, to whom they have always looked for succour, are then as helpless as they, in their extremest need. We cannot even share their agony. It is this which gives a nameless anguish to such a moment.[8]

But it is because we forget that "when father and mother," and all they most depended on in life, "forsake them, then the Lord doth take them up." The Christian is never so little alone as on the verge of heaven. The Lord of life is there. Underneath are the everlasting arms; and through