intended to "bring them both unto glory," the heavier affliction will result in a superior capability for bliss? The master touches of the Divine hand were visible in E. M.'s whole conversation and deportment. While then we are bound to recognise His work, is it not with lawful exultation that we say?"We have not followed cunningly devised fables." The Gospel, which preaches first forgiveness and then heavenliness of mind, is a reality; and if there had never been a greater instance to confirm it, the change, development, and meetness for glory of E. M. would have been sufficient. N CHAP. X. "Yet they with patience can by none be read, HAVING now considered the testimony which Emma's history bears to the agency of the Holy Spirit, we would close our simple narrative by a few suggestions to the sick. But counsel, like sympathy, is most persuasive when it flows from the lips of experience. Our much-tried sister being dead, yet speaketh ;" and, in what follows, it is to her voice that we would earnestly invite the attention of every child of suffering. To the sick especially it is, that the example of E. M. appeals with strong encouragement. The great things which God wrought in her, He will work in every one who in like circumstances unfeignedly seeks the help of His grace. Her submission, her self-denial, her usefulness, were fruits of His Spirit; and her various labours of love were all good works which He had prepared beforehand, that she should walk in them. The foregoing memoir shows us what can and ought to be done, in seasons of protracted sickness. For sickness has its duties. Strange as the words may sound, there are duties, and very solemn ones too, incumbent upon those whom God has laid aside, whether for a longer or shorter period, from the pursuits of active life. But, alas! how often is the precious season frittered away! Debarred from intercourse with the outer world, an inner world is established. The mind still seeks for amusement and interest in the things which are seen, though God would appear to have drawn our curtains round us, as an intimation that (for a time at least) the things which are not seen were to become our study. The very chitchat of the house becomes important, and we grow all the more eager about the trivialities of daily life, although God would have us forget all but its end. Now, it is precisely because sickness has its duties that God sends men into its school. And these duties are more numerous and more defined than we might imagine. They would form a large subject to handle, and it would be foreign to the nature of this work to unfold them. We can only take those points in which the character and conduct of E. M. displayed themselves, and show how great is the encouragement which they offer, and how serious the example which they propose for our imitation. And first of all: the case of Emma shows us the POSSIBILITY OF EXERTION in sickness. Is it easy to conceive a condition more unfriendly to self-culture or exertion? Consider only the prostration of strength, mental and physical, which must have followed twenty-four hours of violent convulsion and excitement. Most persons would be inclined to ask, How could you expect me to do anything but lie in perfect repose during this brief interval of respite? And what could we reply, but that we expected nothing? Not that it is affirmed that exertion of mind and body is always, or even frequently, possible to the sick. The case of E. M. only starts the thought, whether sick persons, under a prayerful sense of the purposes of their visitation, may not attempt more than they generally do. Certain it is that, limited as the season was, Emma diligently employed every moment in which her illness suffered her to act. There were times, indeed, in which she could not apply herself to anything, through the agony of her head and the dimness of her sight; but there never was a time in which she was free from pain, such as would form with many persons a plea for no exertion at all. Look at her study of Scripture alone. Her Bible is scored with pencil marks. Many other books were read by her. Her letters occupied her sometimes several weeks, but were diligently and perseveringly finished. And to all this exertion, made in the strength of grace, is to be attributed the remarkable expansion of her mind and the rapid developments of her spiritual life, according to the proverb, "The diligent soul shall be made fat." May not this memoir, then, suggest to the sick, not only the importance of making some effort at spiritual employment and self-culture, but the advisableness of endeavouring to observe something like method in their sick room? If, for example, (as far as their illness will admit) they would divide their time, so as to have the same occupation, long or short, come round at the same hour, whether it be prayer, study of Scripture, receiving Christian friends, or working with their pen, or in any other useful way, so as to keep up in the mind the sense of duty and disci |