d's discipline was intended to
make not only _models_, but _ministers_; that one who had passed through
the furnace with Christ was to emerge from the fiery baptism not merely
to be _gazed_ at, but to go down to his brethren telling with power the
story of the "form of the Fourth." This is the sentiment of some lines
addressed by her to an afflicted friend:
"O that this heart with grief so well acquainted
Might be a fountain, rich and sweet and full,
For all the weary that have fallen and fainted
In life's parched desert--thirsty, sorrowful.
"Thou Man of Sorrows, teach my lips that often
Have told the sacred story of my woe,
To speak of Thee till stony griefs I soften--
Till those that know Thee not, learn Thee to know."
At a comparatively early period of her Christian experience, the theme
of her prayer was: "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory"; for in the
answer to that prayer there seemed, as she said, to be summed up
everything that she needed or could desire. In a paper in which she
recorded some of her aspirations, she wrote: "Let my life be an
all-day looking to Jesus. Let my love to God be so deep, earnest, and
all-pervading, that I can not have even the passing emotion of rebellion
to suppress. There is such a thing as an implicit faith in, and
consequent submission to, Christ. Let me never rest till they are fully
mine."
I do not know the precise date, but I think it could not have been very
late when she received a mighty answer to the prayer to behold God's
glory. New views of Christian privilege and of the relation of Christ
to believing souls came with prayerful searching of the Scriptures.
She entered, to use her own words, upon "a life of incessant peace and
serenity--notwithstanding it became, by degrees, one of perpetual self-
denial and effort." The consciousness of God never left her. The whole
world seemed holy ground. Prayer became a perpetual delight. The pride
and turbulence of nature grew quiet under these gentle influences, and
anything from God's hand seemed just right and quite good.
The secret of her peace and of her usefulness lay very largely in the
prayerfulness of her life. From her early years, prayer was her delight.
In describing the comforts of her chamber in the school at Richmond, she
noted as its crowning charm the daily presence of the Eternal King, who
condescended to make it His dwelling-place. With the deeper experiences
of which we have spok
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