ns, but this time it has not been
so. I think I have been made to realize that I have a loving Father
in heaven who loves and watches over and cares for me more than
ever you or Mr. Whiting did. I do really feel now that God has
given me friends, so this day has not been so sad a one to me as it
usually is. Another source of thankfulness to-day is, that I have
been raised up from a bed of pain and suffering from which neither
I nor any of my friends thought I ever would rise. Weary days and
nights of pain, when it was torture to move and almost impossible
to lie still, and when it seemed at times that death would be only
a relief, and yet here I am still living to praise Him for many,
many mercies. Mr. Pinkerton waited on me day and night, often
depriving himself of sleep and rest in order to do it, and when
convalescence set in, and with the restlessness of a sick person, I
used to fancy I would be more comfortable up stairs, he used to
carry me up and down and gratify all my whims. For five weeks I was
in bed, and many more confined to my room and the house. But the
greatest reason for thankfulness is, that God has in His great
mercy brought me to a knowledge of Himself, and of my own lost
state as a guilty sinner. It was while lying those long weary days
on the bed that I was made to see that for ten long years I had
been deceiving myself. Instead of being a Christian and being
prepared to die, I was still in the gall of bitterness and the
bonds of iniquity, and if God had taken me away during that
sickness, it would have been with a lie in my right hand. Now when
I look back on those long years spent in sin and in self-deception,
I wonder at God's loving kindness and patience in sparing me still
to show forth in me His goodness and forbearance. Truly it is of
His mercies that I was not consumed. How often I taught others and
talked to them of the love of Christ, and yet I had not that love
myself. How many times I sat down to His table with his children,
and yet I had no portion nor lot in the matter. Sometimes when I
think how near destruction I was, with literally but a step between
me and death, eternal death, and yet God raised me up and brought
me to Christ and made me love Him, and how ever since He has been
watching over me giving me the m