Christian woman.

"When I take my pen to write this, I am, by the goodness and mercy of
God, in a moderate and easy state of health--a blessing I have
thankfully felt through the course of a long life, which (with a much
greater help), the contemplation of a more durable state, has maintained
and upheld me through varieties of providences and conditions of life.
But all the delights and sorrows of this mixed state must end; and I
feel the decays that attend old age creep so fast on me, that, although
I may yet get over some more years however, I ought to make it my
frequent meditation, that the day is near, when this earthly tabernacle
shall be dissolved, and my immortal spirit be received into that place
of purity, where no unclean thing can enter; there to sing eternal
praises to the great Creator of all things. With the Psalmist, I
believe, 'at His right hand there are pleasures for evermore:' and what
is good and of eternal duration, must be joyful above what we can
conceive; as what is evil and of like duration, must be despairingly
miserable.

"And now, my dear child, I pray, I beseech you, I conjure you, my loved
son, consider what there is of felicity in this world, that can
compensate the hazard of losing an everlasting easy being; and then
deliberately weigh, whether or no the delights and gratifications of a
vicious or idle course of life are such, that a wise or thoughtful man
would choose or submit to. Again, fancy its enjoyments at the height
imagination can propose or suggest (which yet rarely or never happens,
or if it does, as a vapour soon vanishes); but let us grant it could,
and last to fourscore years, is this more than the quickest thought to
eternity? Oh, my child! fix on that word, eternity! Old Hobbes, with all
his fancied strength of reason, could never endure to rest or stay upon
that thought, but ran from it to some miserable amusement. I remember to
have read of some man, who reading in the Bible something that checked
him, he threw it on the ground; the book fell open, and his eyes fixed
on the word eternity, which so struck upon his mind, that he, from a bad
liver, became a most holy man. Certainly, nothing besides the belief of
reward and punishment can make a man truly happy in his life, at his
death, and after death. Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing that
is right; for that shall bring a man peace at the last--peace in the
evening of each day, peace in the day of death, and p