s and fears were troublesome, I
think they were useful. Sometimes she had light and comfort; oftener
otherwise. In her twentieth year she had a fever, and from the first she
thought she should not live, complained of her stupidity of mind,
impenitence and unbelief. I came home from afternoon exercise, found her
so ill that her mother thought herself obliged to tell her, upon which
she thanked her for her kindness, but quickly fell into great distress
on being unprepared for eternity. It would break a heart of stone to
hear her: 'Oh! dear sir, what shall I do?' ... Oh! the horrors of that
night. It was one of the most distressing I ever knew. She wouldn't
close her eyes for fear of dying. In the morning was a little more
resigned, fell asleep, awoke refreshed, but still in darkness. 'Oh! dear
father,' she would say, 'I have dreadfully apostatized from Christ.' Mr.
Sewall and I labored with her for days, but we found nobody but the
Almighty could do it.

"Dr. Sewall said, 'If she died in darkness, we should have good ground
to hope that she would awake in glory.' To everything he would say she
would reply, 'I cannot believe.' You must be sensible of a distressed
father's heart, putting his soul in her soul's place for many weeks.

"Incessant prayers were offered for her in public and private, by
relations and friends who loved her, but until the last half hour of her
life were unanswered. She was in agonies of death all the while Mr.
Sewall was praying. When he and the physician left, I told her they
could do nothing more. She was calm and composed, but did not speak....
It was so dismal to see her depart in darkness. Oh! the distress in that
room. I held her in my arms, she opened her eyes and spoke a new
language: 'Oh! I love the Lord with all my heart. I see such an
amiableness in him, I prize him above a thousand worlds.' I said, 'Dear
child, what have you to say to me?'--'Oh! sir, that you may be more
fervent in your ministry, in exhorting and expostulating with sinners.'
I never saw such a change in a sick room, from distress to joy when I
reported her words. I could scarcely have thought a father, mother,
brother and sister could have been so transported in the expiring
moments of one so dear to them."

This discourse was published in Edinboro' after his death. His daughter
Sarah, afterwards wife of Lieut.-Gov. Gill, survived her parents a few
years, but died, without children in 1771. She was also deeply
religi