ristian
lady.

Some time before this period she had become very deaf; but though she
felt it to be a great trial, it made scarcely any perceptible abatement
of her cheerfulness; nor did she allow it to prevent her attendance upon
the house of God. In proportion as she was shut out from the pleasures
of conversation, she seemed to find an increasing delight in secret
devotion. "Let us call those our golden hours," she says in a letter
to a friend, "that are spent with God. May we be found much in that
excellent duty of self-examination." And at a subsequent date she writes
in her diary, "My hearing is in some measure restored; of which I can
give no account from natural causes or medicinal art. O Lord, my healer,
thou canst do every thing. O the riches of immortal grace! If I outlive
my senses, I cannot outlive my graces. O how beautiful, how honourable,
how durable! I earnestly plead with God for his church and ministers, in
faith and hope, for what I am not likely to live to see. Dear Lord, let
me depart and join the holy society above. Amen!"

It is often observed, that as Christians draw near to heaven, their
desire increases to enter upon its holy joys. They present a delightful
contrast, in this respect, to those unhappy persons whose old age is
chilled with the infirmities of decaying nature, and never warmed
into the glow of celestial aspirations by the presages of a blessed
immortality. The natural desire of life is felt by both, and the
uneradicated remains of our ancient and inveterate depravity will
sometimes, even in aged Christians, repress the risings of the soul
towards her native skies. But the prevailing tendency of the desires
will be upwards. "To live is indeed Christ; but to die is gain." Hence
their conversation will take its complexion and character, rather from
the things which are eternal, than from the transactions or interests of
this present world. Such was eminently the case with the subject of this
memoir. She seemed to live much, in the secret exercises of her mind,
upon the invisible glories of that region of blessedness towards which
she was fast approaching. Never was her countenance lighted up with a
more cheerful beam of piety, than when, after she had been occupied
awhile in silent musings, she would break forth in the joyful
exclamation of the patriarch Job, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and
that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though, after
my skin, worms d