With regard to her books, she believed they would be little read after her death.  To a considerable extent her judgment has been verified.  Her writings were a continual seed-sowing, which later workers fertilised, and brought to maturity.

They were republished in eleven volumes in 1830.  Besides the prominence given to their religious or moral purpose, most of them are remarkable for sustained fervour, persuasiveness of tone, and practical common sense.  We give a few extracts from some of the principal works, to illustrate Hannah More’s methods of appealing to the conscience and awakening spiritual concern.

“There are two things of which a wise man will be scrupulously careful—­his conscience and his credit.  Happily, they are almost inseparable concomitants; they are commonly kept or lost together; the same things which wound the one usually giving a blow to the other; yet it must be confessed, that conscience and a mere worldly credit are not, in all instances, allowed to subsist together....

“Between a wounded conscience and a wounded credit, there is the same difference as between a crime and a calamity.  Of two inevitable evils, religion instructs us to submit to that which is inferior and involuntary.  As much as reputation exceeds every worldly good, so much, and far more, is conscience to be consulted before credit—­if credit that can be called, which is derived from the acclamations of a mob, whether composed of ‘the great vulgar or the small’”—­Christian Morals (chapter xxiv.).

“One cause, therefore, of the dulness of many Christians in prayer, is their slight acquaintance with the sacred volume.  They hear it periodically, they read it occasionally, they are contented to know it historically, to consider it superficially; but they do not endeavour to get their minds imbued with its spirit.  If they store their memory with its facts, they do not impress their hearts with its truths.  They do not regard it as the nutriment on which their spiritual life and growth depend.  They do not pray over it; they do not consider all its doctrines as of practical application; they do not cultivate that spiritual discernment which alone can enable them judiciously to appropriate its promises, and apply its denunciations to their own actual case.  They do not use it as an unerring line, to ascertain their own rectitude, or detect their own obliquities.”

* * * * *

“The discrepancies between our prayers and our practice do not end here.  How frequently are we solemnly imploring of God that ’His kingdom may come,’ while we are doing nothing to promote His kingdom of grace here, and consequently His kingdom of glory hereafter.”

* * * * *