“Yes, dear....  I esteem it a very choice blessing that, as the outer man decays, the heart seems enlarged in charity, and more and more drawn towards those I love.  Oh, this love! it is as subtle as the fragrance of the flower, an indefinable essence pervading the soul.  My eyesight and my hearing are both in a weakly condition; but I trust, as the material senses fail, the interior perception of the divine may be opened to a clearer knowledge of God, and that I may read the glorious book of nature with a more heavenly light, and apprehend with clearer insight the majesty and divinity and capabilities of my own being.”

A few months later, she writes:  “My days of active usefulness are over; but there is a passive work to be done, far harder than actual work,—­namely, to exercise patience and study humble resignation to the will of God, whatever that may be.  Thanks be to Him, I have not yet felt like complaining; nay, verily, the song of my heart is, Who so blest as I?  In years gone by, I used to rejoice as every year sped its course and brought me nearer to the grave.  But now, though the grave has no terrors for me, and death looks like a pleasant transition to another and a better condition, I am content to wait the Father’s own time for my removal.  I rejoice that my ideal is still in advance of my actual, though I can only look for realization in another life.  I know of a truth that my immortal spirit must progress; not into a state of perfect happiness,—­that would have no attractions for me; there must be deficiencies in my heaven, to leave room for progression.  A realm of unqualified rest were a stagnant pool of being, and the circle of absolute perfection a waveless calm, the abstract cipher of indolence.  But I believe I shall be gifted with higher faculties, greater powers, and therefore be capable of higher aspirations, better achievements, and a nobler appreciation of God and His works.”

The sweet tranquillity expressed in this letter, and which was the greatest blessing that could have been given to Sarah Grimke’s last years, grew day by day, and shed its benign influence on all about her.  She had long ceased to look back, and had long been satisfied that though she had had an ample share of sorrows and perplexities, her life had passed, after all, with more of good than evil in it, more of enjoyment than sorrow.  Her experience had been rich and varied; and, while she could see, in the past, sins committed, errors of judgment, idiosyncracies to which she had too readily yielded, she felt that all had been blest to her in enlarging her knowledge of herself, in widening her sphere of usefulness, and uniting her more closely to Him who had always been her guide, and whose promises sustained and blessed her, and crowned her latter days with joy supreme.

CHAPTER XVIII.