“Mr. Hanckel sent me a note and a tract persuasive of my remaining in his church.  The latter I think the most bigoted thing I ever read.  He said he would call and see me on the subject.  I trust and believe God will give me words whereby to refute his arguments.  Brother Tom sanctioned my change, for his liberal mind embraces all classes of Christians in the arms of charity and love, and he thinks everyone right to sit under that minister, and choose that form, which makes the deepest impression on the heart.  I feel that I have begun a great work, and must be diligent.  Adieu, my dear mother.  You must write soon to your daughter, and tell her all your mind on this subject.”

There is something very refreshing in all this, after poor Sarah’s pages of bitterness and self-reproach.  At that time, at any rate, Angelina enjoyed her religion.  It was to her the fulfilment of promise.  Sarah experienced little of its satisfactions, and groaned and wept under its requirements, from a sense of her utter unworthiness to accept any of its blessings.  And this difference between the sisters continued always.  Angelina knew that humility was the chief of the Christian virtues, and often she believed she had attained to it; but there was too much self-assertion, too much of the pride of power, in her composition, to permit her to go down into the depths, and prostrate herself in the dust as Sarah did.  She could turn her full gaze to the sun, and bask in its genial beams, while Sarah felt unworthy to be touched by a single ray, and looked up to its light with imploring but shaded eyes.

In November, 1827, Sarah again visited Charleston.  Her heart yearned for Angelina, whose religious state excited her tenderest solicitude, and called for her wisest counsel.  For that enthusiastic young convert was again running off the beaten track, and picking flaws in her new doctrines.  But there was another reason why Sarah desired to absent herself from Philadelphia for a while.

I can touch but lightly on this experience of her life, for her sensitive soul quivered under any allusion to it; and though her diary contains many references to it, they are chiefly in the form of prayers for submission to her trial, and strength to bear it.  But it was the key-note to the dirge which sounded ever after in her heart, mingling its mournful numbers with every joy, even after she had risen beyond her religious horrors.

For months she fought against this new snare of Satan, as she termed it, this plain design to draw her thoughts from God, and compass her destruction.  The love of Christ should surely be enough for her, and any craving for earthly affection was the evidence of an unsanctified heart.  In a delicate reference to this, in after years, she says:—­

“It is a beautiful theory, but my experience belies it, that God can be all in all to man.  There are moments, diamond points in life, when God fills the yearning soul, and supplies all our needs, through the richness of his mercy in Christ Jesus.  But human hearts are created for human hearts to love and be loved by, and their claims are as true and as sacred as those of the spirit.”