While Angelina was thus busily employed, and buoyed up by the hope of benefiting those whose wrongs she had all her life felt so deeply, Sarah was reaching towards her, and in trying to be indulgent to her and just to her Society at the same time, she was awakening to her own false position and to some of the awful mistakes of her religious life.  Through the summer, such passages as the following appear in her diary:  —­

“The approach of our Yearly Meeting was almost overwhelming.  I felt as if I could be thankful even for sickness, for almost anything so I might have escaped attending it.  But my dear Saviour opened no door, and after a season of unusual conflict I was favored with resignation.

“Oh! the cruel treatment I have undergone from those in authority.  I could not have believed it had I not been called to endure it.  But the Lord permits it.  My part is not to judge how far they have been moving under divine direction, but to receive humbly and thankfully through them the lessons of meekness, lowliness, faith, patience, and love, and I trust I may be thankful for the opportunity thus afforded to love my enemies and to pray for them, and perhaps it is to prepare me to feel for others, that I have been thus tried and afflicted.”

That she was thus prepared was evidenced through all the varied experiences of her after-life, for certainly no more sympathetic soul ever dwelt in a mortal frame, and more generously diffused its warmth and tenderness upon all who came within its radius.

After the next First Day meeting, she writes:—­

“The suffering in my own meeting is so intense that I think nothing short of a settled conviction that obedience and eternal life are closely connected could enable me to open my lips there.”

Two weeks later, an almost prophetic sentence is written.

“Truly discouragement does so prevail that it would be no surprise to me if Friends requested me to be silent.  Hitherto, I have been spared this trial, but if it comes, O Holy Father, may my own will be so slain that I may bow in reverent adoring submission.”

Notwithstanding all this distress, however, Sarah might still have lingered on some time longer, stifling in the dry dust of the Quaker Church, and refusing to partake of the living water Angelina proffered to her, but for an incident which occurred about this time, scarcely a fortnight after the last sentence quoted,—­an incident which proved to be the last straw added to the heavy burden she had borne so submissively, if not patiently.  It is best given in her own words, and I may add, it is the last entry in her most remarkable diary.