“Mayhew,” said he, “I thank you for this sincerity.  I will endeavour to look the terror in the face, as I have struggled to do for many days.  It is hard—­but through the mercy of Christ it is not impracticable.  Dear and oldest friend, unite your prayers with mine, for strength, and holiness, and resignation.  Cloud and agitation are at our feet.  Heaven is above us.  Let us look there, and all is well.”

We knelt.  The minister prayed.  He did not ask his Master to suspend his judgments.  He implored him to prepare the soul of the afflicted one for its early flight, and to subdue the hearts of them all with his grace and holy spirit.  Let him who doubts the efficacy of prayer seek to clear his difficulty in the season of affliction, or when death sits grimly at the hearth—­he shall be satisfied.

If it were a consolation and a joy in the midst of our tribulation to behold the father chastened by the heavy blow which had fallen so suddenly upon his age, how shall I express the ineffable delight—­yes, delight, amidst sorrow the most severe—­with which I contemplated the beloved maiden, upon whose tender years Providence had allowed to fall so great a trial.  Fully sensible of her position, and of the near approach of death, she was, so long as she could see her parent and her lover without distress, patient, cheerful, and rejoicing.  Yes, weaker and weaker as she grew, happier and happier she became in the consciousness of her pure soul’s increase.  Into her ear had been whispered, and before her eyes holy spirits had appeared with the mysterious communication, which, hidden as it is from us, we find animating and sustaining feeble nature, which else would sink, appalled and overwhelmed.  There was not one of us who did not live a witness to the truth of the heavenly promise, “as thy days, so shall thy strength be;” not one amongst the dearest friends of the sufferer, who did not feel, in the height of his affliction, that God would not cast upon his creatures a burden which a Christian might not bear.  But to her especially came the celestial declaration with power and might.  An angel, sojourning for a day upon the earth, and preparing for his homeward flight, could not have spread his ready wing more joyfully, with livelier anticipation of his native bliss, than did the maiden look for her recall and blest ascension to the skies.  In her presence I had seldom any grief; it was swallowed up and lost in gratitude for the victory which the dear one had achieved, in virtue of her faith, over all the horrors of her situation.  It was when alone that I saw, in its reality and naked wretchedness, the visitation that I, more than any other, was doomed to suffer.  For days I could scarcely bring myself to the calm consideration of it.  It seemed unreal, impossible, a dream—­any thing but what it was—­the direst of worldly woes—­the most tremendous of human punishments.