he should call for them. No shuffling pretences,
no pitiful evasions, when a fair demand was made upon
the hallowed store; and no frigid affectation in determining
the quality of the demand. A sense of duty was
the prompter, candor the interpreter, and good sense
the judge. Her disbursements were proportioned
to the value of the object, and were ready at a moment’s
warning, to the very last farthing.* How pungent a
reproof to those ladies of opulence and fashion who
sacrifice so largely to their dissipation or their
vanity, that they have nothing left for mouths without
food, and limbs without raiment! How far does
it throw back into the shade those men of prosperous
enterprise and gilded state who, in the hope of some
additional lucre, have thousands and ten thousands
at their beck; but who, when asked for decent contributions
to what they themselves acknowledge to be all-important,
turn away with this hollow excuse, ‘I cannot
afford it.’ Above all, how should her example
redden the faces of many who profess to belong to Christ;
to have received gratuitously from him what he procured
for them at the expense of his own blood, ’an
inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that
fadeth not away;’ and yet, in the midst of abundance
which he has lavished upon them, when the question
is about relieving his suffering members, or promoting
the glory of his kingdom, are sour, reluctant, mean.
Are these the Christians? Can it be that they
have committed their bodies, their souls, their eternal
hope, to a Saviour whose thousand promises on this
very point of honoring him with their substance, have
less influence upon their hearts and their hands than
the word of any honest man? Remember the deceased,
and hang your heads—remember her, and tremble;
remember her, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance.
The author knew her, when in moderate circumstances,
to give, unsolicited, _fifty pounds at once_ out
of that sacred purse to a single most worthy purpose.
“In that charity, also, which far surpasses
mere almsgiving, however liberal, the charity of the
gospel, our friend was conspicuous. The love
of God shed abroad in her own heart by the Holy Ghost,
drew forth her love to his people wherever she found
them. Assuredly she had in herself this witness
of her having ’passed from death unto life,’
that she loved the brethren. The epistle, written
not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God;
not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the
heart; yet read and known of all men: that is,
the Christian temper manifested by a Christian conversation,
was to her the best letter of recommendation.
Unwavering in her own faith as to the peculiar doctrines
of the gospel, she could nevertheless extend love
without dissimulation, and the very bowels of Christian
fellowship, to others who, whatever might be their
mistakes, their infirmities, or their differences
in smaller matters, agreed in the great Christian
essential of acceptance in the Beloved. Deeply