He pressed her hand for reply, and her eyes closed peacefully.  She seemed to sleep.

It was not until Friday that the end came.  Shortly before eleven that morning she waked suddenly out of slumber with lips muttering rapidly.  They, bending close, caught the words “Saviour—­dear Saviour—­help—­at the last.”  By the time they had summoned John, though the muttering continued, the words were unintelligible:  yet they knew she was praising God.

In a little while the voice ceased and she lay staring calmly upwards.  From three to four o’clock the last cords were loosening.  Suddenly John arose, and lifting his hand in benediction, spoke the words of the Commendatory Prayer:  “O Almighty God, in whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prison; we humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear Mother, into Thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and most merciful Saviour, most humbly beseeching Thee that it may be precious in Thy sight. . . .”

It was Hetty who bent low, took the inert hand, and after listening for a while laid it softly down on the coverlet.  All was over:  yet she listened until the voices of the watchers, released by her signal, rose together—­

     “Hark! a voice divides the sky—­
      Happy are the faithful dead
      In the Lord who sweetly die—­”

She raised her face as if to entreat for yet a moment’s respite.  But their faces were radiant, transfigured with the joy of their faith.  And then suddenly, certainly, in their rapture she saw the purpose and end of all their common sufferings; want, hunger, years of pinching and striving, a thousand petty daily vexations, all the hardships that had worn her mother down to this poor corpse upon the bed, her own sorrowful fate and her sisters’ only less sorrowful—­all caught up in the hand of God and blazing as a two-edged sword of flame.  Across the blaze, though he was far away, she saw the confident eyes of Charles smiling as at a prophecy fulfilled.  But the hand outstretched for the sword was John’s, claiming it by right indefeasible.  She, too, had a right indefeasible:  and before the sword descended to cleave the walls of this humble death chamber and stretch over England, her heart cried and claimed to be pierced with it.  “Let it pierce me and cut deep, for my tears, too, have tempered it!”

From the Journal of Charles Wesley for the year 1750: 

     “March 5th.  I prayed by my sister Wright, a gracious, tender,
      trembling soul; a bruised reed which the Lord will not break.

     “March 14th.  I found my sister Wright very near the haven”; and
      again on Sunday, the 18th:  “Yet still in darkness, doubts and
      fears, against hope believing in hope.