A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains,: of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, EnglandSouthall, Eliza Allen
Religion
A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains,: of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England
Southall, Eliza Allen
Christian biography -- England; Quakers -- England -- Biography; Southall, Eliza Allen, 1823-1851
In her desire to promote the spiritual welfare of others, she wrote
two tracts, which were printed by the York Friends' Tract Association.
The first is entitled Richard Nancarrow, or the Cornish Miner, and
traces the Christian course of a poor man whom she had frequently
visited, and who had claimed her anxious solicitude as she watched his
slow decline in consumption. In the second, entitled "Plain Words,"
she endeavored to convey the simplest gospel truths in words adapted
to the comprehension of even the least educated. She was warmly
interested in the Bible Society, in connection with which, for some
years, she regularly visited a neighboring village, besides attending
to other objects of a similar character nearer home.
_9th Mo. 10th_. Letter to M.B.
* * * Setting our affection above is indeed the
first thing of importance; and yet how utterly beyond
our own power! We are so enslaved to sense and sight
till He, who alone is able, sets us "free indeed," that
things around us can take that disproportionate hold on
our hearts which makes work for the light of heaven to
reduce things to their proper proportion in our view. I
have thought often of the text, "Thy will be done on
earth as _it is in heaven_." Oh, how much that implies,
both of love and joyfulness to be aimed at in our service
of our heavenly Father _on earth_. How high a standard!
Can we hope ever to attain it? Surely we are to ask it,
not as a millennial glory for the world only, (if at all,)
but also as our own individual portion. It is more to be
lamented that we do not realize this than that we do not
realize Foster's idea of the world to come, in which we,
yes, we, our very selves, will be actually concerned.
But I believe the two deficiencies are more connected
than we are sometimes aware of; and perhaps the joys
of a happy death-bed, the foretaste of heaven, of which
we sometimes hear, are as much connected with the
completeness of religious devotedness, often not till then
attained, as with the nearness in point of _time_ to a world
of purity and joy. How striking is the earnestness
shown in John Fletcher's "Early Christian Experience,"
in seeking mastery over sin, not as "uncertainly," or as
"beating the air," but as one resolved to conquer in the
might of that faith which "_is_ the victory;" and how
wonderfully was his after-life an example of "doing the
Divine will as it is in heaven"!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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