Her last days were spent almost entirely in prayer, invoking blessings
on those around her and on the village work which lay so near her heart.
She said to a friend during her last illness, "To go to heaven, think
what _that_ is! to go to my Saviour who died that I might live! Lord,
humble me, subdue every evil temper in me. May we meet in a robe of
glory! Through Christ's merits alone can we be saved... Lord, I
believe--I _do_ believe with all the powers of my weak, sinful heart.
Lord Jesus, look down upon me from Thy holy habitation; strengthen my
faith, and quicken me in my preparation. Support me in that trying hour
when I most need it! It is a glorious thing to die!" No vanity or
self-praise on the ground of her life's labours ever found a place in
her thoughts. Some one began to speak of her good deeds. "Talk not so
vainly," she exclaimed; "I utterly cast them from me, and fall low at
the foot of the cross." She sank gradually, and without pain, and on
September 7, 1833, quietly passed away.
There are few thoughtful students who will hesitate to rank Hannah More
with the leading religious and educational reformers of the eighteenth
century. In essential matters she was a kindred spirit with Whitfield,
Wesley, Raikes, and others, and worked, in the way marked out for her by
God, for the regeneration of her country.
With regard to her books, she believed they would be little read after
her death. To a considerable extent her judgment has been verified. Her
writings were a continual seed-sowing, which later workers fertilised,
and brought to maturity.
They were republished in eleven volumes in 1830. Besides the prominence
given to their religious or moral purpose, most of them are remarkable
for sustained fervour, persuasiveness of tone, and practical common
sense. We give a few extracts from some of the principal works, to
illustrate Hannah More's methods of appealing to the conscience and
awakening spiritual concern.
"There are two things of which a wise man will be scrupulously
careful--his conscience and his credit. Happily, they are almost
inseparable concomitants; they are commonly kept or lost together; the
same things which wound the one usually giving a blow to the other; yet
it must be confessed, that conscience and a mere worldly credit are not,
in all instances, allowed to subsist together....
"Between a wounded conscience and a wounded credit, there is the same
difference as between a crime and a calamity. Of two inevitable evils,
religion instructs us to submit to that which is inferior and
involuntary. As much as reputation exceeds every worldly good, so much,
and far more, is conscience to be consulted before credit--if credit
that can be called, which is derived from the acclamations of a mob,
whether composed of 'the great vulgar or the small'"--_Christian Morals_
(chapter xxiv.).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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