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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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