Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the GospelYeardley, John
Religion
Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel
Yeardley, John
Clergy -- United States -- Biography; Quakers -- Biography; Yeardley, John, 1786-1858
They remained at Basle until the 1st of the Tenth Month, and then returned
by way of Berne to Neufchatel. At Berne a sudden diversion was given to
the current of their thoughts by the intelligence of the death of Thomas
Yeardley. J.Y. has left a memorandum of the occurrence, and of the
singular foreshadowing of it upon his own mind which took place at Zurich.
10 _mo_. 2. _Berne_.--We found many letters from England waiting
for us here, one of which, from my nephew John Yeardley, brought the
sorrowful intelligence of the sudden and unexpected removal of my
dearly-beloved brother Thomas, of Ecclesfield Mill. This took place on the
6th of the Ninth Month, about 20 minutes past 2, without sigh or groan,
even as a lamb. These are the expressions of J.Y.; he adds several sweet
expressions of my precious brother's, which show that the solemn change to
him was a joyful one: and I do believe his tribulated spirit is now at
rest. On recurring to the 6th ultimo to see where we were, and what were
the contemplations of my mind, I find we were at Zurich. That morning the
following lines which I heard when a child, and had not repeated for the
last twenty years, came forcibly into my mind:--
It's almost done, it's almost o'er,
We're joining them that are gone before;
We soon shall meet upon that shore
Where we shall meet to part no more.
I not only repeated them to myself the whole of the day, but even sung
them aloud so often that my dear M.Y. said to me, "Whatever can be the
meaning that thou so often repeats these lines?" I replied, "I do not know
that I have repeated them for the last twenty years, but to-day they are
continually with me." This can have been nothing but the spirit of
sympathy with the soul of my dear departing brother, for the awful
impression of sorrow and solemnity in my mind on that day will never be
forgotten; I mourned with the bereaved family without knowing it. My M.Y.
had opened her portfolio to begin a letter to our sister Rachel, and I
wrote the verse on a piece of loose paper, and she slipped it into her
papers, and said to herself, Surely these lines are not prophetic of
something that is going to happen? Last evening she banded me out of her
portfolio the piece of paper containing the lines.
At Berne they received also the tidings that "the excellent" M.A. Calame
was no more; the Christian mother of 250 orphan children was taken from
the scene of her labors and the conflicts of time to the heavenly rest in
her Saviour. The following appear to be among the last words which she
wrote; they were no doubt addressed to her faithful companion Zimmerlin:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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