Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
The restoration of her health was hailed by my father as the greatest
blessing that Divine Providence could have bestowed upon him and his
family; and we were all made to join him in audibly offering up our
nightly prayers and grateful acknowledgments to the allwise and beneficent
Creator, for this to us the greatest of earthly blessings. My father was
enraptured, and a hundred times a day, while he burst forth into sincere
and extatic praise and adoration of the goodness of the Divine Being, he
would enjoin us, his children, never to forget his mercy and loving
kindness, in restoring his dear Elizabeth to health. He also called in his
friends again, to partake of his hospitable and festive board. In fact, he
would sometimes exclaim, to my mother, that he was almost too happy for a
mortal, in this vale of misery and probation. My amiable mother used
gently to chide him, and to tell him that the best way to manifest their
gratitude to Divine Providence, for the happiness which it bestowed, was
never to let a day pass over their heads without doing some good act to
prove their willingness to deserve it. She would add, with her eye beaming
a heavenly smile, "as our blessed Saviour has bestowed every earthly
comfort upon us, let it be part of our duty and our pleasure to dispense
happiness among our poorer and less fortunate neighbours; for recollect,
my dear, 'that all our doings without charity are nothing worth.'"
My mother had not yet been able personally to perform any of her
accustomed charitable visits since her lying in; for she was too strict an
observer of her religious duties, to go from home till she had gone to the
parish church, and publicly offered up her prayers and thanksgivings to
her blessed Creator and Saviour. The following Sunday was fixed upon as
the day for this religious ceremony. My father expostulated; saying that
the church was damp, and that she had better defer it till the next
Sunday, and, in the mean time, take some gentle walks abroad, to enure
herself by degrees to bear the walk and the fatigue of remaining in the
church during the length of the service. He expressed his great dread of
her catching cold, and having a relapse in consequence; but she firmly
replied, that she never feared any evil when she was performing a sacred
religious duty; that God was too wise and too good to permit one of his
creatures to suffer, when in the act of obeying his commands; and she
urged so many pious reasons to shew the necessity of her not delaying to
perform what she termed her indispensable duty, that my father silently,
but very reluctantly, submitted to her decision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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