Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great BritainCharlotte Elizabeth
Religion
Personal Recollections: Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great Britain
Charlotte Elizabeth
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Charlotte Elizabeth, 1790-1846
With unutterable joy in my heart, but great composure of manner, I rose,
and taking from a vase a bunch of dead flowers, inadvertently left
there, I cut them into small bits, laid them in a heap on the table, and
beside them my gold ring: then pointing to each, with the words "many-
one," I asked which he would rather have? He struck his hand suddenly to
his forehead, then clapped both hands, gave a jump as he sat, and with
the most rapturous expression of countenance intimated that the one
piece of gold was better than the room full of dead flowers With great
rapidity he applied the symbol, pointing to the picture, to the ring, to
himself, to me, and finally to heaven. In the last position he stood up
and paused for some time, and what a picture he would have made! A smile
perfectly angelic beaming on his face, his eyes sparkling and dancing
with delight, until, with a rush of tears that quite suffused them, he
gazed at me, then again raised them to the ceiling, his look softened
into an expression of deep awe and unbounded love, while he gently
spelled on his fingers, "Good ONE, good ONE!" and ended by asking me his
name.
"How sweet the name of Jesus sounds In a believer's ear!"
Jack was not to hear that name with his bodily ears until the voice of
the archangel and the trump of God should call him from sleeping in the
dust of the earth; but he received it into his mind, and the gospel, the
glorious, everlasting gospel, into his soul, and the Holy Spirit into
his heart, without the intervention of that sense. In that hour it was
given unto him to believe, and from that hour all things were his--the
world, life, death, and a bright immortality. Never but once before had
I laid my head on the pillow with such an overwhelming sense of perfect
happiness. The Lord had indeed shown me his glory, by causing his
goodness to pass before me.
Henceforth I had a Christian brother in my little dumb charge: his love
to Jesus Christ was fervent and full; his thoughts about him most
beautiful. By degrees, I gave him some knowledge of our Lord's mortal
birth, his infancy, work, death, resurrection, and ascension; together
with his coming to final judgment at the end of the world. * * *
Very great indeed was Jack's emotion when he discovered that the Saviour
in whom he was rejoicing was the object represented by the image he had
been taught to bow down before. He resented it deeply: I was quite
alarmed at the sudden and violent turn his feelings took against Popery.
* * * He spurned the whole system from him, as soon as the light of the
gospel fell upon its deformities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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