The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835Various
Religion
The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835
Various
Baptists -- Periodicals
About two years after this event, she left the neighbourhood of Reading,
to reside in the family of one of her daughters at Tottenham. By this
circumstance she was necessarily brought into new scenes both of
domestic and social life; and they served still further to elicit the
graces of her matured and now venerable character. For to the visitors,
of all ranks, she recommended the religion of the Bible; but with such
propriety, that she never gave offence; and most tenderly and intimately
did she participate in the diversified feelings of her grandchildren,
evincing her affection for them, by her earnest and ardently expressed
longing that Christ might be formed in their hearts, the hope of glory.
It was about this time, that the writer of this brief tribute to her
memory had the happiness to form her acquaintance; and he well remembers
the impression of respectful admiration which that first interview
produced on his mind. She was now "well stricken in years." Time had
mellowed the naturally sweet expression of her countenance, without much
impairing its vivacity. Her silvery locks shaded a brow imprinted with
the wrinkles of age, but intelligent and serene. Her eyes were yet
bright, and glanced upon her friends with benevolent complacency. Her
form was unbending and about the middle stature; her manners dignified,
yet free; her conversation cheerful, affectionate, and eminently
spiritual; her memory richly replenished with the word of God, and with
hymns, which she recited with much emphasis and appropriate application;
and her whole appearance and deportment that of a venerable Christian
lady.
Some time before this period she had become very deaf; but though she
felt it to be a great trial, it made scarcely any perceptible abatement
of her cheerfulness; nor did she allow it to prevent her attendance upon
the house of God. In proportion as she was shut out from the pleasures
of conversation, she seemed to find an increasing delight in secret
devotion. "Let us call those our golden hours," she says in a letter
to a friend, "that are spent with God. May we be found much in that
excellent duty of self-examination." And at a subsequent date she writes
in her diary, "My hearing is in some measure restored; of which I can
give no account from natural causes or medicinal art. O Lord, my healer,
thou canst do every thing. O the riches of immortal grace! If I outlive
my senses, I cannot outlive my graces. O how beautiful, how honourable,
how durable! I earnestly plead with God for his church and ministers, in
faith and hope, for what I am not likely to live to see. Dear Lord, let
me depart and join the holy society above. Amen!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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