“The European letter,” he wrote to Mr. Brown, “contained the intelligence of the death of my eldest sister. A few lines received from herself about three weeks ago, gave me some melancholy forebodings of her danger. But though the Lord thus compassionately prepared me for this affliction, I hardly knew how to bear it. We were more united in affection to each other, than to any of our relations: and now she is gone, I am left to fulfil, as a hireling, my day, and then I shall follow her. She had been many years under some conviction of her sins, but not till her last illness had she sought in earnest for salvation. Some weeks before her death she felt the burden of sin, and cried earnestly for pardon and deliverance, and continued in the diligent use of the appointed means of grace. Two days before her death, when no immediate danger was apprehended, my youngest sister visited her; and was surprised and delighted at the change which had taken place. Her convictions of sin were deep, and her views clear; her only fear was on account of her own unworthiness. She asked, with many tears, whether there was mercy for one who had been so great a sinner; though in the eyes of the world she had been an exemplary wife and mother; and said that she believed the Lord would have mercy upon her, because she knew he had wrought on her mind by His Spirit. Two days after this conversation, she suddenly and unexpectedly left this world of woe, while her sister was visiting a dying friend at a distance. This, you will tell me, is precious consolation; indeed I am constrained to acknowledge that I could hardly ask for greater; for I had already parted with her for ever in this life; and, in parting, all I wished for was, to hear of her being converted to God, and, if it was his will, taken away in due time, from the evil to come, and brought to glory before me. Yet human nature bleeds; her departure has left this world a frightful blank to me; and I feel not the smallest wish to live, except there be some work assigned for me to do in the church of God.” And sometime afterwards he wrote, “My heart is still oppressed, but it is not ‘a sorrow that worketh death.’ Though nature weeps at being deprived of all hopes of ever seeing this dear companion on earth, faith is thereby brought the more into exercise. How sweet to feel dead to all below; to live only for eternity; to forget the short interval that lies between us and the spiritual world; and to live always _seriously_. The _seriousness_ which this sorrow produces, is indescribably precious; O that I could always retain it, when these impressions shall be worn away!”