The Power of Faith: Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham.Graham, Isabella
Religion
The Power of Faith: Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham.
Graham, Isabella
Christian biography; Graham, Isabella, 1742-1814
"O my God, what is my life, what is my happiness but a continual
receiving? Thou art 'the bread of life' that must keep alive the
living principle in my soul. In thee 'dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.' Thy people are complete in thee; thou art their head,
they are thy body, and by joints and bands have nourishment ministered
to them, and are knit together, and increase with the increase of God.
"This, O this is what my soul pants after, closer and more
intimate union and communion. I would be transformed into thine image;
I would be thy temple; I would have thee live in me, walk in me, make
me one with thee; I would be delivered from self-will, self-wisdom,
self-seeking; I would be delivered from that philosophy and vain
deceit which spoils souls and leads them off from their head: then,
and not till then, shall I cease to wander, shall 'run and not be
weary, walk and not faint.' Then shall 'I run in the way of thy
commandments,' and no longer turn aside to crooked ways. Then shall I
eat and drink, work and recreate, all to thy glory. Lord, send thy
Spirit into my heart, that he may continually take of the things of
Christ and show them unto me; that I may grow and be no longer a babe,
but arrive at the fulness of stature in Christ Jesus, and more
steadily, and more purely, and more zealously, and O, more humbly live
to God, and glorify him in the world. Amen."
The following extracts of letters to her friend Mrs. Walker, show
how ardently the true missionary spirit burned in the heart of Mrs.
Graham, and how efficiently it was exemplified, not only in her
pecuniary donations, but her active and self-denying efforts to
diffuse information and enlist others in so worthy a cause. The
efforts alluded to in the first extract evidently gave rise to the
event recorded in the second, _the formation of the first Missionary
Society in New York._ It is delightful also to notice her
attachment to Christians of other denominations, and the gratitude
with which she remembered kindness received by herself when Providence
had cast her lot on what was truly missionary ground.
"Do you remember how much I used to say about our dear Methodist
Society in Antigua? and the three holy, harmless, zealous Moravian
brethren? and how the preachers gave each other the right hand of
fellowship, forgetting their differences, in that land of open
hostilities, on the kingdom of their common Lord? Thither the Lord
brought me from a land of entire barrenness, where, as far as I know,
a gospel sermon was never preached. Here I was brought into great
affliction, and to pass through the severest trial that I ever
experienced before or since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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