no chemist ever watched his crucible with greater care, when he expected the production of the philosopher’s stone, than I watched her in all the various turns of her distemper, which at last grew utterly hopeless, and then no language can express the agony into which it threw me.  One remarkable circumstance I cannot but recollect:  in praying most affectionately, perhaps too earnestly, for her life, these words came into my mind with great power, “Speak no more to me of this matter.”  I was unwilling to take them, and went into the chamber to see my dear lamb, when, instead of receiving me with her usual tenderness, she looked upon me with a stern air, and said, with a very remarkable determination of voice, “I have no more to say to you;” and I think that from that time, although she lived at least ten days, she seldom looked upon me with pleasure, or cared to suffer me to come near her.  But that I might feel all the bitterness of the affliction, Providence so ordered it, that I came in when her sharpest agonies were upon her, and those words, “O dear, O dear, what shall I do?” rung in my ears for succeeding hours and days.  But God delivered her,—­and she, without any violent pang in the article of her dissolution, quietly and sweetly fell asleep, as I hope, in Jesus, about ten at night, I being then at Maidwell.  When I came home my mind was under a dark cloud relating to the eternal state; but God was pleased graciously to remove it, and gave me comfortable hopes, after having felt the most heart-rending sorrow.  My dear wife bore the affliction in the most glorious manner, and discovered more wisdom, and piety, and steadiness of temper in a few days, than I had ever in six years an opportunity of observing before.  O my soul, God has blasted thy gourd; thy greatest earthly delight is gone:  seek it in heaven, where I hope this dear babe is; where I am sure that my Saviour is; and where I trust, through grace, notwithstanding all this irregularity of temper and of heart, that I shall shortly be.

Sunday, October 3, 1736

FURTHER REFLECTIONS AFTER THE FUNERAL OF MY DEAR BETSEY.

I have now been laying the delight of my eyes in the dust, and it is for ever hidden from them.  My heart was too full to weep much.  We had a suitable sermon from these words:  “Doest thou well to be angry?” Jonah iv. 9; because of the gourd.  I hope God knows that I am not angry; but sorrowful he surely allows me to be.  I could have wished that more had been said concerning the hope we may have of our child; and it was a great disappointment to me that nothing of that kind should have been said by one that loved her so well as my brother Hunt did.  Yet, I bless God, I have my hopes that she is lodged in the arms of Christ.  And there was an occurrence that I took much notice of; I was most earnestly praying that God would be pleased to give me some further encouragement on this head, by letting some new light, or by directing