Saviour.  This haunted me constantly and made me fly first to one thing and then another, in the hope of finding somewhere the peace which I would not accept from Him.  It was at this time that I kept reading over the first twelve chapters of Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress,”—­the rest of the book I abhorred.  So great was my agony that I can only wonder at the goodness of Him who held my life in His hands, and would not permit me in the height of my despair to throw myself away.

It was in this height of despair that thoughts of the infinite grace and love of Christ, which she says she had hitherto repelled, began to irradiate her soul.  A sermon on His ability to save “unto the uttermost” deeply affected her. [2] “While listening to it my weary spirit rested itself, and I thought, ’surely it can not be wrong to think of the Saviour, although He is not mine.’  With this conclusion I gave myself up to admire, to love and to praise Him, to wonder why I had never done so before, and to hope that all the great congregation around me were joining with me in acknowledging Him to be chief among ten thousand and the One altogether lovely.”  On going home she could at first scarcely believe in her own identity, the feeling of peace and love to God and to all the world was so unlike the turbulent emotions that had long agitated her soul.  “From this time my mind went slowly onward, examining the way step by step, trembling and afraid, yet filled with a calm contentment which made all the dealings of God with me appear just right.  I know myself to be perfectly helpless.  I can not promise to do or to be anything; but I do want to put everything else aside, and to devote myself entirely to the service of Christ.”

Her account of this memorable experience is dated August 28, 1840.  “While writing it,” she adds, “I have often laid aside my pen, to sit and think over in silent wonder the way in which the Lord has led me.”

How in later years she regarded certain features of this experience, is not fully known.  The record passed at once out of her hands, and until after her death was never seen by anyone, excepting the friend for whose eye it was written.  Many of its details had, probably, faded entirely from her memory.  It can not be doubted, however, that she would have judged her previous state much less severely, would hardly have charged it with hypocrisy, or denied that the Saviour had been graciously leading her, and that she had some real love to Him, before as well as after this crisis.  So much may be inferred from the record itself and from the narrative in the preceding chapter.  Her tender interest in the spiritual welfare of her friends and pupils, the high tone of religious sentiment that marks her early writings, the books she delighted in, her filial devotion, the absolute sincerity of her character, all forbid any other conclusion. [3] The indications, too, are very plain that her morbidly-sensitive, melancholy temperament