26 LITTLE ANN. [26 neral, naming the young- people she wished to carry her corpse, and those she should like to attend the ceremony as pall-bearers. All this was done with as much composure as any person would have made arrangements for a journey, or any common event of life. For many months past her mind had been impressed with the conviction that she should not long continue to be an inhabitant of this lower world. And anxious, if possible, when dead, to benefit her surviving relations, and to proclaim to the world her love to, and confidence in, Christ, she wished to be buried in such a spot, as that her relations might, every time they went to and from church, behold her resting-place, and be reminded of their own approaching end. From the same pious motive of benefitting survivors, she wished that a monumental inscription, expressive of her faith, and of the desires and feelings of her mind, might be placed over her mouldering dust, to admonish and encourage others to seek the Lord for themselves. With this view she finally chose the following lines for her epitaph : While thou, my Jesus, still art nigh, Cheerful I live, and joyful die; Secure, wiien mortal comforts flee, To find ten thousand worlds in thee. This done, she told those about her, “ that her time was drawing near—that she should soon be gone, but. that she had no fear of dying'.” And when any one expressed a hope of her recovery, she always checked them by saying, “ I do not wish to live.” All the foregoing part of her life and Christian experience had passed unobserved and unknown to any except the members of her own family, and the other inmates of the house. Like the choice lily which puts forth its tender leaves, and disp’ays its growing beauties in some secluded vale, casting forth, indeed, its fragrance a little way on every side, but still doomed
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=