strength, make such interference with our comfort, prevented her from
joining in any religious exercises, because she would then be liable to
the excitement of feelings which, in the way just intimated, would have
injured her. With such affections of the bronchial passages, efforts of
mind which are not spontaneous are sometimes agony. Connected endeavors
to follow conversation and prayer were impossible, and she told me, on
saying this, that she took great comfort from a remark, in a book,
addressed to a sick person--"Do not think, but pray." She prayed much
herself; her thoughts, too, were prayers, in certain cases. Now, in that
weakened condition, what could she have done, and what would have been
her father's feelings, had she not, in health and strength, arrived at
such a state of religious knowledge and experience as to remove anxiety
for her spiritual welfare, and to make us feel that she had Christ in
her, the hope of glory? When the cry was made, "Behold, the bridegroom
cometh," she arose and trimmed her lamp, and had oil in her vessel with
her lamp. Wealth could not purchase the relief and satisfaction which
this gave to her friends;--so truly is religion called the "pearl of
great price;" so literally true are the Saviour's words, "But one thing
is needful." It is the greatest blessing which a young person can bestow
on Christian parents, to be a Christian; and what its value is to
surviving parents, ask those who sorrow as they that have no hope. When
a young Christian comes to die, he testifies that he lost nothing, but
gained every thing, with eternal life, by being a Christian in his early
years. I can imagine what this child would say to one and another of her
young friends who may read these pages, and how she would seek to
persuade them, as the first great duty of their existence, and for their
best good here, and for their everlasting peace, to choose the good
part, which will never be taken away from them.

Her funeral was a scene from which many went away rejoicing in God; and