her death.)

249. "I believe, and nothing shall ever persuade me differently,
that no doctor, no man, no accident, can either give life to man
or take it away; it rests with God alone. Those are only the
instruments which He generally uses, though not always; we see
men sink down and fall over dead. When the time is come no
remedies can avail,--they accelerate death rather than retard
it....I do not say, therefore, that my mother will and must die,
that all hope is gone; she may recover and again be well and
sound,--but only if it is God's will."

(Paris, July 3, 1778, to his father, from whom he is concealing
the fact that his mother is dead. He is seeking to prepare him
for the intelligence which he has already commissioned Bullinger
to convey to the family.)

250. "Under those melancholy circumstances I comforted myself
with three things, viz.: my complete and trustful submission to
the will of God, then the realization of her easy and beautiful
death, combined with the thought of the happiness which was to
come to her in a moment,--how much happier she now is than we, so
that we might even have wished to make the journey with her. Out
of this wish and desire there was developed my third comfort,
namely, that she is not lost to us forever, that we shall see her
again, that we shall be together more joyous and happy than ever
we were in this world. It is only the time that is unknown, and
that fact does not frighten me. When it is God's will, it shall
be mine. Only the divine, the most sacred will be done; let us
then pray a devout 'Our Father' for her soul and proceed to other