I would ask; I am not permitted.' At length I asked, 'My dear, do you not visit me sometimes?' He answered, 'Many times a day.' 'But,' said I, 'do not principalities and powers strive to hinder you from communing with me?' He said, 'There is something in that.' And does their opposition cause you to suffer in coming to plied, 'There is not much in that.' every material thing that occurs to 'And may I always know that thou art near me, when I am in trouble, or pain, or danger?' He paused, and said faintly, ' Why, yes;' then added,

He re

me?'
'Do you know

me?' 'Yes.'

but it is well for thee not to know it, for thy reliance must not be upon me.' He mentioned also some in glory who remembered me and said, 'Mr Hey is with us also; he bade me tell thee so; and by that thou mayest know it is I who speak to thee.' Mr Hey died a short time before, very happy in the Lord.”

Old age came upon Mrs Fletcher with a complication of bodily diseases, among which were dropsy and cancer. Speaking of this, she says: I "discern the near approach of dissolution, and am daily made sensible of decay. But these symptoms give me no dreary prospect. The will of God is my choice, in whatsoever way it manifests itself. I feel a bleeding wound from the loss of that dearest and best of men. But I am conscious he is not dead! 'He that believeth in Jesus shall never die.' The will of God is so dear to me, I rejoice that it is done; though against my tenderest feelings.

"I have communion with my dearest love before the throne. He waits for me he beckons me away. I want to be a meet partaker with my dear, dear, holy husband, now in light. I want to feel a fuller degree of the spirit in which he lives. O, Lord, thou knowest our union was far more in the spirit than in the flesh; thou hast said, 'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.' Are we not still one?"

Again she writes: "This has been a solemn day. Eight years ago I was, at this hour, waiting by his bedside, with my eyes fixed on his dear, calm, peaceful, dying countenance. I have this day gone through the scene; but glory be to God, in a different manner than when we seemed on the point of separation. This day it has been constantly on my mind as if we thought and did all together. Yes, thou dear spirit, well didst thou say to me in a dream, 'I am not dead — I live.' Yes, thou dost live; and I have no doubt hast helped me this day to feel an uncommon peace, such as I sometimes have felt when dreaming, having in a peculiar manner a sense of the presence of heavenly spirits. There are seasons when the mind, joining itself to the Lord, feels a kind of anticipation of the blissful union enjoyed in the realms of light, and has communion, more or less sensible, with the spirits before the throne. Some faint touches of this I have felt this day."

A long time after, on the anniversary of her wedding, she thus continues her journal: "How

different was my state this day fourteen years, when I first became a wife! How tossed was my mind with a thousand fears, not yet fully knowing' the angel of the church,' to whom I was joined; and also encumbered with various temporal difficulties. But now there is not one clog left. My dear love's blessing does rest upon me. The husband of the church is indeed my husband; and mercy with overflowing goodness follow me all the day long. When Sally or myself, visited the poor, and beheld great straits, we have sometimes been constrained to withhold help, because my calculation would not allow it, though I had cut off what expense I could, according to my best. light. This I laid before the Lord, and felt thoroughly content either to help or not. In a few days I received a letter from my brother with a proposal so to dispose of a part of my money, as was likely to raise me several additional pounds this year. A person also called and promised the payment of five guineas, which I had quite given up for lost. In a variety of little incidents, I have discerned such a guiding hand of Providence, as hourly confirms the truth of that word, 'The hairs of your head are all numbered."

The infirmities of age and disease crowded fast upon this venerable Christian. Her zeal and benevolence continued unabated, but the suffering body could no longer obey the dictates of the puri

*A faithful and valued domestic.

fied spirit. She complains that she could "not see to write half what she felt in her heart." Through her whole life, her kindness to the afflicted and the destitute knew no bounds; she wanted to relieve all the misery there was in creation. Her book of expenses gave a striking proof how little she required for herself, and how entirely she lived for others. The yearly sum she expended upon her own person never amounted to five pounds; while her annual expenditure for the poor was never less than one hundred and eighty pounds. She was accustomed to say, " It is not important what we have, but how we use it."

The same simplicity of heart, and consequent clearness of faith, continued to the last. She says, "I have given my hand to God, as a child to its mother, and he leads me hour by hour."

The last mention she makes of her husband is as follows: "I feel death very near. My body is full of infirmities; yet I am able to creep through each day, and to work a little in my Lord's vineyard. This day, September twelfth, I am seventysix years old, and the same day my dear husband would have been eightysix. It is nearly thirty four years since our blessed union. It seems but yesterday; and he is as near and dear as ever. Surely we shall remember the scenes we have had together. Oh, my God and Father, enable me to walk in thy presence! Give me power to cleave to thee every moment I feel the powers of darkness are vehemently striving to distract and hinder me.

My soul doth wait, and long to fly to the bosom of my God."

Three months after she wrote this, she "slept in Jesus." She died, in peace and joy, on the ninth of December, 1815, and her spirit joined her husband in that world, where all that is pure in human affection, becomes the immortal love of angels, and shares the eternity of God.