In the months that followed her father’s death, Mrs. Opie, though suffering deeply, was sustained by her faith in the promises of Him whose voice she had heard and obeyed, and for whose service she had renounced the approval and the pleasures of the world. In the kindness and sympathy of her friends she found comfort, and thankfully acknowledged that there is “good in friendship, and delight in holy love,” and, in her turn, she sought to “bind up the heart that was broken,” and to minister to the consolation of others—one of the surest and best means of obtaining relief under the pressure of sorrow. It is impossible to read her journals and letters of this time, without recognizing in them a depth of piety, that could only spring from a Divine source. Her tender compassion for the afflicted, and her labours of love, in visiting the sick, the prisoner, and the necessitous, remind one of Horace Walpole’s words to Hannah More, “Your heart is always aching for others, and your head for yourself.”
The following letter is almost the only record of the year that followed Dr. Alderson’s death; it was addressed to a lady to whom she was much attached, and who afterwards came to live in Norwich. When she died, Mrs. Opie’s letters to her were returned, and some of them will be found occasionally in these pages.
Norwich, 3rd mo., 26th, 1826.
My beloved Friend,
* * * I had thought that I could never feel anything again, but thy news really affected me! I am, I own, uneasy at the idea of thy suffering; but thy present sweet, spiritual, and submitted state of mind, will, I doubt not, strew thy path with those unfading flowers, which, blown here, will blossom to all eternity, and sooth and cheer thy passage to the tomb.
For a year at least, my place of abode must be unfixed; it may be London; in that case, I should be near thee: but when we meet we will speculate on the earthly future, which is equally uncertain to us both.
What a mercy it is, dear friend, that thou wast enabled, through faith, to bear thy apparent sentence, so abruptly pronounced. In nothing are the Lord’s dealings with us so wonderful and gracious, as when he enables us to bear trials, which we should once have expected to shrink from and to sink under. How I have been permitted to experience this!
My health is quite restored, my recent journey having, I trust, been beneficial. On my way home I was alone from Scole to Norwich, with a young man apparently dying of decline, and I felt it a duty to talk on serious subjects; and found him, I trust, teachable, and I promised to send him J. J. Gurney’s Letters and others. He was so delighted! but, poor thing, he was full of hopes of recovery. I have been tolerably tranquil for some days; and to-day I visited my dear father’s grave! he hoped I would sometimes do so! I felt peace both for him and myself, while I looked on it, and looked forward with cheerfulness to sleeping beside him! H. Girdlestone comforted me much, the other day, by reminding me how often in mercy the child was summoned away soon after the parent! The idea brought closer the prospects of eternity, and the necessity, therefore, of preparation, as more urgent, that the day’s work may be done in the day. May my attention be fixed on present duty, that my remaining time may be usefully and well spent, and that I may be ready when the summons shall come to call me hence.
J. J. Gurney is on a long and distant journey; when he returns, and when we meet, which may not be for two months, if I can say ought to him for thee, command me.
Farewell, write soon, thine affectionately,