[4] The Right Rev. John Johns, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia, was a man of apostolic simplicity and zeal, and universally beloved. An almost ideal friendship existed between him and Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton. Dear, blessed, old John, Dr. H. called him when he was seventy-nine years old. See Life of Dr. Hodge, pp. 564-569. Bishop Johns died in 1876.
[5] Das Blümlein Wunderschön. Lied des gefangenen Grafen, is the title of the poem. Goethe's Samtliche Werke. Vol. I., p. 151.
[6] See appendix A, p. 533.
[7] The horrible operation is over, Heaven be praised! It was far more horrible than we had anticipated. They were an hour and a quarter, before all was done. I was very brave at first and wouldn't leave the room, but I found myself so faint that I feared falling and had to go. Lizzy behaved like a heroine indeed, so that even the doctors admired her fortitude. She never spoke, but was deadly faint, so that they were obliged to lay her down that the dreadful wound might bleed; then there was an artery to be taken up and tied; then six stitches to be taken with a great big needle. Most providentially dear Julia Willis came in about ten minutes before the doctors and though she was greatly distressed, she never faints, and staid till Lizzy was laid in bed…. She was just like a marble statue, but even more beautiful, while the blood stained her shoulders and bosom. You couldn't have looked on such suffering without fainting, man that you are.—From a letter of Mrs. Payson, dated Boston, Sept. 2, 1844.
[8] Her friend, Miss Prentiss, had been married, in the previous autumn, to the Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns, of Newburyport.
[9] "Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Intérieure" is the full title of the famous little work first named. It appeared in January, 1697. If measured by the storm it raised in France and at Rome, or by the attention it attracted throughout Europe, its publication may be said to have been one of the most important theological events of that day. The eloquence of Bossuet and the power of Louis XIV. were together exerted to the utmost in order to brand its illustrious author as a heretical Quietist; and, through their almost frantic efforts, it was at last condemned in a papal brief. But, for all that, the little work is full of the noblest Christian sentiments. It pushes the doctrine of pure love, perhaps, to a perilous extreme, but still an extreme that leans to the side of the highest virtue. After its condemnation the Pope, Innocent XII., wrote to the French prelates, who had been most prominent in denouncing Fenelon: Peccavit excessu amoris divini, sed vos peccastis defectu amoris proximi—i.e., "He has erred by too much love of God, but ye have erred by too little love of your neighbor."
CHAPTER IV.
THE YOUNG WIFE AND MOTHER.
1845-1850.