A Memorial of Mrs. Margaret Breckinridge

by John Breckinridge; Samuel Miller

HER LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH.

Her last sickness was of a protracted and very interesting character. When she returned from New York, she was delicate and her state of health was mysterious, but not yet alarming even to her physicians. Very soon after this, she had a violent attack, which in a short season prostrated her frame, and, disclosing a peculiar complication of diseases, overwhelmed every mind in the family, but her own, (she was calm,) with the most gloomy apprehensions of her danger.

At the close of the winter term of the Theological Seminary, (May first,) it was our anxious desire to take her to the Red Sulphur Springs in Virginia. But it was too early in the season; and being yet doubtful, whether this or that place would be useful or hurtful, it was agreed by her physicians to indulge her strongly expressed wish to try the waters of Saratoga. Thither therefore we went, pausing only a short time in the city of New York for medical consultation.

At this time, she was a most interesting object to all who saw her. Her debility was so extreme that she was borne from place to place in the arms of her husband, which, from her delicate frame, it was easy to do. The gentleness and patience with which she endured her sickness, the inimitable moral beauty of her countenance, and the general expression of frailty mingled with grace, excited the deepest interest wherever she passed.[5]

At Saratoga we spent a very quiet season of three weeks, (before the great hotels were opened, or the crowds had arrived) at the house of a most kind and deserving Christian woman, Mrs. Taylor, whose unceasing attentions greatly conduced to soothe sufferings which God had pleased should not be arrested. During this visit she used the waters freely, as a beverage, and in the bath, with no apparent injury, except that it evidently disclosed the fatal symptoms of her malady. She was able almost every day, to take gentle rides in the open air, and frequently to mingle with the family. But her chamber was her sanctuary. There she reclined, feeding on the Word of God. She was especially delighted with Clarke on the Promises. During that season of seclusion, she seemed to grow in grace with a progress which surprised (while it delighted) us; for we knew not then how near she was to the perfection of the heavenly rest. But it has since been interpreted to us, by the event, as one of God's peculiar mercies. What made this the more pleasing evidence of grace was, that she did not know her own danger. It was the power of religion poured upon her spirit by Him who was "hastening to make her up among his jewels." At one time, she said—"Oh, yes, pray that the distance between God and me may be taken away." And after uniting, with the most affecting solemnity and tenderness in the prayer which was offered, she at its close expressed aloud her joy in the exercise, (a thing most unusual with her) and her delight in God her Saviour, who draweth nigh. On another occasion, after hearing some of the promises of healing to the body, as collected by Clarke, she seemed for a moment to be musing, she then gently said: "My dear——I am like the poor woman who had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any; but rather grew worse. My hope is in the Great Physician!"

Since we have been calm enough to review the various stages of her last sickness in relation to her religious exercises, it has been a subject of deep regret, and of no little self-reproach, that we had not made the attempt at recording, as they were uttered, some of the deeply affecting expressions of her Christian principles and feelings. But the tumultuous hour of hope and fear, and hurried, anxious watching at the bed of death, is not the time for cool calculation. Some of the most affecting parts of such scenes are incapable of being written down, even by one not interested in the sufferer. Nay, more—like the voices which John heard from heaven in Patmos, the Spirit seems to say of them, "write them not." These are "joys with which the stranger intermeddleth not." (Prov. xiv. 10.) It is a sanctuary which no creature can enter. And then our beloved Friend, who was often afraid to whisper her religious joys to her Saviour, lest she should be found offering "strange fire" on his altar, seldom talked of her hopes, (though often of her sins,) to her nearest friends; and never, by writing them down, put it in the power of posthumous publications to expose them to the view of others. We can only, therefore, illustrate her religious character, at the stage which we now approach, by broken fragments of thoughts and feelings, caught from her lips amidst the awful mercies of a dying hour.

She began at length, visibly to sink, when Dr. Freeman, of Balston, whose skilful and kind attentions she enjoyed, (Dr. Steel, of Saratoga, having himself been recently removed by death,) strongly advised a discontinuance of the use of the waters, and an attempt to reach the Red Sulphur Springs. For now the prevailing type of the disease had become distinctly pulmonary; and the skill of physicians, and the healing waters, and all the help of man were vain. Now, for the first time, we began to discern the dread reality of her approaching dissolution; and had some foretaste of the first anguish of such a loss.[6]

With heavy hearts, but hastened steps, we returned to Princeton; whence almost in despair, yet anxious to try any and all means for so great an end, we hastily set out with our meek sufferer for the Virginia Springs: but as the previous narrative has recited, we were arrested at Philadelphia. Here all was done by the assiduity and skill of her physicians,[7] and the most tender and constant attentions of a great number of friends. But her divine Redeemer claimed her for himself. She returned to Princeton, to bless her household, and to die. On the evening of June the 13th, she reached her children, and her earthly home. On the morning of the 16th, a quarter before ten o'clock, with her reason unclouded, in a frame of calm and holy triumph which marked the dawning of heaven on her soul; with a meek prayer for permission to die, and with but a single pang, she bade the world farewell, and ascended to God!

Her remains were attended to the grave by a very large and deeply affected assembly, after the delivery of the impressive funeral discourse affixed to this Memoir; where they rest by the side of her three little children, two daughters and a son, removed by death before. The like number and of the same sex, two daughters and a son, are left to the surviving parent, to mourn her loss, to treasure and imitate her example, and, by the grace of the Saviour, to follow them to the skies, where the "house now left desolate unto them" shall be restored with added bliss; and the little family thus divided in the midst of life, being reunited in pure and perfect love, be received into everlasting habitations.