"How long, dear Caroline, have you loved the Saviour?"
With a deep sigh, and a look of profound sorrow, she replied, "Only a few months. Oh, what a hard heart mine has been!—to turn for so long a time from a loving Saviour."
"Can you, without exerting yourself too much, tell me about the change in your feelings?"
"Hasn't the Doctor told you?"
"No, he said perhaps you would do so."
She closed her eyes for a moment, and then gave me the following account. "I lived a life of gayety and pleasure. The world looked bright; not only the things of nature, to which you referred, but gay people, fashion and pleasure in every form. I suppose it will do no harm for me to say now, that I was praised for my personal beauty, and for my graceful manner. But I forgot that "we all do fade as a leaf." Yes, I forgot it, though I had lost two sisters, since my remembrance.
"In the unwearied pursuit of worldly enjoyment, all other things faded from my mind. Yet there were times when conscience sounded an alarm, and the thought that perhaps I too should be cut off, as my sisters had been, in the morning of life, made the blood stagnate in my veins, and my heart cease to beat.
"I was a regular attendant at church, and one of the prominent members of the choir. But I never listened to the sermons. I studiously avoided hearing them; especially when they treated of death, the judgment, and eternity. I have often sat in church, very devout in the eyes of those about me, but engaged in making all my plans for the coming week; and then quieted myself with the thought that I had not sinned half so much, as if I had heard the sermon, and not profited by it. I was often praised for my regular attendance. Alas! He who looks into the heart knows I went to the sanctuary far more to exhibit myself, to hear people say of me, 'how handsome! what a fine voice!' than to worship my Maker, who had bestowed these gifts upon me.
"About a year since, I took a violent cold upon my lungs. I had previously felt languid and unwell, but would not acknowledge it to mother, lest I should be kept from singing school, and places of amusement. Soon after this, the Doctor was called, and never was there a harder or more rebellious heart than mine, when he, in the kindest, most fatherly manner, told me that the disease would probably prove fatal. It was not in the power of man, he added, to effect a cure. He said that possibly I might be better, and live for years; but the disease was upon me and could not be shaken off.
"That was the thought that twinged every nerve in my body. I hated my Creator for making me sick. I hated my physician for telling me of it. I hated my parents and every one who believed it. But oh! I hated myself more than all, when I began to see a little into my own heart.