Oh! my sister! my sister! What a lesson may we learn from the death of our dear Amelia! She was but sixteen years old like myself, and only two years older than you are, but how much had she done for the Lord. I saw and heard her, when Jesus came to call her to himself; I was in the churchyard when they placed her body in the grave! Oh! what a solemn warning! and now I feel humbled before God, and I pray Him to pour into my heart the same Spirit which He bestowed so abundantly upon our friend, as well as that lively faith, which although Amelia 'is dead, yet speaketh,' as it is said of Abel, and which shall speak through her for many years to come!
I wrote to you less than a fortnight ago, that Amelia was unwell; but how little I then thought it was her last illness! Oh! how uncertain our life is, dear Esther, and how much wiser we should be if we would only believe so!
On the seventh day of her illness, her mother said to me, "Anna, your friend is going to leave us; the danger of her disorder increases every hour, and we must give her up to God!"
I wept much and bitterly, and could not at first believe it; but when I was alone with Amelia, the next day, she said to me, with that calm peacefulness which never left her, "I am going away from this world, Anna; yes, dear Anna, I am going to depart; I feel it, and ... I am preparing myself for it!"
I tried to turn away her thoughts from this subject; I told her that she was mistaken, and that God would certainly restore her; but she stopped me with firmness of manner, and said, "Do you envy my happiness, Anna? Do you wish to prevent me from going to my Heavenly home, to my Saviour, unto his light and glory?" The entrance of her father and the Doctor prevented my reply, and I left the room in tears.
"You must not cry," said her mother to me. "We must pray, and above all, seek profit from the occasion. The time is short! Her end is at hand! But," added this servant of Christ, "that end is the beginning of a life which shall have no end!"
Three more days passed away. On the fourth, we had some faint hope, but the following day, all had vanished, and towards evening, Amelia declared, that the Lord was about to take her.
"Yes, my dear parents, my excellent father and mother," she said, with a beam of heavenly joy on her countenance, "I am about to leave you; but I do not leave my God, for I am going to see Him, 'face to face.'"
"My dear parents," she continued, affectionately, "rejoice at my departure; I am going to Heaven a little before you, it is true, but it is only before you, and you know it; and the Apostle says, that, 'to be with Christ is far better.'"
I was present, Esther, and was crying.