"This, I know, is what the evangelicals say, but I won't believe it."
"I believe it, Sir, for I have seen her, and heard her say so. I wish I was half as happy with the prospect of living as she is with the prospect of dying. Can you account for this wonderful change from a dread of death to a desire to die?"
"It's all effervescent excitement."
"A most pleasant one, just such an excitement as I should like if I were dying."
"My dear, you are overstepping the bounds of reverential propriety, by offering such free remarks to Mr. Cole."
"I hope not, ma'; it is not my intention to do so; but I can't help saying that, while standing beside her death-bed, I envied her her happiness. She told me that the sacrament did not take from her the dread of dying, but the sweet promise of Jesus Christ did."
"What promise of Jesus Christ did she refer to? To one, I suppose, that she heard in a fit of delirium. Delirious people always see imaginary sights, and hear imaginary sounds, and yet they think them real."
"O no, Sir, there's no delirium in her case. It was a promise which Mr. Ingleby read to her out of the Bible, and it was something like this, 'Come to me, and I will give you rest.'"
"I shall have no rest as long as Mr. Ingleby is suffered to invade my ecclesiastical territory, and pervert my parishioners from the sacraments of our church to his evangelical notions. I mean to complain of him to the bishop of our diocese, and have him cited before him."
"I don't like," said Miss Denham, after Mr. Cole left, "this citation reference. I wonder what he will say to the bishop, and I wonder what the bishop will say to him. Will he tell him that he visited a young lady of his parish when she was dying, and gave her the sacrament and absolution, according to the prescribed forms of the church, but they failed in her case in the efficacy of their power, as she dreaded death as much after she had taken the sacrament as she did before it was given to her? Will he then go on to say, that Mr. Ingleby was then invited to see her, and that he, by repeating and explaining to her some promise of Jesus Christ, which he read to her out of the Bible, succeeded in taking from her heart all dread of death, and in inspiring her with a joyful hope of immortality? Do you think he will do this, and then pray his lordship to issue a censure, and an interdiction to prevent his doing such a kind thing to any other person?"