"No, my dear, you are now brought into connection with realities,—sublime realities—realities which connect the two worlds, and which explain the mysteries of time, and open a free and a safe passage for the guilty and the worthless into eternity."
"May I now urge my last request, which is this—that ere you leave this house, you will try to impress on the mind of my dear parents the important truths which you have with such clearness made known to me."
The venerable man having given her his pledge that he would attempt to do so, then knelt down and prayed with her, and bade her farewell, yet intending to see her again. Immediately after Mr. Ingleby's departure she retired to rest, and slept the greater part of the night. In the morning, when her father drew near her bedside, and asked her if her soul was happy, she replied, "I am composed, but not perfectly happy. I have a hope that I shall not perish, and that I shall be saved; and this is as much as I can expect, and far more than I deserve. I shall now soon leave you, dear father; but before I go I have two requests to make, which I hope you will comply with. The one is this, that you and my dear mother will go and hear that holy man of God preach, who has brought words of comfort to my troubled soul. He understands what religion is, and will explain it to you more clearly and more perfectly than Mr. Cole can do. I once, in common with others, ridiculed his evangelical views of Divine truth, and turned the edge of satire against those who seek happiness in the consolations of the gospel; but now I am driven for peace and for hope to that very source. My other request is, that you will send my affectionate regards to Mrs. Stevens and Miss Roscoe, and say that I wish to see them as soon as they can conveniently come."
Mr. John Ryder, who had been unremitting in his attentions during her illness, and who was nearly frantic with grief in the prospect of parting with her, was waiting below; and when she was asked if he might see her once more, she replied, "I think not, it may disturb me; I am too near an eternal world to suffer my feelings to intermingle again with those objects on which they have been too strongly placed." But after a long pause she added, "Yes, let him come up. The parting scene, though painful, may be profitable." He entered the room, pale and dejected; and though his spirit could brave death in the high places of danger, yet now he was appalled—seeing her preparing for the tomb, instead of the altar. On approaching her bedside she extended her hand, and with a mild look and softened tone, she said, "We now part, but I hope not for ever. Death, which is now removing me, may soon call for you, and then I hope you will find that consolation in the death of a despised Saviour, which it has pleased God, very unexpectedly and undeservedly, to give to me." And then, after a mutual embrace, she drew back her hand, and concealed her face, as though her eyes were for ever closed on things visible and temporal.
The interview with her endeared friends, Mrs. Stevens and Miss Roscoe, gave a fresh excitement to her feelings; but it was one of pure and unmingled satisfaction. They conversed together with intense interest on the love of Christ, and the freeness of his salvation; but when any reference was made to the joys of the heavenly state, she merely expressed a hope that she might be permitted to join the innumerable throng, though doomed to remain unnoticed amongst them. As Mrs. Denham and the nurse were exhausted by excessive fatigue, having had no rest for several nights, Mrs. Stevens's and Miss Roscoe's kind offer to stay with her was accepted. It was evident to all that she could not continue long; for though there had been some favourable symptoms of recruited strength, yet for the last few days the disease had made very rapid progress, and when the physician took his leave, he said, "Be not surprised if a sudden change should take place." She slept through the first part of the night very composedly, but about three in the morning she became restless, and on being raised up in the arms of Miss Roscoe, she swooned for a few seconds, when she gradually revived, and expressed a wish to see her parents once more. She first kissed her mother, and bade her adieu, and then her father, and then her two female friends, and, last of all, her old nurse; and after a long pause she said, "I am dying, but not without hope of obtaining eternal life, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." She then gently reclined her head on the bosom of Mrs. Stevens, and breathed her last.
Thus died the once gay and thoughtless Miss Denham, bearing a testimony against the vanities of the world, which had ensnared her, and to the importance and excellence of the faith in Christ, which she had often made the theme of her ridicule. Had she felt the transforming power of the truth which on one occasion she heard fall from the lips of Mr. Ingleby, or had she given heed to the warnings which Amelia Stubbs, when dying, addressed to her, she might have lived, a comfort to her parents in their old age, and an ornament to society; and, at a distant period, she might have descended to the grave laden with the fruits of righteousness, and rich in the anticipations of hope. But as she chose to disregard them, and devote herself to the follies and amusements of gay life, she was called to taste the bitterness of death in the spring-time of her years; yet mercy spared her till she sought the redemption of her soul, through faith in the death of the Redeemer, while many are left in their last hours on earth to seek for enjoyment amidst scenes of folly, and then, when death comes, they pass into the eternal world, for which they have made no preparation. What consternation and horror will then seize them! A ceaseless storm of agony, which never abates, and from which there is no escape. O, reader,
"Be wise to-day, 'tis madness to defer."
THE TRACTARIAN AT FAULT.
