But a severe trial awaited her. The conjugal relation was at length broken. By the death of Mr. Waugh she was deprived of the staff of her age, and left to travel alone through the last stages of her pilgrimage. She had however the unspeakable satisfaction of reflecting that he had walked with her in the ways of righteousness, and that although he had outstripped her in the course, and arrived first at the sepulchre, she should follow him into the world of reunion and eternal love. His decease was also eminently happy. He was favoured during his illness with much spirituality and elevation of mind, and departed in the “full assurance of hope.” On being asked by one of his daughters, whether, if it were the will of God, he would like to return again into the world? “What,” he exclaimed, “when Christ bids me ‘come up hither!’” It was the privilege of his faithful wife (for such she deemed it) to be with him through all his illness, and to witness the final scene. She would not delegate to other hands the discharge of any duty which she could perform herself; but the conflict being over, she retired from the chamber of death, and was found some time after, by her children, who had missed her, in her closet, and on her knees. The throne of grace was her refuge. To that hiding-place she was accustomed to flee, in every “cloudy and dark day;” and sweetly was the promise fulfilled in her experience, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.” She felt deeply the stroke which had made her a widow; but, possessing an uncommon degree of self-command, it was a comfort to her children to observe her great calmness of spirit, and to hear the expressions of her confidence in God. Her natural fortitude was sustained by divine grace, and her whole carriage under this bereavement afforded an edifying instance of the manner in which a Christian both bends before the storm, and rises above it.
About two years after this event, she left the neighbourhood of Reading, to reside in the family of one of her daughters at Tottenham. By this circumstance she was necessarily brought into new scenes both of domestic and social life; and they served still further to elicit the graces of her matured and now venerable character. For to the visitors, of all ranks, she recommended the religion of the Bible; but with such propriety, that she never gave offence; and most tenderly and intimately did she participate in the diversified feelings of her grandchildren, evincing her affection for them, by her earnest and ardently expressed longing that Christ might be formed in their hearts, the hope of glory. It was about this time, that the writer of this brief tribute to her memory had the happiness to form her acquaintance; and he well remembers the impression of respectful admiration which that first interview produced on his mind. She was now “well stricken in years.” Time had mellowed the naturally sweet expression of her countenance, without much impairing its vivacity. Her silvery locks shaded a brow imprinted with the wrinkles of age, but intelligent and serene. Her eyes were yet bright, and glanced upon her friends with benevolent complacency. Her form was unbending and about the middle stature; her manners dignified, yet free; her conversation cheerful, affectionate, and eminently spiritual; her memory richly replenished with the word of God, and with hymns, which she recited with much emphasis and appropriate application; and her whole appearance and deportment that of a venerable Christian lady.
Some time before this period she had become very deaf; but though she felt it to be a great trial, it made scarcely any perceptible abatement of her cheerfulness; nor did she allow it to prevent her attendance upon the house of God. In proportion as she was shut out from the pleasures of conversation, she seemed to find an increasing delight in secret devotion. “Let us call those our golden hours,” she says in a letter to a friend, “that are spent with God. May we be found much in that excellent duty of self-examination.” And at a subsequent date she writes in her diary, “My hearing is in some measure restored; of which I can give no account from natural causes or medicinal art. O Lord, my healer, thou canst do every thing. O the riches of immortal grace! If I outlive my senses, I cannot outlive my graces. O how beautiful, how honourable, how durable! I earnestly plead with God for his church and ministers, in faith and hope, for what I am not likely to live to see. Dear Lord, let me depart and join the holy society above. Amen!”
It is often observed, that as Christians draw near to heaven, their desire increases to enter upon its holy joys. They present a delightful contrast, in this respect, to those unhappy persons whose old age is chilled with the infirmities of decaying nature, and never warmed into the glow of celestial aspirations by the presages of a blessed immortality. The natural desire of life is felt by both, and the uneradicated remains of our ancient and inveterate depravity will sometimes, even in aged Christians, repress the risings of the soul towards her native skies. But the prevailing tendency of the desires will be upwards. “To live is indeed Christ; but to die is gain.” Hence their conversation will take its complexion and character, rather from the things which are eternal, than from the transactions or interests of this present world. Such was eminently the case with the subject of this memoir. She seemed to live much, in the secret exercises of her mind, upon the invisible glories of that region of blessedness towards which she was fast approaching. Never was her countenance lighted up with a more cheerful beam of piety, than when, after she had been occupied awhile in silent musings, she would break forth in the joyful exclamation of the patriarch Job, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” This was indeed a very favourite passage with her, and was selected by herself for her funeral text. But “the word of Christ dwelt in her richly;” and it was sometimes equally astonishing and delightful to hear with what copiousness, accuracy, and animated expression, at more than 80 years of age, she would pour forth, like a sparkling stream, a long series of beautiful quotations, her feelings at the same time kindling into celestial rapture, and the whole perhaps finished with that ecstatic verse of Dr. Watts.
“Haste, my beloved, fetch my soul
Up to thy bless’d abode;
Fly, for my spirit longs to see
My Saviour and my God.”
She had outlived nearly all her contemporaries. Most of her friends had preceded her to their rest, and sometimes she would chide herself for still lingering in her upward flight, among the chilling clouds of these lower regions, when she thought her wings should have borne her more rapidly onward to join the company of the blessed. Thus she expresses herself in one of her memorandums: “O Lord, when I look around me, and feel I am bereaved of human joys, and behold the ravages which thou hast made among my dear, beloved friends and kindred in the flesh, I am astonished at the strength of that depravity, which leads me still to cling to this dying world. Why, oh, why do I not rest my weary soul on the unchangeable realities of heaven? There shall I meet those very dear ones who sleep in Jesus. Animating hope! Oh, then, let me march boldly on, nor faint in the day of rebuke; but may I be enabled to yield up all my earthly comforts when Jesus calls and demands, that I may find my all in him.”
It was her privilege often to climb to the summit of Pisgah; and when she descended again into the plain, how delightfully would she talk, and as in the very dialect of the country, of that land of fair and beauteous prospect which lies beyond the Jordan. There were seasons when no other subject seemed welcome to her thoughts. She would sit at such times watching the countenances of her friends, and at a break in the conversation, which she could not hear, drop a short sentence full of the love and joy of heaven. She seemed to have an inward and divine light which shone through her soul, and made it a region of pure and celestial thoughts; no doubts were permitted to disturb the composure of her mind, no temptation to trouble and overcast the serenity of her cloudless sky. Her days moved on in tranquil succession, each renewing and passing forward to the next, the sunshine of its predecessor. Only, indeed, as her orb descended to the horizon, the light seemed more to concentrate and to soften; just as the evening sun gathers back into himself the radiance with which he had illuminated the world, and sets amidst the chastened splendours of his own accumulated glory.
Her tabernacle, which had been often shaken, was at length taken down. No fierce disease was commissioned to inflict the final stroke. Till the last week she was permitted to continue in the society of her children. Two of them reside at Camberwell; and they reflect, with grateful pleasure, that some of her last days were spent with them. She left them on the Monday, after having passed the whole of the preceding month in their company. It was not then apprehended that her end was so near, but her conversation was sweetly tinctured by a vein of ardent and elevated devotion. Her mind was eminently spiritual; she seemed to be living in an element of prayer and love. It was the happiness of the writer to spend a short time with her during the last week; and in her pocket-book she has noted the comfort she derived from the devotional exercises in which they then engaged. The Sabbath day was a season of great delight. She did not know that on the following her translation was to take place; but had she foreseen it, scarcely could she have passed the day in communications more fitted to her near approximation to eternal joy.
The next day she returned to Tottenham, not so well as she had been, yet there seemed no cause for immediate alarm; but in her last words, as she was taking leave of her daughters, there was something almost prophetic of the event which was soon to take place. Clasping the hand of one of them, as she was about to step into the carriage, she turned to her, and said, “I shall soon mount on eagles’ wings; I shall run and not be weary, I shall walk and not faint.” On Wednesday, her indisposition considerably increased, and her strength began rapidly to decline. It soon became impossible to hold any conversation with her beyond a few short and detached sentences at intervals. In reply to inquiries, she still expressed her faith in the Lamb of God, and spoke of his preciousness to her soul. But the power of articulation failed, and this circumstance, joined with her deafness, precluded the further interchange of sentiment with the departing saint. She continued to lodge on the banks of the Jordan a day or two longer, till about noon on Lord’s day, June 30, 1833; when she passed through the river with a gentle and quiet motion, and was lost to the sight of surrounding attendants, amidst the distant groves of Eden, on the opposite shore.
“No pain she suffered, nor expired with noise;
Her soul was whispered out with God’s still voice:
So softly death succeeded life in her,
She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.”
Camberwell. E. Steane