In looking over my sister
Anne's papers, I find mournful evidence that religious feeling had been
to her but too much like what it was to Cowper; I mean, of course, in a
far milder form. Without rendering her a prey to those horrors that defy
concealment, it subdued her mood and bearing to a perpetual pensiveness;
the pillar of a cloud glided constantly before her eyes; she ever
waited at the foot of a
secret Sinai, listening in her heart to the voice of a trumpet sounding
long and waxing louder. Some, perhaps, would rejoice over these tokens
of sincere though sorrowing piety in a deceased relative: I own, to me
they seem sad, as if her whole innocent life had been passed under the
martyrdom of an unconfessed
physical pain: their effect, indeed, would be too distressing, were it
not combated by the certain knowledge that in her last moments this tyranny
of a too tender conscience was overcome; this pomp of terrors broke up,
and passing away, left her dying hour unclouded. Her belief in God did
not then bring to her dread, as of a stern Judge,--but hope, as in a Creator
and Saviour: and no faltering hope was it, but a sure and stedfast conviction,
on which, in the rude passage from Time to Eternity, she threw the weight
of her human weakness, and by which she was enabled to bear what was to
be borne, patiently --serenely--victoriously.
Currer
Bell
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