confession and submission to the charge it contained, and the truths it urged; but Caroline has not the smallest recollection of the manner of it, or how much it disclosed of her altered mind. She understood too little of the revulsion to explain it probably. To others around her, circumstances prevented detection of the change, which she had not then the courage to make known; and which she could not have expected to be believed or understood, by persons whose religion had not the faintest coloring of evangelical truth or knowledge; whose whole creed was, "Lord, I thank thee," of pharisaic confidence. The unwholesome atmosphere to which, doubtless, was attributable the physical depression she had previously suffered, as the winter advanced, brought on alarming symptoms of pulmonary disease; she kept her chamber, and after many weeks of the most tender, the most feeling, the most unbounded attention from that generous family, so much fear was excited for her life, that her friends were sent for, and she was removed by slow journeys to her distant home. All that appeared therefore of the change, and became a subject of remark in the family,-as, her love for the Bible, and her attention to religious reading, was of course attributed to sickness, and the contemplation of approaching death. What was in her mind, mean

while? Most naturally it was to believe that her conversion was the preparation for her soul's departure. She believed that she should die, and was well pleased to do so, for she knew that she was saved; there was no place for any feeling in her bosom but wonder, gratitude, and joy, that the brand had been plucked from the fire, at the very moment when that fire was to become eternity. There needed time to disclose to her, how unmeet she was for the companion of her Father's house, to which she had been called and chosen, and by how long a process the dross of such a heart, had to be burned out, by the sanctifying influences of the Spirit. Freed from the guilt of sin, she had yet no knowledge of its power. Her state of mind during that illness, may best be compared to his to whom it was said, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise :" she saw nothing between her and the Lord who bought her, and the inheritance that he had divided with her. It was a presumptuous expectation, but it was the natural result of inexperience in the truth; it was justly grounded, and had her illness terminated as was expected, it would not have been disappointed. She would have been with Jesus; she says it and signs it now, that time and deep knowledge of indwelling sin, have modified without changing her views of the method of divine

grace, the doctrines of the gospel-respecting, that is, the progressive sanctification of the justified believer, the work of the Spirit in the elect of God; she says it in the face of years of subsequent vanity, earthliness, and inconsistency; in the face of accumulated sins of which the burthen is far more intolerable, at times, than those that preceded her conversion; she says it in the face of many, who reading these memoranda, may affirm that they knew her after this period, with few signs enough of conversion upon her; had she died then, her hope would not have been made ashamed, she was justified in Christ without the deeds of the law; she signs it now, and if the opportunity be afforded, should she ever live out her three-score years and ten, she believes that she will resign it on her death-bed, to the glory of the power of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ; and the comfort of all who know themselves to be the subject of it. But He, whose precious gem she had become, had no intention to take it from the fire with all its base admixture of earthliness and corruption, infixed and indurated in a manner the most difficult to eradicate by habit, by character, by circumstances, and by wilful opposition to the word, so long indulged.

It is not the intention here to pursue the ransomed

spirit's history. It will be found, if God spare her tc write it, in the regular process of the memoir. There may be letters extant in which, being written at the time, the state of her heart is better exhibited than it can be at this distance. Her brother was naturally the first to whom she specially declared what God had done for her; and with whom from that time forward, she was likely to hold the most confidential spiritual correspondence. His high and decided views of doctrinal truth, were likely to meet with all sympathy in the first fervor of the new-born soul whose history was a confirmation of all that he believed and taught. Perhaps he preserved her letters; if so, they will be the best witnesses to the truth of the present statement. Private letters are of all documents the most veritable of that which they disclose of the character of the writer. While every other testimony is but the portrait, which may or may not be like; they are the cast expressly moulded on the living form. If there be such letters, they should be here inserted.

Having no religious friends, it is improbable her feelings should be disclosed to any by letter but her brother, and those sisters, M, L, A——, who were already members with her in the body of Christ; but separated, as she thinks, at that time, from her. Hard, sterile, and unproductive was the soil on which

the precious seed had thus been sown; the perfecting of Jehovah's work will be scarcely less wonderful when we come to tell it, than its beginning. Caroline never changed her faith, or revoked the profession of it; she never changed her purpose, she never let go the death-grasp she had taken on the cross of Christ; there was no season when that once abhorred name was not music in her ears, and balm upon her lips; but she was a graceless, senseless, and unruly child to her heavenly Father, as she had been to all others; and many, many were the years before she or any one else could find the fruits of holiness, on that wild olivebranch, engrafted as it was in the pure stem. It bears them scarcely still; we will hereafter tell it all. Suffice it now, to say, that the most immediate result of Caroline's change of heart, was, the happiness to which it had at once restored her; at peace with God, she made up her quarrel with all things. The zest of life returned; she no longer quarrelled with her destiny, or felt distaste of all her pursuits, or grew weary of her existence without any reason. The void was filled, she never after wanted something to do, or something to love, or something to look forward to; the less there was of earth, the more there was of heaven, in her vision; whenever man failed her, Christ took her up. She had no more stagnant water, long