I am brim-full of a sweet feeling within. She
often used to express how good and sweet it was to lie low before God,
and the lower (says she) the better! and that it was pleasant to think
of lying in the dust, all the days of her life, mourning for sin. She
was wont to manifest a great sense of her own meanness and dependence.
She often expressed an exceeding compassion, and pitiful love, which she
found in her heart towards persons in a Christless condition. This was
sometimes so strong, that, as she was passing by such in the streets, or
those that she feared were such, she would be overcome by the sight of
them. She once said, that she longed to have the whole world saved; she
wanted, as it were, to pull them all to her, she could not bear to have
one lost.
She had great longings to die, that she might be with Christ: which
increased until she thought she did not know how to be patient to wait
till God's time. But once, when she felt those longings, she thought
with herself, If I long to die, why do I go to physicians? Whence she
concluded that her longings for death were not well regulated. After
this she often put it to herself, which she should choose, whether to
live or to die, to be sick or to be well; and she found she could not
tell, till at last she found herself disposed to say these words: I am
quite willing to live, and quite willing to die; quite willing to be
sick, and quite willing to be well; and quite willing for any thing that
God will bring upon me! And then, said she, I felt myself perfectly
easy, in a full submission to the will of God. She then lamented much,
that she had been so eager in her longings for death, as it argued want
of such a resignation to God as ought to be. She seemed henceforward to
continue in this resigned frame till
.
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