In this year, she wrote but little in her Journal, and it appears
to have been a time of spiritual proving; yet one in which she
experienced that it was good for her "to trust in the name of the
Lord, and to stay herself upon her God."
_6th Mo. 16th_, 1844. One week ago was the
twenty-first anniversary of my birthday. In some
sense, I can say,--
"The past is bright, like those dear hills,
So far behind my bark;
The future, like the gathering night,
Is ominous and dark.
"One gaze again--one long, last gaze;
Childhood, adieu to thee;
The breeze hath hurried me away,
On a dark, stormy sea."
Deeply and more deeply, day by day, does my understanding
find the deceitfulness of my heart. Well
do I remember the feelings of determination, with
which I resolved, two years since, that this period
should not find me halting between two opinions,--that
ere _this_ day I would be a Christian indeed.
And looking back upon my alternating feelings, ever
since reason was mine, upon the innumerable resolutions
to do good, which have been as staves of reed,
I must want common perception not to assent to the
truth, that "the heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it?" But,
oh, it is not this only, which my intellectual conscience
is burdened with: when I look at the visitations
of divine grace which have been my unmerited,
unasked-for, privilege, through which I can but feel
that in days past, a standing was placed in my power
to attain, which, probably, now I shall never approach,
the question does present with an awful importance,
"How much owest thou unto thy Lord?"
Seeing we know not, nor can know, the value of an
offer of salvation, till salvation is finally lost or won;
seeing that such an offer is purchased only by the
shedding of a Saviour's blood, how incomprehensibly
heavy, yet how true, the charge, "Ye have crucified
to yourselves the son of God afresh.
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