Page:Memoir of Isaac Parrish, M.D. - Samuel Jackson.djvu/29

 He was as free from pride as a just sense of the dignity of human nature would admit; and vanity was an entire stranger to his mind. His soul was meek and humble: though relying with confidence on his faith, it was no part of his religion to arrogate peculiar merits, or to thank his heavenly Father that he was not as other men were.

He was a very faithful attendant of public worship; and he always endeavored to arrange his business so that this duty might not be prevented. Nor was he often absent from those business meetings of the Society which are regularly held for the purposes of internal discipline and acts of special beneficence. In these meetings he was a ready speaker, and his speeches, as I have been told by an elder of the church, were always heard with respect; in the language of Friends, "they were always very acceptable."

Such was the truly catholic and spiritual religion of Dr. Parrish; and we shall find that in his last hour, it did not deceive him. So serene and hopeful was he when death hovered over him, that he might have called his friends, as Addison did Lord Warwick, "to see in what manner a Christian could die."

He was of a slender, delicate frame, always endowed with more vigor of mind than body; and, during his last year, he suffered almost continually from dyspepsia, which greatly lessened his strength. The last twenty days previous to his sickness, were spent with all the labor and anxiety of a parent, in attending day and night on his eldest son, who had sickened with a fatal dysentery, near Christiana, about fifty-seven miles west of Philadelphia. He had the sorrow of seeing his child in a hopeless state, when he was suddenly and violently seized himself with the same disease. He had struggled with it to the fourth day, when this mortal dysentery invaded the family of Levi Pownall, in whose hospitable mansion he lay; and it was therefore thought best by himself, wife, and brothers, that he should be forthwith brought to his home in Philadelphia. Here was a severe trial of his fortitude, for it was necessary to leave his child, whom he had little hope of seeing again, and to leave his wife to attend this child, while he was beginning, what he must then have feared, might be his journey to the grave. Notwithstanding his tenderness and sensibility, which were always great, he bore this cruel separation