Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/95

 that pining for some higher state whose promise is in the Gospel; our weakness daily forces us to look around for support; we admit the perfection of the Saviour's moral code; we see that the mighty voice of prophecy, which spoke of old upon the mountains, is awaking year by year its wondrous fulfilments;— and yet we believe not, or, if we believe, we delay acting upon that belief. "Out of evil cometh good. The attention that might have been diverted, the conviction that might have been darkened in the world, were both given entire to the faith that dawned on the subdued and enlightened mind of Emily Arundel. The Bible of Beatrice was their only religious book; but it was read with that simple and earnest belief by which the dark is soonest made light, and the crooked path made straight." But we must not linger;—the moral of the whole history may be conclusively summed up in the quotation of a few lines from Emily’s dying letter to her early friend, Lady Mandeville:— "Death sends Truth before it as its messenger. In the loneliness of my sleepless midnight, in the feverish restlessness of days which lacked strength for pleasant and useful employment, how have I been forced on self-examination, and how have my thoughts witnessed against me! Life, the sacred and the beautiful, how utterly have I wasted! for how much discontent and ingratitude am I responsible! I have been self-indulged from my childhood upwards; I have fretted with imaginary sorrows, and desired imaginary happiness"

"I was ill. Beatrice read to me from the little Bible, which she said had ever been, in her trying and lonely life, a friend and a support, Alas! my