Page:The McClure Family.djvu/128

106 McClure hoped, as did his friends, until the last fatal change in his case, that he would be able by easy and careful travel to get home—at all events to get to Cincinnati—which he esteemed as home; but for many months he had been fully satisfied that his days were numbered and that his life, if he got up and out in the world again, would be but short. He had thought and reflected so maturely on the subject that he had become reconciled to death and willing to die whenever God in His good prividenceprovidence [sic] should choose to call him hence. As to death, his only wish and constant prayer was that he might be enabled to die, whenever the time should come, without bodily pain and long suffering. As to religion, he talked with a number of friends—clergymen of different denominations, Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists. They often prayed with and for him. He said he felt comfort from such visits and exercises. He consulted his Bible much in the course of the last year. He has left it to be sent home, a small, beautiful pocket Bible, which he used most. He could read it conveniently lying in bed, and had it nearly always in reach. While he could sit up he used a Bible of mine, in royal octavo form, on account of the large, plain print, it being an edition of the Bible society, and of course without notes or commentaries. I suppose he has declared to me, in the fullest confienceconfidence [sic], fifty times in the last six months, that he had full and perfect trust in the mercy and goodness of God, and that he confided and trusted himself, as to all his hopes of this world or eternity, to the mercy and justice of his Creator. He said again and again, that that gracious providence which had preserved him from so many evils through life, would assuredly bring him in safety to the end, and to the better and more perfect state of another and happier life, in which he now fully believed. On Sunday, the day before he died, he declared to myself and others his perfect resignation to the will of God in whatever was to happen, and in being secure in that happy immortality in which his late pious father and beloved wife had trusted and believed. He often adverted to a promise