Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. VI. 1808?1811. " Thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it in the day when thy soul is full of joyful tears and needs a bosom on which to shed them." Richter. " 0, fear not, in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long, Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong." Lougfellow. " How little can we love men, till we love Thee!" Mrs. SchimmelPenninck says, in her journal of 1808; and to love God above all things, and devote herself wholly to His service, had long been, as we have seen, the first desire of her heart. But the more God designs to make use of any particular instrument, the more carefully He forms and polishes it by suffering; and thus it was with the subject of this Memoir. She deeply suffered from conflicts in her own soul. She had yet to suffer, as we shall see, by trials from without; but seasons of refreshment were now vouchsafed to her from the presence of the Lord, which, to use her own words, " made up for all." It was at this time that Mrs. SchimmelPenninck first became acquainted with the Wesleyan Methodists, of which event she gives the following account. " After my first acquaintance with the Moravians at Bath, there was a time, on my return home, when I had no opportunity of enjoying the society of religious people; and, not having many religious books, I was compelled the more to search the Scriptures, which at every line sent me to the Saviour himself. A few books, however, now and then fell into my hands, just enough to show me that in various parts of the Good Shepherd's fold are those who love Him in sincerity and truth; and, in my solitude, many were the refreshing hours I owed to Christian brethren who, on earth distinguished by various appellations, are all, I am assured, now unitedly rejoicin...