I really think we were
almost as much shocked as though we had not heard of her illness;
for we felt that, at the eleventh hour, some favourable turn _must_
take place. I think we expected a miracle to be performed, so
certain were we, or wished and tried to be, that she would recover.
But God's ways are not as our ways; truly, they are past finding
out. We felt like putting our hands on our mouths, for fear of
rebelling against _His_ most righteous decrees. "Be still, and know
that I am God," was all that we could say. It was hard to realize
that the sun was still shining behind the cloud, for this was a
darkness that might be felt. There seemed a pall over the earth and
sky. Oh, how unsatisfactory seemed all on earth! how dark and
strange! how mysterious and unreal! We could not weep, we were
stunned, and it seemed at the time that we could never come back to
earth without her. But when the touching relation of her last hours
was made to us, the fountains of grief were unsealed, and we wept,
as it were, rivers of tears.
I can give you no idea on paper of the beauty and sublimity of that
death-scene as it was painted to me. We imagined that the heart must
shrink, or at least draw back before the entrance into the dark
valley.
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