"How professing Christians, who would seem devout at church, could laugh at others for being serious out of it, and burlesque the Bible, and turn religion into ridicule."

And finally, "How intelligent men could take care of souls, and seldom come among them, and never look after them."

Many years before her death she began to keep a diary, consulting two persons, whom she used to call her soul friends, concerning the best manner of performing it. She at first wrote her diary every evening; but finding the evening inconvenient, from her lord's long illness, which occasioned her many inevitable interruptions at that season, she changed it into the quiet, silent morning, always rising early. In this diary, among other things she recorded the daily frame of her own heart towards God, his signal providences to herself, and sometimes to others, the gracious manifestations of God to her soul, answers of prayer, temptations resisted, or prevailing, or whatever might be useful for caution or encouragement, or afford her matter of thankfulness or humiliation.

She used to style prayer heart's-ease, as she often experienced it; and, though her modesty was such, and she was so far from a vain ostentation of her gifts, that a minister,* who was long acquainted with her, says, "that he could not name one person with whom she prayed; yet," adds he, "I can say that she was not only constant and abundant in prayer, but mighty and fervent in it; for, as she sometimes used her voice, she hath been overheard in her devotions; and her own lord, knowing her hours of prayer, once conveyed a grave and judicious minister into a secret place within hearing, who much admired her humble fervency." In praying she prayed, and, when she used not an audible voice, her sighs and groans would be heard from her closet. On the very day before she died she shut up herself above an hour, which she spent in fervent private prayer, notwithstanding her indisposition. Indeed prayer was the very element in which she lived, and actually died; or the vital breath of her soul that wafted it immediately to heaven.

But if she exceeded herself in any thing as much as she excelled others in most things, it was in meditation. She usually walked two hours every morning to meditate alone, in which divine art she was a most accomplished proficient, both as to set and occasional contemplations; in set comtemplations choosing some particular subject, which she would press upon her heart with the most intense thought, till she had drawn out its juice and nourishment; and in occasional meditations like a bee extracting honey from all occurrences; whole volumes of which she hath left behind her.

* Dr. Anthony Walker, rector of Fyfield in Essex. He preached a Sermon at Felsted at the countess's funeral, and afterwards printed it under the title of, "The virtuous Woman found, her Loss bewailed, and her Character exemplified;" to which are annexed, "Some of her ladyship's pious and useful Meditations." To this publication we have been principally obliged for the Memoirs of this excellent lady, as well as her pious compostions.

After she had consecrated the day with reading the Scriptures, prayer, and meditation, a short dressing time, and ordering her domestic affairs, or reading some good book, employed the remainder of the morning, till the season came for chapel prayers, from which she never absented herself, and in which she was ever reverent, and a devout example to her whole family.

She was a strict observer of the Lord's day, which may be truly considered as the best external preservative of religion; for it is very evident that the streams of godliness are deep or shallow, according as this bank is kept up, or neglected.

This lady was a very serious and diligent hearer of the word, and constantly after sermon recollected what she had heard, sometimes by writing, always by thinking, and calling it to mind that she might make it her own, and turn it into practice, not content to be a forgetful, fruitless hearer, but being a doer, that she might be blessed in her deed James i. 25.

Nor was she less solicitous to make others good than to be good herself. She well remembered our Savior's charge to Peter: "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren :" Luke, xxii. 32. She set herself to build God's spiritual temple, and applied herself to it with all her might. She had a seraphic zeal for the glory of God, and a great love for immortal souls, and hence she was engaged to promote religion with the utmost industry, which, that she might accomplish with greater advantage, she would in company introduce good discourse, to prevent idle, or worse communication. She would drop a wise sentence, or moral or holy apothegm, with which she was richly furnished from her own making, or her collection, that suited with, or was not very remote from, what was talked of, and by commending, or improving, that she would turn the conversation into a useful channel without offense, and even with pleasure. She indeed kept a book of such weighty sayings; much valuing sentences which contained much use and worth in a little compass. The following were a few out of the many.

The almost Christian is the unhappiest of men; having religion enough to make the world hate him, and yet not enough to make God love him.

The servants of God should be as bold for their master, as the servants of the devil are for theirs.

O Lord, what I give thee doth not please thee, unless I give thee myself. So what thou givest me shall not satisfy me, unless thou give me thyself.

O Lord, who givest grace to the humble, give me grace to be humble.

He loves God too little, who loves any thing with him, which he loves not for him.

So speak to God as though men heard thee; so speak to men, as knowing God hears thee.

We should meditate on Christ's cross till we are fastened as close to him as he was to the cross.

By how much the more vile Christ made himself for us, by so much the more precious should he be to us.

He who takes up Christ's cross aright, shall find it such a burden as wings to a bird, or sails to a ship.

It is a great honor to be almoner to the King of heaven. To give is the greatest luxury. How indulgent then is God to annex future rewards to what is so much its own recompense!

To be libelled for Christ is the best panegyric.

Where affliction is heavy, sin is light.

Sin brought death into the world, and nothing but death will carry sin out of it.

The best shield against slanderers is to live so that none may believe them.

He who revenges an injury, acts the part of an executioner; he who pardons it, acts the part of a prince.

Why are we so fond of life that begins with a cry, and ends with a groan?

Where this excellent lady had particular kindness, or personal interest, she would improve the authority of her friendship in free discourses and arguments, and plead the cause of God and their own souls, with such eloquence, that it was hard to resist the spirit with which she spake. "Let me," says the minister who writes her life, and was many years well acquainted with her, "echo from her lips, though alas! too faintly, how she would, with melting charms and powerful strains, make her attempts upon the friends for whom she had a kindness, and whom she longed to rescue from ruin.

"Come, come, my friend, you must be good; you shall be good. I cannot be so unkind, nay, so unfaithful to the laws of friendship, as to let you persist and perish in a way which you know as well as I, leads down to hell. It grieves my very soul to have so good a nature insnared against the dictates of its own light by bad example, custom, or any thing else." If they replied with excuses, she would stop them thus: "Pray, my friend, have patience; hear me out. I know, or guess at least, what you would say, and I would not have you say it. It is bad to commit sin, but it is worse to plead for it, and defend it. None sin so dangerously as those who sin with excuses. The devil then plants a new snare, when he gets into our tongues, to fasten us to our failings, or when he raises an outwork in our own mouths, to secure the fort he possesses in our hearts. I take it for granted, that all other holds were quitted easily, could you conquer such or such a vice, too much by custom prevailing over you. Unhappy custom that dares prescribe against God's law! But, friend, use no arguments that will not hold at the day of judgment; though hand join in hand, you know what follows. No example, custom, number, should have power over us which cannot

excuse and secure us. But this is the mischief of sin lived in; it bewitches the heart to love it so, that it cannot leave it. CANNOT! So men love to speak, but it is because they will not; that is, will use no endeavors to be rid of it. But, my friend, you must leave it; there is no remedy, though it cost you trouble, smart, and selfdenial. There is as much as all this comes to, in cutting off a right hand, and plucking out a right eye. I speak to you as to one in whom I have a party to help me plead, I mean your conscience, and the belief of the Scriptures; for, if you were one of those on whom you know I use to set my mark, I would not give you this trouble, nor esteem myself under more than the laws of general charity to wish you better, and should hardly venture my little skill to make you so. But as for you, who still own God's authority, and believe his word, and attend his worship; why should I despair of making one part of yourself agree with the other, your practice with your convictions, your conversation with your conscience? And not to terrify you with the thunder-claps of wrath and vengeance, and God's judging you know whom-Listen to the still voice. It is your peculiar eminency to be kind and grateful; and because there is a kind of magnetic virtue in these arguments which touches our temper, I shall attack you on that side, hoping the strongest excellency of your nature will prove the weakest defensative for sin, and to keep out God. You therefore who are so good-natured, so kind, so grateful, that you never think you have acquitted yourself sufficiently to those who have been civil, or, as you are pleased to call it, obliging, Oh! how can you be so unkind and so ungrateful to God Almighty, the kindest friend, who is so much beforehand with you, who hath given you so much good, and is so ready to forgive you all your sins? O that you, who, I dare say, would take my word for any thing else, would do me the honor to take my word for him, who, I assure you, upon your sincere repentance, will be fully reconciled to you in Christ, and never so much as upbraid your past neglects, but heal your backslidings, and love you freely. And do not fear you shall have cause to repent of your repentance. No man was ever yet a loser by God, and you shall not be the first. You shall not lose your pleasures, but exchange them; defiling ones, for them which are pure and ravishing. And let it not seem strange, or incredible to you, that there should be such things as the pleasures of religion, because, perhaps, you never felt them. Alas! you have deprived yourself unhappily, by being incapable of them. New wine must be put into new bottles. To say nothing of what the Scriptures speak of a day in God's courts being better than a thousand, and of joys unspeakable, and full of glory, of the great peace they have, who keep God's law, and that nothing shall offend them, and that wisdom's ways are pleasantness, let my weakness reason out the case with you. Do you think that God's angels, who excel in all perfection, have no delight becaase they have no flesh, no sense, no bodies,

as men and beasts? Or have our souls, the angels in these houses of clay, which are God's images, and the price of his blood, no objects, no employments, which may yield them delight and satisfaction? Think not so unworthily of God, or so meanly of yourself. Have not the strokes of your own fancy, or the intellectual pleasures of your mind, sometimes transported you beyond all the charms of your senses, when they have chimed all in tune together? And cannot God, think you, who is a spirit, and so fit an object for our souls, give them as great pleasures as any object of our taste and sight? Come, come, my friend, take my word for it, there is more pleasure in the peace of a good conscience, in the well-grounded hope that our sins are pardoned, in serving God, and in the expectation of eternal life, than in all the pleasures in the world. Alas! I was once of your mind; but I assure you, upon my word, I have really found more satisfaction in serving God, than ever I found in all the good things of this life, of which, you know, I have had my share. Try therefore; dare to be good, resolve to be so thoroughly. If you do not find it much better than I have told you, never take my word, or trust me more."

Thus, and much more powerfully, would our lady's zeal for their good, cause her to argue with her friends, that she might by holy violence attract and allure them to be good and happy.

She took great care of the souls of her servants; and if she had any ambition in her, it was to be the mistress of a religious family. This appeared, among others, in the following particulars: in exacting their attendance on the public worship of God, and reverent behavior there in personal instruction, and familiar persuasion of them in preparing them for, and exhorting them to the frequent participation of the Lord's Supper: in dispersing good books in all the common rooms and places of attendance, that they who were in waiting might not lose their time, but well employ it and in making religion in her servants the step to their preferment; for she used to make the hundred and first psalm the rule of her economics; and though she treated all her servants as friends, yet they were her favorites which most remarkably feared the Lord.

The good countess had learned St. Paul's lesson to perfection, "to speak evil of no man." Where she could not speak in commendation, the worst injury she would do was to be silent, unless it was to some single friend, of whose taciturnity she was secured by experience. Nor would she invidiously diminish the just praises of any who deserved them, but would study to extenuate their other failings by presenting the bright sides of their characters to conceal their dark ones.

As a wife, it may be truly said, that the heart of her husband safely trusted in her; and that she did him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. Never was woman more truly a crown or ornaShe always lived with the sense of the covenant

ment to a man.