In looking over my sister Anne's papers, I find mournful evidence that
religious feeling had been to her but too much like what it was to
Cowper; I mean, of course, in a far milder form. Without rendering her a
prey to those horrors that defy concealment, it subdued her mood and
bearing to a perpetual pensiveness; the pillar of a cloud glided
constantly before her eyes; she ever waited at the foot of a secret
Sinai, listening in her heart to the voice of a trumpet sounding long
and waxing louder. Some, perhaps, would rejoice over these tokens of
sincere though sorrowing piety in a deceased relative: I own, to me they
seem sad, as if her whole innocent life had been passed under the
martyrdom of an unconfessed physical pain: their effect, indeed, would
be too distressing, were it not combated by the certain knowledge that
in her last moments this tyranny of a too tender conscience was
overcome; this pomp of terrors broke up, and passing away, left her
dying hour unclouded. Her belief in God did not then bring to her dread,
as of a stern Judge,--but hope, as in a Creator and Saviour: and no
faltering hope was it, but a sure and stedfast conviction, on which, in
the rude passage from Time to Eternity, she threw the weight of her
human weakness, and by which she was enabled to bear what was to be
borne, patiently--serenely--victoriously.