LIFE IN JESUS: A MEMOIR OF MRS. MARY WINSLOW, ARRANGED FROM HER Correspondence, Diary, and Thoughts. BY HER SON OCTAVIUS WINSLOW, D. D., "MIDNIGHT HARMONIES," AUTHOR OF 99.66 "In her had Nature bounteously combined The tenderest bosom with the strongest mind; I view the Mother and the Saint in one, And pay beyond the homage of a Son."-Knight. "Her children arise up, and call her blessed."—Prov. xxxi. 28. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 580 BROADWAY. PREFACE. THERE are few literary tasks more delicate in conception, difficult in design, or responsible in execution, than that of composing a parent's life—that parent a MOTHER. Under ordinary circumstances, to portray a character distinguished for its preeminent excellence, strongly developed in some of its essential features, and remarkable for a certain idiosyncrasy which assigns to it a place in the portrait gallery peculiarly and impressively its own, would impose upon the delineator the greatest caution; lest the imagination, enamoured of its study, should be allowed unduly to control the judgment, and thereby an ideal rather than a truthful picture should be the result. But, to sketch a character which, from childhood, we have filially loved and venerated, and, in later life, have looked upon with a deepening admiration, bordering upon a feeling of religious awe;—a character, too, sanctified in an eminent degree by the grace of God, demands the possession of powers to which the writer can prefer but a feeble claim. A MOTHER! who has not felt the exquisite tenderness of her love, the magic power of her influence, the sacred reverence of her name? Has she weaknesses ?—what feeling heart could unveil them? Has she virtues?—what filial hand can paint them? And yet the holy office has been undertaken of perpetuating a mother's memory! It seemed proper that some individual should weave together the incidents of a life too interesting and instructive to be altogether lost. Who so fitted for the work, as one who had knowu her so long, and had known her so well? The absence of the present Memoir from the biography of the Christian church-imperfectly as its materials are compiledthe writer, with lowliness, hesitates not to say, would have been a real and serious loss. The memorial of a life so unreservedly consecrated to God, -the publication of a correspondence, so rich in Christian experience, and replete with Christion comfort, must, with God's blessing, be greatly and exten sively useful. To retain and perpetuate, therefore, something of that bright spirit that has passed away, and which itself could not be retained,―to catch the mantle as it fell in its celestial flight, and pass it down, a sacred and precious heirloom, to the Christian church, were a solemn and imperious duty, from which no conviction of inability or sense of unworthiness should be allowed to shrink. There were difficulties in the accomplishment of the work, other than those inseparable from its peculiar nature. It was found impossible to give that fulness to the biography, that was desired, without involving allusion to the living. Personal references to some who survive,—increasingly to feel how irreparable is their loss,-have already insinuated themselves into the volume to a greater extent and more prominently than either the judgment or taste of the compiler approved. They were, however, so closely interlaced with her writings as to |