In a small cottage, distant about three miles from the residence of Mr Clayton, there lodged, at this time, an old man with his sister, a blind woman about seventy years of age. He had communicated with Mr Clayton's church for many years. He was now poor, and had retired from the metropolis, to the hut, for the advantage of purer air, and in the hope of prolonging the short span within which his earthly life had been brought. To this humble habitation I was directed by Mr Clayton.
"The woman," said the minister, "is without any comfortable hope; but the prospects of the brother are satisfactory and most cheering. Go to the benighted woman. Her's is a melancholy case. Satan has a secure footing in her heart, and defeats every effort and every motive that I have brought to bear against it. May you be more fortunate--may her self-deceived and hardened spirit melt before the force and earnestness of your appeals!"
I ventured for a second time on sacred and interdicted ground, and visited the cottage. The unhappy woman, to whom I had specially come, was smitten indeed. She was blind and paralyzed, and on the extreme verge of eternity. Yet, afflicted as she was, and as near to death as the living may be, she enjoyed the tranquillity and the gentleness of a child, ignorant of sin, and, in virtue of her infancy, confident of her inheritance. I could discover no evidence of a creature alarmed with a sense of guilt, loathing itself, conscious of its worthlessness. Her nature, in truth, seemed to have usurped a sweetness and placidity, the possession of which, as Mr Clayton afterwards observed, was justifiable only in those who could find nothing but vileness and depravity in every thought and purpose of their hearts.
It was a beautiful day in summer, and Margaret was sitting before the cottage porch, feeling the sun's benevolent warmth, and tempering, with the closed lid, the hot rays that were directed to her sightless orbs. She had no power to move, and was happy in the still enjoyment of the lingering and lovely day. She might have been a statue for her quietness--but there were curves and lines in the decrepit frame that art could never borrow. Little there seemed about her to induce a love of life, and yet a countenance more bright with cheerfulness and mild content I never met. The healthy and the young might read a lesson on her blanched and wrinkled cheek. Full of my errand, I did not hesitate at once to engage her mind on heavenly and holy topics. She did not, or she would not, understand me. I spoke to her of the degradation of humanity, our fallen nature, and the impossibility of thinking any thing but sin--and a stone could not be more senseless than the aged listener.