Life in Jesus: A Memoir of Mrs. Mary Winslow

There are few literary tasks more delicate in conception, difficult in design, or responsible in execution, than that of composing a jmreyifs 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 fiHal 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 tog-ether the incidents of a life too interesting and instructive to be altogether lost. Who so fitted for the work, as one who had known her so lonsr, and had known her so well? The absence of the present Memoir from the biography of the Christian church — imperfectly as its materials are compiled — the 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 extensively 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 involvins: allusion to the livingr. 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 render a separation difficult, if not impossible, without essentially impairing their beauty and effect.

The destruction, by her own hands, of one of her earliest and most important private journals, together with a large mass of letters of a deeply interesting and circumstantial character, deprives the work of that completeness of consecutive and incidental history which the editor would like to have preserved. The habit, too, of not dating many of her letters, and iottinofs in her diarv, would ereatlv have embarrassed the chronological arrangement of the matter, (and may possibly have done so to some slight extent,) but or the events themselves, which have formed tolerably correct landmarks, guidino- our course alona; the stream of her life.

Painfully trying to his feelings, and physically exhausting, as the work has been, it is not without some regret that his task is concluded. Not only has he counted it an honour — the least in his father’s house — to have been intrusted with an office so responsible and sacred, but the prosecution of his work has conferred a happiness hallowed and indescribable. It has been to him, in many a still hour of night, like a prolongation of personal communion with her pure and glorified spirit, thus “preventing the feeling of entire disruption, and forming a kind of intermediate stage between her society in this world and the everlasting union of heaven.”

Acknowledgments are due to those of her correspondents

who have kindlv furnished for the Memoir letters in th

•’ a — Letsession. It has been, necessarilv, but to a limited -jn Looking

-To Miss M.,

the compiler has been able to avail himself of thes.Qce in Sicktreasures. He hopes, however, to follow the p”^^ b PREFACE.

with a second one, composed entirely of selections from his mother’s unpublished remains, in which many of these letters will appear.

The work — already and solemnly dedicated to the Triune God — is now humbly laid at the feet of Christ’s one church, with the fervent prayer, that the example which it presents of a LIVING FAITH, and of a Catholic Christianity may instruct, comfort, and animate many saints in their Christian course; and thus bring honour and praise to Him whom, living, it was her supreme delight to serve; and whom, though dead, through these memorials, she still may glorify.

“Oh, cherish’d and revered! fond memory well
On thee with sacred, sad delight may dwell!
So pure, so blest thy life, that death alone
Could make more perfect happiness thine own.
He came; thy cup of joy, serenely bright,
Full to the last, still flow’d in cloudless light;
He came — an angel, bearing from on high
The all it wanted, — Immortahty 1” — Mrs. Hemans.

Leamington, England.

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