Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: to be faithful to sinners. It must not be inferred from this record that she had heretofore done nothing in this part of her work, for she had done much; but she had not done enough to satisfy her conscience; she felt that she had not done all her duty. Brother, sister in Christ, read over again this last record from her pen, and go and do likewise. CHAPTER VIII. About the beginning of March, 1829, Miss Hobble was visited with a more severe attack, which brought her, in the course of two or three weeks, very low. It seemed to me for some time that she could hardly survive it. But the Lord designed by this visitation to prepare her for doing his will a little longer, and still more faithfully upon the earth, before he should call her away from it for ever. He does not grieve willingly the children of men ; he afflicts his people to purify their souls and fit them better for his service on earth, and for the eternal enjoyments of the better world on high. There is something very touching and beautiful in the illustration given by the prophet Malachi (3 : 3,) of the process by which Jehovah purifies his people. And he ' shall sit as a refiner and purifyerof silver.' The Lord, when there is need of it, puts his people into the furnace of affliction, and kindles around them, as the refiner of silver around his impure metal, an intense heat. As the refiner keeps up the fire until the dross is consumed and the metal becomes pure, so does God with respect to his people. The refiner sits, looking intently into the glowing furnace and watching the contents of his crucible, until he sees in the molten silver the reflection of his own face, and by this, he knows it to be pure ; so, when the Lord afflicts his children, he sits intently and anxiously watching them ; and as soon as he s...