She had borne severe trials for her religion with a spirit of patience and Christian propriety which won the love and esteem of the community.

She went to the altar of God, a widow, with the little deaf and dumb child, and presented it for baptism.

It was as though the impending calamity of its father's death had shut up some of the senses of the child, and God had placed it in the mother's hand as a silent memorial to her, for life, of his chastising love.

She left her fatherless flock in the family pew, and went with her nursling, not merely to give it to God, but to receive for it the seal of his covenant, bowing submissively to his inscrutable appointment, and imploring the God of Abraham to be still her God, and the God of this her seed.

That scene had not failed to make deep impressions upon the other children; and now it was proposed to one of them that she should, by connecting herself in marriage, disavow her mother's right to cling, in those hours of anguish, to that asylum of the fatherless, infant baptism,--that very present help in trouble, the covenant of God with believers and their offspring.