315 CHAP. XV. RELIGION THE PRESERVATIVE FROM SUICIDE; OR, THE HISTORY OF CONSTANTIA. 'I hear a voice you cannot hear, 'The bane and autidote are both before me. Constantia and Honorius-Their early Acquaintance-Providential Deliverance of Constantia by means of a Thunder Storm-Long Separation-Renewal of Acquaintance-Her Life saved by Honorius-Distress of Mind-Deliverance from Suicide by Means of the Author's Sermon, entitled 'Suicide Providentially Arrested'-Peace of Mind bestowed by true Religion. I SHALL now introduce a remarkable tale of a young lady, who had purchased the materials of self-destruction, through melancholy despondency in an affair of the heart, and was prevented from the commission by a singular providence, in which true religion was concerned, just before the moment of execution. It was received by me in a letter, the 23d of March, 1822; and the fact may be depended upon as faithfully correct, and known to many in the populous town where the parties resided. The gentleman who writes it is a classical scholar. Though long, the letter is much abridged. Reverend and Dear Sir, My friend and I took an early opportunity of visiting Constantia's mother: the good old woman received us with tears in her eyes. It was with no little regret we heard that she had, within the last half year, refused an advantageous offer, though backed by a parent's consent, and even wishes, and against which she herself could urge no reasonable objection, or refuse on any other grounds than that she had no desire to change her condition. Well acquainted with her history, and interested about her, I frequently saw Constantia, as well as her mother, during my stay. Previously disposed, as has been before noticed, to serious reflection and thoughtfulness, she became daily more and more a prey to pensive dejection, which rapidly grew into a hopeless despondency, beholding herself with ab horrence, and looking on herself as an unfortunate and lost being, doomed to know no peace of mind here, and ensuring to herself eternal misery here after. In this state of mind it was that Honorius, one evening, at the close of an interview he had endeavored to apply in furthering her highest interests, incautiously made use of an expression which her already broken spirit felt with an indescribable degree of pain and poignancy: her altered manner was mistaken by Honorius, and attributed to a wrong cause, which he accordingly beheld rather with satisfaction than otherwise. 'As appeared afterwards, Constantia was for several days after this interview drowned in tears, to which succeeded a morbid melancholy; and it was now that the great enemy of our souls seized the opportunity to make one of his blackest and most fatal suggestions in her disordered mind: but the overruling hand of Providence was again conspicuously stretched forth to rescue this weak and fragile vessel from eternal shipwreck. Calling on her at this crisis, (as some would say, fortuitously,) I was struck with her manner, and the evident dejection of mind under which she labored; and which was the more obvious, as, although more sedate of late, as before mentioned, she was naturally of a cheerful disposition in company. Without any other idea than that of its general tendency to do good, I left with her a publication which I had the day before received from a much-esteemed friend in London. She promised to peruse it; a promise I was aware she would forthwith keep, knowing the interest with which she always received and read any thing I offered to her consideration. Deeply interested about this amiable and hapless female, in whose mind appeared, I thought, a dawning of divine light, it was not more than a day before I again visited her. 6 On my first accosting her, a more cheerful air appeared, I thought, to pervade her countenance and manner: it quickly, however, subsided, and we had not conversed many minutes when her countenance gave evident symptoms of her heart being full of some weighty and important matter: in a few seconds I perceived the tear-drop starting into either eye; while her lips, tremulous with expression, seemed laboring to find utterance: at length, clasping convulsively my hand, and bursting into tears, she exclaimed, in all the eloquence of grief, blended with other passions, "My deliverer!-my guardian angel! sent to my rescue!" and then, in the sweetest accents, broken by her fast-falling tears, she uttered her imperfect prayers to Heaven for every blessing on my head. "Oh, sir!" continued she, "but for you I had not been at this moment among the living-I had now ceased to exist! But for you, this body had now been cold in death; and my guilty soul, hurried by its own deed into the presence of its Maker, had now known its final doom! But God has been graciously pleased to make you the means of rescuing me from such a dreadful fate; and, oh, sir! I know not how to praise him for such a deliverance: help me to pray for power and strength, and that I may yet live to offer praises and prayers that may be acceptable!" 'I shuddered at the ideas which this address gave rise to; but a momentary pause enabled me to perceive all. The fact was as she now explained The unhappy Constantia, determined to rid herself of a now hateful existence, had meditated the commission of a crime of no less magnitude than the awful one of suicide. But the night before the intended execution of this demoniac act (to effect which a quantity of "oxalic acid" had been purchased) I called with the publication above alluded to. She was led to read the book, as the last she should ever look into: it was deferred to her last act; previous to which, I have reason to believe, she had composed and written letters to Honorius and her mother, and had arranged some trifling bequests to them, to myself, and to an infant cousin, about two years old, who, it appeared, to |