What Keeps a Widow from Sinking?

In his book THE WIDOW DIRECTED TO THE WIDOW’S GOD, John Angell James talks about the widow in the moments and days after she is told that her husband has died:

“Astonished at her  own calmness; at her tranquility amide such a wreck of earthly hopes–she at first questioned whether it was indifference, stupefaction, or true religion.  It could not be the first, for she was as sure of her love to her husband, as she was sure of her existence; nor the second, for she reasoned, reflected, and anticipated.  It must therefore, be the last–it must be faith laying hold of the promise, and staying itself in this dark dispensation, upon the name of God.  It must be the power of God perfecting its might in her weakness–the flowing in of grace into a soul, which grace has first made willing and able to receive it.

What else could have sustained her, bereft as she was of what gave to earth its chief interest?  Let that true religion still support you.  What it has done–it an still do.  It has proved to you its reality and its power–still trust it as the anchor of your soul, sure and steadfast.  If it prevented you from sinking, when the shock came first upon you, it can do the same through every future stage of your solitary journeying, and every future scene of your now unshared sorrow.”

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