Augusta Clark Cole [pp. 1-5]

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AUGUSTA CLARK COLE.
A MODEL CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
BY R. M. HATFIRLD, D. D.
'T IS sweet, as year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, ill faith to muse
How grand in paradise our store."
C ARY AUGUSTA CLARK, second daugh ter of Bishop Davis W. and Mary J.
Clark, was borni in Trenton, New Jersey,
November 30, I842. Consecrated to tihe Lord
fromn her birth, and carefully trained by faithful
Christian parents, she was inclined to a religious
life from her early childhood. Before she was
ten years old, she professed faithli in Christ, and
united with the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
Poughikeepsie, New York, of which her father
was at that time pastor.
It is strange that it should have been so, but
her faith in Christianity was violently assailed
soon after her conversion. To quote her own
language, her heart "was filled with doubts and
misgivings." These doubts and misgivings
were of a serious and distressing character,
reaching to the foundation of all religion. She
had painful questionings with regard to a future
state of existence, the immortality of tile soul,
and the being and perfections of God. This
conflict was severe and long continued. The
influence and counsels of a judicious mother
were invaluable to her at this time. Referring
to this subject years afterward, she said, in a
letter to a friend: "I had a longing desire to
investigate and argue, and if I had been left to
myself, there is no knowing where I might have
been. But a mothler's love was about me constantly, advising me, counseling me, pleading
with me, and removing all works of a skeptical
character from my reach-telling me there were
some things we should not try to look into;
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that at best we could only see through a glass
darkly, and that a God comprehended is no God
at all." During all these years of harassing
doubt, shie did not restrain prayer, or neglect
the means of grace; and in His own time, He
who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, led
her by gentle methods into the blessedness of a
confirmed and joyful faith. Then she was enabled to say, "All the enjoyments the world can
give are nothing in comparison with the consciousness of God's favor, and the knowledge
that my name is written in heaven."
From this time shegrew in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
until her Cihristian character was developed
into proportions of rare symmetry and beauty.
Those who knew her most intimately do not
hesitate to speak of her as a model Christian.
Her life was so consistent, her piety so genial
and attractive, as to make her tile light and life
of the circle in which she moved. A cousin,
who was for some months a member of her
fathler's family, attributes his recovery from a
state of doubt and perplexity, to peace in believing, to her influence and prayers.
Her religion entered into the very web and
woof of her life, and made her presence a perpetual benediction in the household. The parents and children of that household constituted
a "deliciously happy family." Augusta was not
profuse and wordy in her expressions of affection, and did not often tell her parents or brotihers and sisters how much shie loved them; but
shie manifested hler affection in a thousand
thoughtful and unselfish ways. In thile closing
hours of her life, referring to her absent brothers and sisters, and her earnest desire to see
them, she said, "How devotedly I have loved
them, nobody knows." None of those brothers
or sisters ever questioned that she gave them