Affliction and Christian Patience
By Sarah A. Snyder
BRO. SMITH: Feeling it a duty as well as a privilege, I embrace the present opportunity of writing a few lines to you, and the brethren and sisters. I have waded through afflictions until I am almost overwhelmed251with trouble, sorrow, and care. Death has again entered our family, and torn from my embrace a loving husband, and kind father of two surviving children. But he did not stop here. My oldest daughter came home to see her father, she not being well. She witnessed his death and burial, and was then taken worse; after suffering all that it seemed the human frame could endure, she died two weeks and five days after her father's death. I fear I do not endure with that Christian patience I need in this trying hour. I have felt for years as though nothing could darken, or hedge up my way, but it seems as though I was left to myself, and that Satan desires me to sift me as wheat. Oh! that all would pray for me, that my faith fail not. All is dark and dreary here; death has rendered chill and dreary my heartstone, and I am lonesome; but thanks be to God, there is no wound that Heaven cannot heal. I still receive the Review which is a great source of comfort to me. Your afflicted sister, in hope of eternal life,
SARAH A. SNYDER.
Luzerne Co., Pa.