The Loss of My Beloved Pearce!

A selection from a letter by Sarah Pearce, wife of Samuel Pearce, pastor of the Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, England. She was writing to her friend, Francis Franklin, about the recent death of her 18 month-old son, Samuel. She also mentioned how terribly she missed her husband who had died a year earlier at the age of 33. The letter was written July 11, 1800.

Oh could I feel but half the resignation respecting the loss of my beloved Pearce! But I cannot. Still bleeds the deep, deep wound; and a return to Birmingham is a return to the most poignant feelings. I wish however to resign him to the hand that gave and that had an unquestionable right to take away. Be still then every tumultuous passion, and know that he who hath inflicted these repeated strokes is God; that God whom I desire to reverence under every painful dispensation, being persuaded that what I know not now, I shall know hereafter.

The Christian Lover: The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the Letters of Believers, by Michael Haykin, with Victoria J. Haykin, Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009, p. 68.