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CHAPTER II.

SCENES OF CHILDHOOD.

The Mother's religious Exercises.-Converse with God.—Religious Studies.-Removal to Antigua.-Toilsome Journey through the Wilderness of New York. - Mrs. Major Brown. -Death of Dr. Graham.-Mrs. Graham goes to Scotland.-Establishes a School for Young Ladies.

THE religious exercises of Mrs. Graham at this period, both before and after the birth of Joanna, were peculiarly deep and decisive. The wild and beautiful scenery about her, combining the flowing river and ocean-like lake with the unbroken virgin forest, through which the roar of the great cataract could be heard, strongly impressed her poetical mind with a sense of the Divine majesty and love. The responsibilities of the young wife and mother, cast upon the care of Providence, far from her native land, her faithful parents, and the pious friends of her youth, and, not least, the difficulty of maintaining her Christian character amid such novel circumstances, and without her accustomed religious privileges, brought her into closer communion with God, making her stronger from consciousness of her entire dependence upon her sympathizing, ever-present Savior. It is true that, in her humility, she condemned herself as low in her religion; but, from her conscientious regard B

for the Sabbath, her devotional solitudes, her cheerfulness in the discharge of her many domestic cares amid the trying hinderances of garrison life, her anxious, affectionate desires for her husband's sanctification, her thankful study with him of Doddridge's Rise and Progress, and her frequent reminiscences in after life of her days at Niagara, all tend to the conviction that He who leads his children by ways that they know not was then educating her for a higher Christian strength and decision of character; nor can we doubt that her then infant child, unconscious in the arms of her young Indian nurse, borne among the flowers of her father's garden, or sleeping under the blessing of her mother's guardian, prayerful love, received a baptism from the Comforter, invoked by maternal faith and trust. He who sanctifies from the womb can give a blessing in the womb, and sanctify a mother's travail and nursing at the breast. The mystery of the new birth will not allow us to understand the ways of blessing God has for the early childhood of the little ones whom believing parents put into the Master's arms, craving for them the covenant blessing.

In 1772, the hostilities preceding the war of our Revolution becoming more serious, and it being thought by the British government to remove the Royal Americans from the danger of sympathy with the Whig spirit, then rapidly spreading, Dr. Graham's regiment was ordered to the island of Antigua. The doctor having gone to New York on an unsuccessful attempt