She said it was
as good as a sermon; and as she was particularly fond of sermons, this
was a compliment. She used to beg me carefully to remember anything of
the kind that I heard, and when I repeated it, she had generally her
own word of advice to add, and wonderful tales with which to point the
moral,--tales of happy and unhappy deathbeds, of warnings, judgments,
and answers to prayer. Tales, too, of the charities of the poor, the
happiness of the afflicted, and the triumphs of the deeply tempted,
such as it is good for the wealthy, and healthy, and well-cared-for,
to listen to. Nurse Bundle's religious faith had a tinge of
superstition; that of Mr. Andrewes was more enlightened. But with both
it was a matter of every-day life, from which no hope or fear, no
sorrow or joy, no plan, no word or deed, could be separated.
And however imperfectly, so it became with me. Like most children, I
had my own rather vivid idea of the day of judgment. The thought of
death was familiar to me. (It is seldom, I think, a painful one in
childhood.) I fully realized the couplet which concluded a certain
quaint old rhyme in honour of the four Evangelists which Nurse Bundle
had taught me to repeat in bed--
"If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
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