9th October 1862
The Lord hath brought me forth into the wilderness that I might behold His works in their most terrible aspect, and I am undone – undone with the sublimity of it. Three days have I wandered amongst these mountains, where the pine trees stand as iron pillars upholding the vault of Heaven, and the streams rush over rocks of adamant. My soul is wrought to such a pitch of exaltation that I can scarce command my hand to inscribe these words, yet I must set down what hath been revealed to me, lest the vision fade as morning mist.
***
Yesterday eve, as I sat upon a great boulder – cold and grey as any blacksmith’s anvil – I perceived with sudden and overwhelming clarity the nature of my immortal self. We are not born complete, but must be hammered into shape by the very trials that seem designed to break us. The Almighty is the Master Craftsman, and each sorrow, each affliction, is but the strike of His hammer upon the metal of our souls. How do we bear the heat of the furnace? How do we endure the tempering waters? Only by understanding that we are being made into instruments fit for His divine purpose.
The news that reached me two days since – of the dreadful slaughter at Perryville in Kentucky, where thousands of our American brethren have fallen – hath pierced me through. Brother against brother, all that good metal of humanity melted down and wasted in the crucible of war. And here in our own England, the mill-workers of Lancashire starve for want of cotton, their looms standing idle as rusted ploughshares, whilst their children cry for bread. The tools of honest industry have become monuments to human suffering.
***
As I knelt upon the stone this morning, with the wind howling through the crags like the very breath of the Eternal, a question formed itself within my breast with such force that I knew it to be no mere fancy of mine own. If I were assured – absolutely assured – that the Almighty would grant success to any endeavour I might undertake, what work would I dare to attempt?
The answer came upon me like a flood of light. I would preach. Not as men preach, from pulpits of carved oak with the sanction of bishops, but as the ancient prophetesses spoke – with the authority that comes not from earthly ordination but from direct communion with the Source of all truth. I would stand before the multitudes and declare that every soul – man or woman, bond or free – contains within it a spark of the Divine, and that each must be permitted to unfold according to the pattern graven upon the heart by the Creator’s own hand.
How the world would revile me! How they would say I had fallen into enthusiasm, or worse, that I exhibited the symptoms of hysteria peculiar to my sex. Yet if I knew I could not fail – if I knew that hearts would be opened as locked doors yield to the proper key – I would speak such truths as would shake the foundations of our present society.
***
The setting sun hath turned these mountain peaks to burnished copper, and I am reminded that even base metals may be transmuted into beauty. I came into this wilderness three days past as one person – a woman bound by the narrow confines of drawing-room and needlework, of propriety and silence. I shall descend as another. The wilderness hath been my forge, solitude my hammer, and I am re-made.
I know not what use the Divine purpose may make of this vessel that I am, but I offer myself wholly to that service. Let others concern themselves with the politics of nations and the getting of wealth; I have seen into the eternal realm, and I am forever altered. My very self – that which I thought I knew – hath been melted down and poured into a new mould.
The night draws on, and I must make my way back to the shepherd’s cottage where I have taken lodging. Yet I carry within me a fire that no wind can extinguish, a certainty forged in solitude and tempered by revelation. Whatever awaits me in the world of men, I am armed now with a knowledge that cannot be taken from me: I am not merely flesh and circumstance, but an immortal soul with a commission to fulfil.
Thy will, not mine, be done. Yet let Thy will be made manifest through this willing instrument.
Set in the mid-Victorian era, the entry alludes to the American Civil War and the Battle of Perryville (8th October 1862), a hard-fought clash in Kentucky that checked a Confederate invasion and helped keep the border state under Union control. Britain, meanwhile, faced the Lancashire Cotton Famine as the Union blockade and disrupted Southern exports starved mills of raw cotton, causing mass unemployment and relief efforts across northern England. In the war’s aftermath, pivotal developments followed: the Emancipation Proclamation’s advance after 1862 victories, continued campaigns culminating in Union triumph in 1865, and lasting industrial and social realignments on both sides of the Atlantic.
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