A TESTIMONY OF THE MONTHLY MEETING OF FRIENDS OF RHODE-ISLAND, CONCERNING MARY MITCHELL, DECEASED. OUR beloved Friend, MARY MITCHELL, having been many years a valuable member of this Monthly Meeting; and some of our minds retaining the lively savour of her exemplary life and religious labours; we are concerned to bear testimony to the Christian virtues with which she adorned her profession; and thereby to commemorate the efficacy of that grace through which she experienced preservation, and became truly quali fied to promote the cause of righteousness. She was born in Newport, Rhode-Island, the 10th of the 12th month, 1731. Her parents, JOHN and ELIZABETH CALLENDER, were of the Baptist Society, in which her father was many years a minister; and under their pious care she was preserved from the contaminating influence of vain, licentious company. 6653 When she was about sixteen years of age, being deprived of her father by death, Joseph and Sarah Jacob, who had long entertained a strict friendship for him, gave her an invitation to become one of their family, which she accepted, and continued to live with them till their decease; and she acknowledged that the instructive conversation and example of those valuable friends, and others whom she met with at their house, proved a particular blessing to her. Not long after she resided with them, the renewed visitations of Divine love were graciously extended to her, and desires raised to lead a more strictly religious life. But not duly waiting for the arising of " the Sun of Righteousness," by which the mist of early prepossession might have been dispelled; she apprehended it requisite for her, not only to be exemplary in the practice of what she esteemed religious duties, but to submit to the ordinances which she had been taught to believe were Divinely instituted. She was accordingly baptized in the twentieth year of her age, and continued for several years in the careful observance of the religious exercises in which she was educated. But the Father of Spirits, who doubtless saw her integrity, did not permit her to take up her rest in outward performances; but by the revelation of his son Jesus Christ, in her heart, enabled her to look beyond that typical and temporary dispensation, and to experience, that when He, the substance, is come, all shadows disappear. Having been thus mercifully favoured with the arising of the Day Star; and her mind being humbled under a sense of the insufficiency of human reason, to discover the way in which the Most High is pleased to lead his servants, she received "with meekness the engrafted word," and patiently waited for the further discovery of his will concerning her; in obedience to the manifestations whereof, she joined in membership with the Society of Friends, in the year 1762. Though her mind had been deeply baptized into death to her natural inclinations, previous to her renouncing some of her hereditary religious opinions; yet many were the subsequent immersions and severe conflicts which she experienced. But having carefully examined the ground on which she had advanced thus far; and believing with the Apos tle, that as "many as are baptized into Jesus Christ, are baptized into his death," that so they may know "the power of his resurrec tion unto life; and her faith in Him who |