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18 h arriet Neale led an exemplary life; however, she is memorialized more for the way she died than the way she lived. By dying well, Neale became a holy messenger and a model Christian demonstrating the strength and power of her faith. According to her memoir, when Neale became sick, she knew that her illness would prove fatal. Nonetheless, “she was entirely resigned to the will of Providence, and confidently believed that God would not let her die in doubts and fears.” Although she suffered indescribable pain over the course of four months, readers were told that she “never indulged in a single murmur.” Instead, “she observed, ‘who would not live a life of pain to feel what I now enjoy.’” When her mother remarked how patiently her daughter bore her afflictions, Neale responded, “we can do any thing when assisted by his grace.” And when asked by her husband if she was ready to die, Neale is described joyfully assenting, telling her husband to “prepare to meet me in a better world.”1 For those who surrounded Neale’s deathbed and the thousands who were later invited to witness her death through the publication of a four-page memoir in Methodist Magazine (MM), Harriet Neale became a model of holy dying . More importantly, she was converted into an argument for holy living. In fact, her memoirist stressed the persuasive power of Neale’s death, claiming that Neale’s example “would have convinced the most cold-blooded sceptic chaPter one dying Well After progressing a few years in her religious course, she was arrested by the hand of death: and as though Providence designed her as an example of patience and resignation to her neighbors, he permitted the messenger to hold her in affliction for several months. —Memoir of Harriet Neale, Methodist Magazine, 1822 e dying Well 19 of the efficacy of religion.”2 Memoirs such as Harriet Neale’s were not merely intended to celebrate and honor the memory of the deceased, but to motivate and instruct the living. Indeed, memoirs were carefully constructed rhetorical compositions. Unlike the first-person accounts and reflections that constitute contemporary memoirs, the pieces customarily labeled memoirs in MM are more akin to modern-day obituaries because they were posthumously composed narratives of another person’s life and death. Yet the memoirs in MM are far more rhetorical than contemporary obituaries, containing more than the factual accounts of a person’s life and accomplishments. MM memoirs function as testimonials in which the dead are resurrected to implore the living to seek salvation. Through accounts of their holy deaths, these individuals advocate not only Christianity, but also a distinct Methodist ideology. The concept of dying well and the publication of exemplary death for the edification of others is a long-standing religious tradition preceding Methodism . Hagiographies, which date back to the primitive church, have for centuries provided models for Christians by recounting the lives of saints who tried to follow Christ’s example. Similarly, Puritans produced biographical narratives that attempted to outline the stages of personal spiritual growth.3 Drawing on hagiographies and other religious biographical traditions, Methodist founder John Wesley began printing and distributing memoirs in his London periodical Arminian Magazine in 1781. He outlined his rhetorical intent, writing , “nothing is more animating to serious people than the dying Words and Behaviour of the Children of God.”4 Wesley believed that the most genuine example of one’s religious faith came when an individual bravely faced death. Moreover, as Vicki Tolar Burton explains, Wesley’s doctrine of perfection stipulated that while few individuals would experience a union with God or spiritual perfection during life, many would experience perfection at the moment life ended. This belief added even more import to the words individuals spoke as they approached death.5 Due to the rudimentary medical care of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, individuals like Harriet Neale often suffered slow, painful deaths in their homes. During these struggles, witnessed by family and friends, many believers demonstrated the benefit of their faith as they approached death unafraid . Through the collection, publication, and dissemination of memoirs, the early Methodist church expanded the audience surrounding the deathbeds of Christians in the hope that these accounts would rescue the unrepentant and validate the faithful. In Elizabeth Prentiss’s popular religious novel Stepping Heavenward (1869), Katy, the main character, confesses to her diary, “I have read ever so many memoirs, and they were all about people who were too...

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