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course between us, forever!" In the first letter which he wrote to Lady Hesketh after the restoration of his reason, he referred to his unaccountable behavior in that interview. "I remember I neither spoke to you nor looked at you. The solution of the mystery indeed followed soon after; but at the time it must have been inexplicable. The uproar within was even then begun, and my silence was only the sulkiness of a thunder-storm before it opens. I am glad, however, that the only instance in which I knew not how to value your company, was when I was not in my senses."

Cowper's brother, on his dying bed, described his feelings at the time of the interview with Cowper in the period of his mental distress in London. He would have given the universe, when he found him in such anguish and despair, to have administered some comfort to him, and tried every method of doing it, but found it impossible. He began to consider his sufferings as a judgment upon his brother, and his own inability to relieve them as a judgment upon himself. But when Mr. Madan came in and spoke the precious consolations of the Gospel to Cowper's agitated soul, he succeeded in a moment in calming him. This surprised Cowper's brother, for Mr. Madan had, in the name of Christ, and the message of his mercy to the chief of sinners, a key to Cowper's heart, which his

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brother had then neither gained nor knew how to use; but it no longer surprised him when the light had broken upon his mind, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding had filled his heart during his own sickness.

CHAPTER VI.

COWPER'S CONVERSION. THE GRACE AND GLORY OF IT.

All

DURING the period of Cowper's seclusion at St. Albans, the tenderest and most skillful discipline, both for mind and body, was brought to bear upon nim, but for many months to no apparent purpose. It was not that reason was dethroned, as in the first access of his insanity, but an immovable, impenetrable, awful gloom surrounded him, out of which it seemed as if he never would emerge. this while, Cowper says, conviction of sin and expectation of instant judgment never left him, from the 7th of December, 1763, till the middle of July following; and for eight months all that passed might be classed under two heads, conviction of sin and despair of mercy. Over the secrets of the prison-house he draws the vail, if indeed he remembered them; but even when he had so far regained his reason as to enter into conversation with Dr. Cotton, putting on the aspect of smiles and merriment, he still carried the sentence of irrecoverable doom in his heart. The gloom continued, till a

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visit from his brother in July, 1764, seemed attended with a faint breaking of the cloud; and something like a ray of hope, in the midst of their conversation, shot into his heart.

;

And now, for the first time in a long while, he took up the Bible, which he found upon a bench in the garden where he was walking, but which he had long thrown aside, as having no more any interest or portion in it. The eleventh chapter of John, to which he opened, deeply affected him ; and though as yet the way of salvation was not beheld by him, still the cloud of horror seemed every moment passing away, and every moment came fraught with hope. It seemed at length like a spring-time in his soul, when the voice of the singing of birds might once more be heard, and a resurrection. from death be experienced. And, indeed, God's time of mercy in Christ Jesus had now come. Seating himself in a chair near the window, and seeing a Bible there, Cowper once more took it up and opened it for comfort and instruction. And now the very first verse he fell upon was that most remarkable passage in the third chapter of Romans, that blessed third of Paul, as Bunyan would have called it, "whom God had set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness through the remission of sins that are passed, through the forbearance of God." Immediately on reading

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this verse, the scales fell from his eyes, as in another case from Paul's, and in his own language, "he received strength to believe, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon him." "I saw," says he, "the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the Gospel. Whatever my friend Madan had said to me so long before, revived with all its clearness, with demonstration of the Spirit, and with power."

cure.

Now this was a most complete and wondrous Not more wondrous was that of the poor wild man of the mountains in Judea, of old possessed with devils, when brought to sit, clothed and in his right mind, at the feet of his Redeemer. The fever of the brain was quenched, those specters with dragon wings that had brooded over the chaos of his soul, were fled forever; the ignorance and darkness of an understanding blinded by the god of this world had been driven away before the mild, calm, holy light of a regenerated, illuminated, sanctified reason, in her white robe of humility and faith; and the anxious, restless, gloomy unbelief and despair of heart had given place to a sweet and rapturous confidence in Jesus. Oh, it were worth going mad many years, to be the subject of such a heavenly deliverance