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PREVALENCE OF SCEPTICISM.

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wherever they are heartily maintained, is still more the object of disapprobation than the principles themselves." In a previous letter to Lady Hesketh, he had said, "Solitude has nothing gloomy in it, if the soul points upward. St Paul tells his Hebrew converts, 'Ye are come (already come) to Mount Sion, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.' When this is the case, as surely it was with them, or the Spirit of Truth had never spoken it, there is an end of the melancholy and dulness of life at once. A lively faith is able to anticipate in some measure the joys of that heavenly society which the soul shall actually possess hereafter. My dear cousin, one half of the Christian world would call this madness, fanaticism, and folly. . . . Let us see that we do not deceive ourselves in a matter of such infinite moment."

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If one half the Christian world had got so turned away from life into the frost and death of formalism, with little or nothing of life left but just enough for the demonstration of bitterness and opposition against what were called the doctrines of grace, and in ridicule of the style of fervent piety called Methodism, how deplorable an influence must have reigned in the world of popular and fashionable literature ! No wonder that a sarcastic and haughty deism, and the frigidity and carelessness of natural religion, maintained so great and wide a supremacy. The idea of conversion by the grace of God was scoffed at, was regarded as enthusiasm or fanaticism, assuming, indeed, a mild and melancholy type in an amiable man such as Cowper, but still a self-righteous, presumptuous, conceited form of

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PREVALENCE OF SCEPTICISM.

spiritual bigotry and pride. In such a period, great was the need of instruments to be raised up and prepared, like Cowper, Hannah More, and Wilberforce, to carry the powerful voice of truth into the drawing-rooms of the great, the gay, and the fashionable, and to set Christianity itself, in its simplest gospel dress, amid the attractions of science, genius, and literary taste.

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The arrest of Cowper-Providences and discipline of trial by which he was awakened-His attempt at suicide-His conviction of sin-His anguish and despair.

THE great event of Cowper's conversion made a change in his whole life and social circle, such as no temporary insanity, had he recovered from it in any other way than that of a religious faith by Divine grace, could have effected. It broke up all his habits, and removed him for ever from the gay and dissipated companions, in whose society so many years of the best part of his life had already been spent. "The storm of sixty-three," as Cowper designated the period of his terrific gloom and madness at St Alban's, made a wreck of the friendships of many years; and he said that he had great reason to be thankful that he had lost none of his acquaintances but those whom he had determined not to keep. He refers, in his letters, to some of them who had been suddenly arrested by death, while he himself was passing through the valley of the shadow of death in the lunatic asylum. "Two of my friends have been cut off during my illness, in the midst of such a life as it is frightful to reflect upon; and here am I in better health and spirits than I can almost remember to have enjoyed before, after having spent months in the apprehension of instant death.

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How mysterious are the ways of Providence! Why did I receive grace and mercy ? Why was I preserved, afflicted for my good, received, as I trust, into favour, and blessed with the greatest happiness I can ever know or hope for in this life, while they were overtaken by the great arrest, unawakened, unrepenting, and every way unprepared for it? His infinite wisdom, to whose infinite mercy I owe it all, can solve these questions, and none beside Him." One of these friends cut off so unexpectedly, was poor Robert Lloyd the poet, son of Rev. Dr Lloyd, one of the teachers at Westminster School. They had been among Cowper's intimate associates in the Nonsense Club, with Bonnel Thornton, George Colman, and others of a like convivial character. No wonder at the feelings of gratitude and amazement with which he looked back at his own danger, and at the supernatural suddenness and violence of his escape.

In 1762, the revolutionary chain of events in Cowper's existence began, and his character and life were together arrested and turned back from an earthly into a heavenly career. He had glided on through life thus far, till he was thirty-one years of age, a fine classical scholar, a man of exquisite refined taste, an amiable, playful, affectionate temper, a deep humorous vein, and a disposition for social amusement, as well as a tendency to mental depression, that led him to seek the enjoyment of society for relief. He had neither religious habit nor principle, but had come to an acquiescence, with which he says he had settled down, in the following conclusion as to the future life, namely, "That the only course he could take to secure his present peace was to wink hard against the pros

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pect of future misery, and to resolve to banish all thoughts upon a subject on which he thought to so little purpose."

To wink hard against the prospect of future misery! How graphic a picture of the struggle in a careless, prayerless, pleasure-loving heart, against partial conviction and anxiety in regard to the retributions of a future state! This winking hard against the prospects of future misery is, we apprehend, the only religious effort of many a mind, and the only step of many a disturbed and frightened conscience toward peace. Some persons wink so hard, that the effect is like that produced by a blow upon the temples, or a strong, sudden pressure over the eyeballs, making the eyes flash fire. Strange radiances appear in these eye-flashes, which some are willing to accept as revelations, when they have rejected the Word of God, or so utterly neglected it, as to be quite ignorant of its actual details in reference to the future world.

If the soul were suddenly illuminated, in the midst of its carelessness and unbelief, to see and feel things as they are, terror would take possession of the conscience and the heart, and all insensibility would pass away for ever. But we are often as men in a trance, or as persons walking in their sleep, and conscious of nothing. Sleep-walkers are never terrified, even by dangers that would take from a waking man all his self-possession. Sleep-walkers have been known to balance themselves upon the topmost ridge of the most perilous heights, with as much indifference and security as if they were walking upon even ground. They have been seen treading at the eaves of lofty buildings, and bending over, and looking down into the street, making the gazers, who have discovered the experiment, tremble with

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