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ANGUISH OF COWPER'S BROTHER.

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 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.

COWPER'S CONVERSION.

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CHAPTER VI.

Cowper's conversion-The grace and glory of it.

DURING the period of Cowper's seclusion at St Albans, the tenderest and most skilful discipline, both for mind and body, was brought to bear upon him, 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. All 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 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.

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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 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 fulness 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."

Now, this was a most complete and wondrous cure. 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 quenchedthose spectres with dragon wings that had brooded over the chaos of his soul, were fled for ever; 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! The hand divine of the Great Physician, gentle and invisible, was in all this; the vail was taken from Cowper's heart, and the Lord of Life and Glory stood revealed before him; and when his soul took in the meaning of that grand passage in God's Word, it was a flood of heaven's light over his whole being. It was as sudden and complete an illumination as when the light shineth from one side of heaven to the other; and it was as permanent, through a long and blissful season of unclouded Christian experience, as when the sun shineth at noonday, or, in that other and more lovely image in the Word of God, as the sun's clear shining after rain. It was creative energy and beauty in the spiritual world, transcending the glory of the scene when God said, “Let there be light" in the material world.

But what was this sudden revelation? Assuredly Cowper had seen, had heard, had read, this passage before. Undoubtedly Mr Madan, himself an enlightened and

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DIVINE ILLUMINATION.

rejoicing Christian, must have presented it to him, and dwelt upon its meaning. Indeed, it had always been, in the speculation of the theological, and the experience of the Christian world, as marked a fixture and feature of truth and proof in Christian doctrine, as the sun is a radiant and reigning luminary in the heavens. And yet, Cowper had never beheld it before! But now, on the verge of a region of darkness that can be felt, through which he had been struggling, he saw it suddenly, transportingly, permanently. How can this be accounted for? What invisible influence or agent was busy in the recesses of Cowper's mind, arranging its scenery, withdrawing its clouds, preparing its powers of vision, and at the same time moving in the recesses of that profound passage, shining behind the letter of its phrases, as behind a vast transparency, and pouring through it, like a sudden creation, the imagery of heaven? There is but one answer; and this experience of Cowper's mind and heart is one of the most marked and wondrous instances on record, illustrative of his own exquisitely beautiful hymn, beginning,

"The SPIRIT breathes upon the WORD,
And brings the truth to sight."

It is one of the most precious demonstrations ever known of that passage in which the Apostle Paul describes his own similar experience, and that of all who are ever truly converted, "For God, who caused the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." It was one of the most marvellous and interesting cases of this Divine Illumination in the whole history of Redemption.