On Madness to relieve my throbbing brain And with some sweet illusion mock my soul ;- The perverse and ignorant children of this world are continually bringing it as a reproach against Religion, that it drives men mad,-and herein they are only speaking evil of the things they understand not: But was not this poor wretch going mad very fast for the want of it? And if at length he found peace and consolation in Religion, may it not be safely and confidently affirmed, that he was one instance (to which, beyond all question, thousands might be added) of a man whom true Religion saved from insanity? The Christian reader will of course perceive one expression at the close of a line, which reverence for the sacred name of the Most High would forbid him to repeat: but I did not feel myself at liberty to alter a single word in such a record. The exclamation may be read "O earth and heaven!" that no ear may be offended. But as it stands, there was in it perhaps, more of the nature of an agonizing cry to Him who alone can help (though uttered in deep and awful ignorance) than of a common and profane exclamation. I am sometimes inclined to question whether there might not have been, even in the repetition of these mournful lines, something that approached to the nature of prayer; for other circumstances in the history of the writer sufficiently indicate that a gracious hand, in a very wonderful manner, was leading him, blind as he was, by a way that he knew not, at the very period when these lines were written. But however this might be, it pleased the God of all grace and mercy, in due time, to look with eyes He And it is re of compassion upon all this anguish and agony, and then he had no longer reason so fretfully to say, that "nothing answered his complaining prayer." He found abundant peace and consolation in the knowledge of Him, who invites the weary and heavy-laden to Himself. found indeed rest unto his soul. markable that he found it in the midst of outward trials for he has often said that, for several years, he never had a wish or plan, great or small, of a merely personal and temporal nature, which was not crossed and thwarted: as if it were intended to shew, that his consolation and happiness was not to be sought at all in circumstances, but must arise, simply and exclusively, from the power of Religion, which enabled him to add, that (during the same period) he never experienced any disappointment or affliction, without finding reason to bless and praise God for it (and that sometimes with tears of thankfulness) before four-and-twenty hours had passed. Nor could it be expected that the constitutional tendency to melancholy and despondency would be entirely overcome and destroyed, though grace triumphed over it and effectually restrained it. Like other Christians then, he had trials and sorrows to endure, and was sometimes for a while in depths of manifold affliction : but the following lines (written in the beginning of 1824) as compared with the former, will sufficiently point out the difference between the sorrows of the Christian and those of the Unbeliever. While the latter sinks deeper and deeper in darkness and despair, the former begins, perhaps very often, with crying "out of the depths," but ends with triumph, and sometimes with rapture. Troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor. iv. 8, 9.) Alone-alone-alone upon the earth, An outcast and an exile, full of fears,- Poor and despised and friendless,-in the midst This weary and unprofitable world,— Where should I look, O Saviour! but to Thee? Turns to the East, and looks, and longs to see Some gleam of morning struggling through the storm. Bow down Thine ear and hear me ! for Thou knowest That I am poor and needy! and though these prayers Are all unworthy to be heard by Thee, Amid the empyreal regions, where enthron'd |