PHILANDER. Let pride and ridicule emit their spight, For thee, factitious pleasures I resign, These fields, their flocks, the master, all are thine. EVENING. "AT the close of the day," when the sun sinks to rest, And twilight appears in her mantle of grey; When woo'd by lone quiet each bird seeks her nest, While the last gleam of evening fades in the west, And the moon sheds the mimic reflection of day: Ah! then, when the mind is divested of care, If naught but the toils of the day has oppress'd, self at his holy table, he would he pleased to grant me strength to overcome every difficulty, and repentance and faith to come acceptably. I soon perceived the lions were chained, and their roaring seemed as faint echoes. I made the dreaded application to the forbidding Pastor, in whose presence I had so often trembled; but instead of the chilling severity I expected, he received me with the most encouraging tenderness, and soothed me with assurances of his affection. I thought I was now at the gate of heaven; the mountains of difficulties that had reached the skies were overleaped, and I anticipated a path, straight indeed, but smooth and easy, abounding with the flowers of Paradise. The dream was short, and another succeeded that precipitated me from the heights of bliss to the gulph of despair. The same evening I felt the return of a malady to which I was subject. The first symptoms gave me no alarm. I went to rest in the full confidence that on the ensuing Sabbath my joy would be complete. While I slept, my fancy presented me walking on a narrow piece of delightful ground, on which the light shone in the mildest radiance; suddenly I was taken off from the ground and suspended over a smoaking abyss, to which I could see no bottom, nor could I perceive what it was that kept me from falling, standing upon nothing, with no visible hand to support me. I conceived it would not be possible to stand long thus unsupported, and turning to the ground I had lost, made an anxious but ineffectual struggle to regain it; when a voice, at the moment of failure, exclaimed, "It is too late." I awoke in terror, which I strove to suppress by reasoning on the fallaciousness of dreams, and the weakness of suffering the phantoms of unguided fancy to disturb the mind. The success of this reasoning was but partial; I could recover but a twilight kind of repose at best; and as the symptoms of my disorder increased, the dream, with each appropriate and terrifying circumstance, seemed, from the analogy, to predict my doom. Two days passed in alternate hope and despondence. I still persisted in the resolution of attending the service. If I had strength and life given for this, I was content to die the next moment. This was the sum of my constant petitions, until the evening previous to the supper, my mother declared the impracticability of my attendance rendered it madness to think of, and she positively forbid it. Indescribable terrors took hold of me. Having so long slighted the invitations of divine love, and trampled on the blood of a crucified Saviour, what had I to expect but "a fearful looking for of fiery indignation?" I conceived the little repast of joy I had tasted, and the nearness of the privilege to which I now so ardently aspired, was intended to show me the magnitude of the blessings I had wilfully abused and wantonly lost; I felt the sentence of condemnation in my soul, and acknowledged it just as the disposition to outbrave it vanished in the horror of anticipated torments-not only anticipated, but already begun. Jesus Christ, with all his benefits, were hid from my view, and hope gave place to absolute despair. The sensation of a state so hopeless can only be felt, it can never be described. How long I could have supported it, I know not. Blessed be the goodness of the God of grace and eternal compassion, he left me to suffer but a few hours; the visible, the silent anguish of my mind was thought by those around to proceed from the painfulness of the disease under which I laboured. Alas! it was then unconsciously suffered; I waited anxiously the hour when all around me would be wrapped in sleep, and then silently arose, not to pray, for that seemed not only useless, but presumptuous. In agony inexpressible, I snatched a book of Psalms that lay at hand, and opened it with a half formed hope of finding there some little alleviation of the misery I endured; it opened at a hymn, paraphrased by Dr. Watts from the 8th chapter of Romans; the two first verses described the safety of the saints from condemnation. This was no consolation to me, who considered myself a reprobate. In the third I found these lines: "He lives! he lives! he reigns above, "Or what shall tempt us to despair!" The wretch struggling in deep waters, to whom a friendly hand is stretched forth, can only conceive the sudden transition of my feelings. As I proceeded in the hymn, in the reading these two lines, "Christ is our life, our joy, our hope, "Nor can we sink with such a prop," a sudden light flushed upon me, whether external, or within, I am yet unable to determine. I turned involuntarily to the windows in the room, to see if there was any natural light admitted there; but from the sweet serenity of mind that instantly succeeded, I was convinced it was light from above, whether conveyed through the outward organs or not. The burden of sin, that a moment before weighed me, as it were, into N the depths of hell, had fallen off. The darkness that had enshrouded my mind, fled away, as the shades of night before the rays of the morning. I was as a nurtured child reposing on the lap of paternal indulgence. I could now cheerfully acquiesce in the delay of my request, and hail a Father's love in thus kindly affording a season of recollection and preparation, not now as formerly by works of righteousness that I could do (the inability of self had been evinced to my smart), but in the all-sufficient righteousness of another, to rest my hope on "a rock that could never be moved." On the following spring, I obtained the accomplishment of my desire, in a union with the visible church on earth, and in the enthusiasm of a first love, longed for the communion of the church in heaven, 66 as the hart panteth for the water-brooks." Alas! how soon this love abated! How often have I wandered as a sheep from the fold, and as often brought back, either by the rod of reproof, or the bands of love; sometimes rejoicing in the clearness of evidence, and again mourning over the lost roll, heedlessly dropped in the pursuit of unreal pleasure, or overlooked in the eagerness for worldly advantages. Being engaged in a course of biographical reading for some time, I found many instances of extraordinary manifestations of the divine Spirit to persons of various sects and descriptions. I became fearful lest I was still a child of wrath, and had not passed from death unto life. I became very importunate at the throne of grace, for a sensible manifestation of the Holy Spirit, as an evidence of acceptance; like the widow, my petitions were fervent and frequent, determined not to go without the blessing. One night having been more earnest than usual |