"He pays-back
what money he had won at gambling," says the story;--he does not think
any gain of that kind could be really _his_. It is very interesting,
very natural, this "conversion," as they well name it; this awakening of
a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful _truth_
of things;--to see that Time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and
this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell!
Oliver's life at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it
not altogether as that of a true and devout man? He has renounced the
world and its ways: _its_ prizes are not the thing that can enrich him.
He tills the earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants
round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of
preachers; nay, can himself preach,--exhorts his neighbors to be wise,
to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant," or
other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other
Higher World; his aim to get well _thither_ by walking well through his
humble course in _this_ world. He courts no notice: what could notice
here do for him? "Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye."

It is striking, too, how he comes-out into public view; he, since no
other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance. I mean,
in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to law with
Authority; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns back
into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. "Gain influence?" His
influence is the most legitimate; derived from personal knowledge of
him, as a just, religious, reasonable, and determined man. In this way
he has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the
earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it was at this point that he
suddenly became "ambitious"! I do not interpret his Parliamentary
mission in that way!

His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest
successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him,
more light in the head of him, than other men. His prayers to God; his
spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, and
carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set
in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; through
the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the "crowning
mercy" of Worcester fight: all this is good an