every faculty and
feeling of my soul racked, and tormented into callous insensibility. I
was even hung by the locks over a yawning chasm, to which I could
perceive no bottom, and then--not till then, did I repeat the
tremendous prayer!--I was instantly at liberty; and what I now am, the
Almighty knows! Amen.

September 18, 1712.--Still am I living, though liker to a vision than a
human being; but this is my last day of mortal existence. Unable to
resist any longer, I pledged myself to my devoted friend that on this
day we should die together, and trust to the charity of the children of
men for a grave. I am solemnly pledged; and, though I dared to repent,
I am aware he will not be gainsaid, for he is raging with despair at
his fallen and decayed majesty, and there is some miserable comfort in
the idea that my tormentor shall fall with me. Farewell, world, with
all thy miseries; for comforts or enjoyments hast thou none! Farewell,
woman, whom I have despised and shunned; and man, whom I have hated;
whom, nevertheless, I desire to leave in charity! And thou, sun, bright
emblem of a far brighter effulgence, I bid farewell to thee also! I do
not now take my last look of thee, for to thy glorious orb shall a poor
suicide's last earthly look be raised. But, ah! who is yon that I see
approaching furiously, his stern face blackened with horrid despair! My
hour is at hand. Almighty God, what is this that I am about to do! The
hour of repentance is past, and now my fate is inevitable. Amen, for
ever! I will now seal up my little book, and conceal it; and cursed be
he who trieth to alter or amend.

END OF THE MEMOIR

WHAT can this work be? Sure, you will say, it must be an allegory; or
(as the writer calls it) a religious PARABLE, showing the dreadful
danger of self-righteousness? I cannot tell. Attend to the sequel:
which is a thing so extraordinary, so unprecedented, and so far out of
the common course of human events that, if there were not hundreds of
living witnesses to attest the truth of it, I would not bid any
rational being believe it.

In the first place, take the following extract from an authentic
letter, published in Blackwood's Magazine for August, 1823.

"On the top of a wild height called Cowan's-Croft, where the lands of
three proprietors meet all at one point, there has been for long and
many years the grave of a suicide marked out by a stone standing at the
head and another at the feet. Often have I