shoulders rejoicing.' And how did
it all come about? It was a tranquil evening in the early autumn, and a
Sabbath. There is always something conducive to contemplation about an
autumn evening. When, one of these days, one of our philosophers gives
us a _Psychology of the Seasons_, I shall confidently expect to find
that the great majority of conversions take place in the autumn. At any
rate, Andrew Bonar's did. As he looked out upon the world in the early
morning, he saw the shrubs in the garden below him, and the furze on the
moorland beyond, twinkling with the dew-drenched webs of innumerable
spiders. In his walk to the church, and in a stroll across the fields in
the afternoon, the hush of the earth, broken only by the lowing of
cattle, the bleating of sheep and the rustle of the leaves that had
already fallen, saturated his spirit. The world, he thought, had never
looked so beautiful. The forest was a riot of russet and gold. The
hedge-rows were bronze and purple and saffron. The soft and misty
sunlight only accentuated the amber tints that marked the dying fern. In
the evening, unable to shake off the pensive mood into which the day had
thrown him, he reached down Guthrie's _Trial of a Saving Interest in
Christ_, and gave himself to serious thought. Was it in the pages of
Guthrie's searching volume that he came upon the text, or did he, later
on, lay down the book and take up his New Testament instead? I do not
know. But, however that may have been, one great and glowing thought
took complete possession of his soul. As the tide will sometimes rush
suddenly up the sands, filling up every hollow and bearing away all the
seaweed and driftwood that has been lying there so long, so one surging
and overmastering word poured itself suddenly in upon his mind, bearing
away with it the doubts and apprehensions that had tormented him for
years. '_Of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace._'
Then and there, he says, he began to have a secret joyful hope that he
did really believe on the Lord Jesus. 'The fullness and freeness of the
divine grace filled my heart; I did nothing but receive!'

'_Of His fullness have all we received!_'

'_His fullness filled my heart!_'

'_I did nothing but receive!_'

Forty-two years afterwards, at the age of sixty-two, he revisited that
room and tried to recapture the holy ecstasy with which, so many years
earlier, he had 'first realized a found Saviour.'

'_Grace for grace!_