his time he fell in with an old tattered copy of Luther's "Commentary
on the Galatians," "so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if
I did but turn it over." As he read, to his amazement and thankfulness,
he found his own spiritual experience described. "It was as if his book
had been written out of my heart." It greatly comforted him to find that
his condition was not, as he had thought, solitary, but that others had
known the same inward struggles. "Of all the books that ever he had
seen," he deemed it "most fit for a wounded conscience." This book was
also the means of awakening an intense love for the Saviour. "Now I
found, as I thought, that I loved Christ dearly. Oh, methought my soul
cleaved unto Him, my affections cleaved unto Him; I felt love to Him as
hot as fire."

And very quickly, as he tells us, his "love was tried to some purpose."
He became the victim of an extraordinary temptation--"a freak of fancy,"
Mr. Froude terms it--"fancy resenting the minuteness with which he
watched his own emotions." He had "found Christ" and felt Him "most
precious to his soul." He was now tempted to give Him up, "to sell and
part with this most blessed Christ, to exchange Him for the things of
this life; for anything." Nor was this a mere passing, intermittent
delusion. "It lay upon me for the space of a year, and did follow me so
continually that I was not rid of it one day in a month, no, not
sometimes one hour in many days together, except when I was asleep."
Wherever he was, whatever he was doing day and night, in bed, at table,
at work, a voice kept sounding in his ears, bidding him "sell Christ" for
this or that. He could neither "eat his food, stoop for a pin, chop a
stick, or cast his eyes on anything" but the hateful words were heard,
"not once only, but a hundred times over, as fast as a man could speak,
'sell Him, sell Him, sell Him,'" and, like his own Christian in the dark
valley, he could not determine whether they were suggestions of the
Wicked One, or came from his own heart. The agony was so intense, while,
for hours together, he struggled with the temptation, that his whole body
was convulsed by it. It was no metaphorical, but an actual, wrestling
with a tangible enemy. He "pushed and thrust with his hands and elbows,"
and kept still answering, as fast as the destroyer said "sell Him," "No,
I will not, I will not, I will not! not for thousands, thousands,
thousands of worlds!" at lea