gle hard to
maintain his ground. "Oh, how did Satan now lay about him for to bring
me down again. But he could by no means do it, for this sentence stood
like a millpost at my back." But after two days the old despairing
thoughts returned, "nor could his faith retain the word." A few hours,
however, saw the return of his hopes. As he was on his knees before
going to bed, "seeking the Lord with strong cries," a voice echoed his
prayer, "I have loved Thee with an everlasting love." "Now I went to bed
at quiet, and when I awaked the next morning it was fresh upon my soul
and I believed it."

These voices from heaven--whether real or not he could not tell, nor did
he much care, for they were real to him--were continually sounding in his
ears to help him out of the fresh crises of his spiritual disorder. At
one time "O man, great is thy faith," "fastened on his heart as if one
had clapped him on the back." At another, "He is able," spoke suddenly
and loudly within his heart; at another, that "piece of a sentence," "My
grace is sufficient," darted in upon him "three times together," and he
was "as though he had seen the Lord Jesus look down through the tiles
upon him," and was sent mourning but rejoicing home. But it was still
with him like an April sky. At one time bright sunshine, at another
lowering clouds. The terrible words about Esau "returned on him as
before," and plunged him in darkness, and then again some good words, "as
it seemed writ in great letters," brought back the light of day. But the
sunshine began to last longer than before, and the clouds were less
heavy. The "visage" of the threatening texts was changed; "they looked
not on him so grimly as before;" "that about Esau's birthright began to
wax weak and withdraw and vanish." "Now remained only the hinder part of
the tempest. The thunder was gone; only a few drops fell on him now and
then."

The long-expected deliverance was at hand. As he was walking in the
fields, still with some fears in his heart, the sentence fell upon his
soul, "Thy righteousness is in heaven." He looked up and "saw with the
eyes of his soul our Saviour at God's right hand." "There, I say, was my
righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God
could not say of me, 'He wants my righteousness,' for that was just
before Him. Now did the chains fall off from my legs. I was loosed from
my affliction and irons. My temptations also fled away, so th