expressed there. "Among other matter," said he, "I reprehended and earnestly exhorted those who deny the effectual operations of the Holy Spirit, gravely expressing a wish that they may soon learn the reality of them from their own undoubted experience. Such was my wish for them; and, wretched creature that I was! I had neither the least knowledge or experience of that blessing myself, nor any care to acquire it." He held then an office in the University; but during a vacation, though there were occupations which seemed to require his presence in college, he availed himself of some fair pretext for going home, because Miss E. was in his father's neighborhood. It was agreed between them that in about two years he should accept a certain cure which had been offered him. Both were happy in the prospect; "but the purpose of God," says Van Lier, " was different; and, blessed be his name forever! our purposes vanished like smoke, while his stood fast, and he performed all his pleasure." Not many days afterwards, his betrothed began to show evident marks of declining health; she was soon confined to her bed, and every day diminished the hopes of her recovery. "When, on my daily inquiry," he says, "I was informed either that she was no better, or that her distemper rather increased, a sword seemed to pass through my heart, and, harassed by inexpressible fears, what I should do I knew not. I prayed to my unknown God for the restoration of her health. Never, I think, shall I pray again with equal earnestness. Her disease raged daily more and more, and in a short time the danger became imminent. My terrors and agitations of mind, keeping pace with her illness, had by this time increased to such a degree, that it became necessary for me, lest I should fall into absolute desperation, to contrive some employment or other, by which my distracted mind might in some measure be diverted to other objects. I determined to write a sermon, and, with consent of the minister of the place, to deliver it in public. A few days before the appointed time of delivery, I proceeded thus: I chose my text, spent some days in meditation on it, wrote down my thoughts, and committed the whole to memory. Thus I had not much leisure to advert to other things. The violence of my distress was at least alleviated, and my attention directed elsewhere. At the time fixed I mounted the pulpit. — (It was his first attempt as a preacher.) - The Lord did not suffer me (as justly and deservedly I might have been, for my rashness and irreverence) to be put to shame. I preached with much applause, and possibly not without some effect. On this and the following day the distemper seemed very much abated, and the health of Miss E. so far restored that I hoped in a short time to witness her complete recovery. My joy now was proportioned to the pangs I had suffered. I saw her, and with great pleasure declared to her my former dread and anxiety on her account, as well as my present sincere delight in the assurance I seemed to have of her restoration. After this, while they were carrying her to her bed, she looked at me with eyes expressive of singular affection, full of the tenderest meaning, and fixed on me with an extraordinary seriousness of attention. From that hour I was never permitted to see her. The joy that I had conceived proved transient as it was sudden. The disease returned on her with redoubled force, and raged to such a degree that her sufferings were extreme. The next day, to the best of my remembrance, a physician of the first eminence was called in: he pronounced immediately her distemper most alarming, and so dangerous that he entertained very little hopes of her recovery. These words sounded in my ears like a terrible clap of thunder. In truth, my condition was most unhappy, agitated as my mind was with extreme terror, and torn with unutterable grief. I labored, but it was with the utmost difficulty that I prevailed, to conceal in some measure the fearful state of my mind. In the mean time I had a horrible prospect before me of being present at her death a prospect that I could not bear to contemplate. I determined to leave her, and to depart suddenly from the place. Neither her condition, nor the state of my own mind, would allow me to bid her adieu. Accordingly, without her knowledge, overwhelmed with sorrow and dejection, I abandoned my home, and returned to the University." His first business there was to search the works of a foreign physician, in which he remembered once to have read an account of the disease which now threatened to be fatal to his happiness. And finding a mode of treatment recommended there, which was little used in his own country, he wrote immediately to request it might be tried, and prayed with extraordinary affection that these remedies might have a good effect, and that she, without whom life seemed impossible to himself, might be restored. Sorrow and love combined taught him to pray fervently; he offered his supplications in various manners, and urged them on various pleas, and sometimes flattered himself that the means would be attended with the desired success. On the third day after his return to college, news came that she was not worse, and that his prescription would be used, if the physician had no objection; but a few hours only elapsed before a friend of the family called upon him with the tidings of her death. At this he controlled himself so strongly, that he appeared to feel less than had been expected; but secretly he was in a state of desperation, and his mind so stunned as to have lost all power of reflection. Soon, however, he bestirred himself, walked forth, called on one and another, and thought of taking a short journey in hopes of some recreation; but the good providence of God, he says, would not suffer it. He then purchased some religious books which were at that time in high reputation; Walker's Sermons and Blair's were among them; but the one which first engaged his attention was Lavater's Prospect of Eternity. "A little hope dwelt in me," he proceeds, "that after death I should meet Miss E. again - a hope that sometimes supported and refreshed me. For that reason I searched diligently the writings of Lavater for arguments favorable to the opinion that we should know each other in a future life, and that the relations which obtain between us here will not entirely cease hereafter. At the same time I prayed to God that he would mitigate and do away the excessive sorrow with which I was tormented. But not one thought had I of faith in Christ and conversion." He had wished nothing so much as that he might be released by a sudden stroke from a life which had now become hate - ful; but Lavater's book soothed and strengthened him. He found more alleviation in reading religious works than in any other employment; and in this mood of mind, while musing over the Meditations of a certain Socinian, or rather Skeptic, on the principal truths of natural religion, which pleased him greatly by the elegant simplicity of the style, he found, most unexpectedly, a consolation which he had neither sought nor dreamt of. The case is singularly curious, and the whole narrative bears the stamp of sincerity. "I was employed," says the happy writer, "in reading this Socinianizing or skeptical author; I read him with close attention, and was absorbed in the meditations that he suggested. Suddenly awakened, as I may say, out of those musings, I thought on God and his works. An idea altogether extraordinary of the glory and majesty of God struck me. I had never in such manner represented God to myself as now. The eyes of my understanding being enlightened, I observed and admired in all his works to which I adverted, his stupendous power, wisdom, and goodness. I had in my mind an apprehension of the splendor of his glory and presence perfectly new to me. It was not so much a notion that my illuminated intellect entertained of his infinite majesty and perfections, as it was a sense of them; they were so present to me that I felt them. The glory of his infinite Godhead and presence filled me with delight; and I saw so clearly his supreme worthiness of all my love and obedience, that my mind was carried by a sweet and irresistible force to love him with sincerity; and my heart, broken at the sight, abhorred its former ingratitude. I instantly conceived the purpose of a total reform in my conduct, of a universal attention to all his commandments, and to take them for my rule of life thenceforth without any exception. This appeared to me not only perfectly just and right, but easy also, and pleasant. I seemed to myself to have been hitherto the blindest and most ungrateful of creatures, who had never formed to myself such views of God before, who had neither loved nor obeyed him." "From that memorable day my condition became widely different, and my course of life also. I had acquired new ideas of God, of myself, of the vanity of earthly things, and of the inestimable value of grace and divine communion. I was translated, as it were, into a new world. Christ lived in me, although till then I had not known him, and thus I became a new creature. Old things had passed away, and all things were become new. In short, it is easier to conceive than to express what passed in my mind on the occasion.Taught, therefore, by undoubted experience, I hence concluded that I had obtained, by the incomprehensible and effectual grace of God, that new birth, without which no man can see or enter the kingdom of God, and of which, formerly, I had neither the desire, nor even the thought. My ideas now of the infinite excellence and loveliness of God, were lively and perspicuous. Such also were my apprehensions of my duty towards him, of my own excessive ingratitude and disobedience, and of God's powerful and unmerited grace, by which he had quickened me. Fears of the divine wrath I had none; no dread of punishment. That I deserved it indeed, and was utterly unworthy of his favor, I saw plainly; notwithstanding which, I never for a moment supposed myself an object of divine wrath, or feared lest I should suffer the punishment that I had deserved. It was a subject on which anxiety, fear, doubt, had no place in me. A lively perception of the divine glory and beauty, an unspeakable sense of his gracious presence, an experimental acquaintance with the delight that belongs to an effectual love to him, these things secured me from all such terrors, and filled me with exceeding joy. In such a state of mind I could not doubt one moment concerning my admittance to the divine favor and communion, for I had sensible experience of both; knowing myself, however, at the same time unworthy of them, and unable to account for the grant of them to me, otherwise than in virtue of the blood and spirit of Christ alone, the Son of God, and only Savior of sinners." One remarkable circumstance in Van Lier's story is, that though love had been "the scale by which to heavenly love he had ascended," 74 no sooner had this new view of religion |