The following is a continuation of the book by Joseph Jones called The Influence of Health and Disease on Religious Experience. The Apostle James reproves those who are too ready to connect their enticements to evil with supernatural causes, who ascribe to circumstances around them an influence which proceeds from a susceptibility within them. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempts he any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lusts and enticed. The danger of walking among sparks belongs only to those who wear combustible garments. Nothing is more common among the desponding and morbid than a proneness to this very mistake. They impute their unhappy experiences to a cause which very often is only the painting of their fears. How far the Prince of Tempters may take occasion from their sickly physical state to lead them into errors concerning their spiritual, we presume not to say. There is, however, the same intervention of second causes in their case, as in that which James speaks of. They are drawn away by their own bodily affections and enticed into grave mistakes, which cause their many doubts and disquiet about their spiritual safety. It is the temptation of some in their desponding state to think that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. We have known Christians with imminent gifts and piety, which nobody doubted but themselves who have been at times exceedingly distressed with the apprehension that they were guilty of this unpardonable sin. The perplexing question concerning its nature, then, which Father Austin said, there was no harder in all the Scriptures, is clearly unanswered as they suppose in their own forlorn experience. Among the schoolmen of the Middle Ages there were no less than six different opinions about this fearful sin, all of which in later times have been rejected as erroneous. John Calvin defined it as a malicious resistance to divine truth, only for the sake of resistance. In this view, Arminius concurred with Calvin, although opposed to him and so many others of more importance. Since a reformation, a more common opinion has been that it was the sin of the Jews when they ascribed the miracles of Christ to the agency of Satan. Thomas Chalmers and others think it to be not so much any one sin against the Holy Ghost, as a prolonged sinning, a resisting and grieving the Heavenly Comforter until He ceases to strive, and withdraws when the forsaken heart is left like a field on which the clouds shed no more rain. The good seed of the Word will not take root and bring forth fruit in a former case, any more than bear grain, wheat, or some other will germinate, so long as the earth is powder and dust in the absence of proper moisture. Conviction of sin, regeneration, sanctification are no longer possible because the dishonored spirit, so often repelled, has let these impenitent persons alone. Sinning now has become unpardonable, as it can no longer be repented of, and not because it is, in its own nature, worse than it was before the spirit's final exit. It does not come within the scope of the present volume to write a treatise on this grave subject. but it is introduced to the reader's notice only so far as to exhibit the moral effect of a physical cause. The gloomy prognosis in cases like these is a token. not as the sufferers suppose that they are unconverted, but that they are unwell. Mr. Kemper says that in 99 instances out of 100, it is a symptom of bodily disease of which states Satan takes advantage to annoy and distress them. This appears, he adds, for two reasons. First, that so many recover become comfortable, and cease to charge themselves with the commission of that most frightful of all sins. The second is that others know their characters to be better than they say they are, and from the unreasonable charges which they bring against themselves, which others in their sober senses can see, were impossible. We once knew a young man who had lived twelve years under the impression that he had survived his day of grace. He supposed that he could refer to the very day, and mention the act by which he caused the Holy Spirit to withdraw, and leave him in a condition of hopeless abduracy. In all this time he had shown a becoming respect to the preaching of the gospel, or that was visible to others. No one suspected what was the state of his mind, not his pastor, nor most intimate friends, for in all his conversation he had carefully concealed it from both. But the spirit that he had exiled forever, as he imagined, was striving with him still, and at length constrained him to reveal this oppressive secret to his pastor. He was then told that the very distress of mind which had caused him to seek that interview was at once the token and effect of the Holy Spirit's presence. The remark was supported by citation from the scriptures and followed by prayer. His mind was at once relieved when his joy was now great in proportion to his former deep and long-continued sorrow. Thomas Ridgely says that such as are guilty of the sin have no conviction in their conscience of any crime committed herein, but stop their ears against all reproof, and often set themselves with the greatest hatred and malice against those who, with faithfulness, admonish them to the contrary. that they go out of the way of God's ordinances and willingly exclude themselves from the means of grace, which they treat with the utmost contempt, and use all means in their power, that others may be deprived of them." A consciousness of sin, then, according to Thomas Ridgely, a solicitude and sorrow produced by a person's fears of having sin beyond pardon, are evidence that his case is not so desperate as he supposes. His pain to find he cannot feel is a symptom of vitality. It proves that he is not passed into the callous state of those whom the Apostle describes as past feeling. Some time before the Reverend Daniel Baker made a profession of religion, he was in great spiritual darkness and on the borders of despair from the fear that he'd send away his day of grace. The unpardonable sin, the unpardonable sin, I was very much afraid that I'd committed it. But one day reading a book called Russell's Seven Sermons, I met with a sentence in the last sermon which gave me great comfort. It was to this effect that if a man has any serious concern about the salvation of a soul, and has a tender thought in relation to his Redeemer, that was proved positive that he had not committed the unpardonable sin. Immediately my burden was gone, every cloud was scattered, and my feelings became most delightful. It was like the beauty of spring after a long and dreary winter. I had new views of my Savior. Felt that I could rest upon Him when was unable to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Another common temptation is to the adoption of a false standard of duty or of ambiguous evidences of a regenerate state. Like the Jews who could not discern the signs of the times which were so visible in the moral firmament, and so intelligible to many, they ask for others that the Savior would not give, and wish they had no divine warrant to expect. Thus how many have lost their spiritual peace by the sudden occurrence of an alarming passage of Scripture, as if it were a supernatural warning. They forget that a bad spirit can suggest a text as well as a good, and that its meaning is liable to be perverted in order that it may suit the morbid state of their mind, when it is presented just as water takes the color of the soil over which it runs. It is mentioned in the life of Mr. Lackington, the celebrated bookseller, that when quite a youth he was at one time locked up to prevent his attending a Methodist meeting in Taunton. Under a strong mental impression that he ought to go, he opened his Bible for direction when his eye caught the passage, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hand they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. This, Mr. Lackington says, was quite enough for me. So, without a moment's hesitation, I ran up two pairs of stairs to my own room, and out of the window I leaped to the great terror of my poor mistress, who had charge of me. He was, of course, severely bruised and confined to his bed fourteen days. Doubtless young Lackington was sincere, and was not aware of his adopting the very sense of the passage imposed on it by Satan, and which in his excited state he was so predisposed to receive. The great moral lesson which this experience taught him was never forgotten, nor was it bought dearly even at the expense of so much bodily peril. It is a striking exemplification of the folly of all who are like him enticed to bite the tempter's hook when baited by a text of the Bible. Persons sometimes think themselves to be following a light from heaven, when they are led by a vain imagination and a deceiving heart. Others again trust to the evidence of dreams and are at one time alarmed and at another comforted by thoughts from the visions of the night, which they seem to believe are prompted by the same spirit, that address Eliphaz the Temanite, as if physiology had not made it too clear to be any longer doubted, that the character of our dream depends very much upon our physical condition, as affected by the amount or quality of our food last taken, and the state of our stomach. One man retiring to bed after a light meal will dream of paradise, while the digestive organs of another, gorged and oppressed by the excesses of the evening, will make him dream of perdition. Baron Trenck relates of being almost dead with hunger when confined in his dungeon. His dreams every night presented to him the well-filled and luxurious tables of Berlin, from which, as they were spread before him, he imagined he was about to relieve his hunger. Not a small proportion of our dreams at night are the prolonged waking thoughts of the day, and come according to Solomon through the multitude of business. Condorcet told someone that while he was engaged in abstruse and profound calculations, he was frequently obliged to leave them in an unfinished state in order to retire to rest, and that the remaining steps in the conclusion of his calculation had more than once presented themselves in his dreams. Samuel Coleridge says that after reading an account of the Khan Kubla, he fell into a sleep and in that situation composed an entire poem of not less than 200 lines, some of which he afterwards committed to writing. Jonathan Edwards so fully believed that our dreams are generally fashioned from the materials of the thoughts and feelings, that we have while awake, that he used to take particular notice of his dreams in order to ascertain from them what his predominant inclinations were. Such being the connection between the operations of our mind and sleep and our sensations and conceptions when awake, we see the error of those who are so ready to ascribe their dreams to a supernatural influence and receive them as revealing the will of God. We once knew a lady in advanced age that gave little evidence of piety, who had cherished for many years an unwavering assurance of her salvation, which was based upon nothing but a dream. That God no longer informs men of his mind through supernatural dreams, as he did in patriarchal times, we do not assert. We presume to fix no limit to this method of divine communication, to say when it ceased, or that old men do not dream dreams and young men see visions still. The apparent connection that is sometimes seen between men's dreams and the subsequent events which they seem to foresee and predict is too striking and exact to be accidental or fortuitous, or to be explained on simple and natural principles. A dream of this sort is mentioned in the memoir of a distinguished clergyman of England to whom the facts were well known, a young lady whose mind had become awakened to consider the subject of religion with special interest, dreamed of being in a place of worship where she heard a sermon, but when she awoke could remember nothing but the personal appearance of the preacher in this text. The impression on her mind, however, was very deep, and she resolved on the next Lorsday morning to find a place that she dreamed of, if she should go from one end of London to the other. About one o'clock she found herself in the heart of the city where she dined, and afterwards set out again in search of this place of worship. About half to after two o'clock, she saw a great number of people going down the old Jewry and determining to see where they went. She was led by them to the meeting house of the Reverend Mr. Shower. She had no sooner entered the door than turning to a companion. She said, with some surprise, this is the very place I saw in my dream. It was not long before Mr. Shower entered a pulpit when with great surprise, she observed, this is a very man I saw in my dream. And if every part of it holds true, he will take for his text the seventh verse of the 116th Psalm. Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with thee. When he arose to pray, every petition expressed the desire of her heart, then followed the sermon which to her joyous amazement was on the very passage which had been impressed on her mind in the dream. The result was her saving conversion and her finding that rest for her soul which she had so long sought elsewhere in vain. Not less remarkable was the case mentioned by Dr. Abercrombie, of our most respectable clergyman in the country parish of Scotland, who made a collection in his church for an object of public benevolence in which he felt deeply interested. The amount of the collection which was received in ladles carried through the church fell greatly short of his expectation. And during the evening of the day, he frequently alluded to the fact with expressions of much disappointment. In the following night he dreamed that three one-pound notes had been left in one of the ladles, having been so compressed that they had stuck in the corner when the ladle was emptied. He was so impressed with the vision that in an early hour in the morning he went to the church, found the ladle that he had seen in his dream, and drew from one of the corners of it the three one-pound notes. The same writer gives an account of another clergyman who had gone to Edinburgh from a short distance in the country, and was sleeping at an inn when he dreamed of seeing a fire. and one of his children in the midst of it. He awoke with the impression and instantly left town on his return home. When he arrived within sight of his house, he found it on fire and got there in time to assist in saving one of his children. when the alarm and confusion had been left in a state of danger. The authority on which we have the story forbids us to doubt its authenticity. But while there is now and then a case like these which no philosophy of the mental powers can fully explain, yet the wild, grotesque, incoherent, and non-natural character of most prove them, to be the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy. Many Christians of a nervous temperament are tempted to make too much of religious frames. They will imagine themselves perhaps to be in a state of favor with God, or to be unreconciled according to their present impression of mental enjoyment. Mr. Brownlow North, in one of his public addresses in Ireland, mentioned the case of a female in Belfast who said that she knew that Christ had pardoned her sins because she was so happy, but if her feeling of happiness were taken away, she would not think her sins to have been forgiven. Many imagine, unless they are at all times in a glow of fervor, an ecstatic frame of feeling all must be wrong with them. But there is nothing more dangerous or deceptive than a life of mere feeling, and its most dangerous phase is a life of religious emotional excitement. It is in the last degree erroneous to consider all this glowing ecstasy a frame, a necessary condition of healthful spiritual life. You will not be asked in the last great day whether you had great enjoyment or much enlargement of soul here. Speak to that vast multitude which no man can number now around the throne. Ask them whether they came through much consolation and joy in the Lord. No, through much tribulation. Ask them whether they were saved by their warmth of love to their Savior. No, but they had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Many persons, Mr. North says, derive their faith from their feelings, whereas they ought to do the exact reverse and let their feelings flow from their faith. The power of temptation in the form we now speak of was exemplified to a remarkable extent in the case of Mrs. Hawkes, the devoted friend of Mr. Cecil of London and an honored servant of Christ. Her copious diary is full of meditations which exhibit her spiritual vacillancy and show that this was her infirmity. Thus, after one of her transitions from spiritual gloom to light and hope, she exclaims, How variable are our frames and feelings. How like the shining in the shadow passing over the green plain. But blessed be God, our salvation consists not in frames and fillings, but in being engrafted on the living vine. And abiding in Christ consists not even in our sensible hold on him, but in our simple belief of his gracious declaration that he will never leave, nor forsake, nor suffer us to be plucked out of his hand. In reference to such cases as hers, Mr. Newton remarks that a humble, dependent frame of spirit, perseverance in the appointed means, care to avoid all occasions of sin, a sincere endeavor to glorify God, an eye to Jesus Christ as our all in all are sure indications that the soul is thriving, whether sensible consolation abounds or not. Neither high nor low frames will do for a standard of faith. Self may be strong in both. Persons who are conscious of such spiritual oscillation should learn to discriminate between their emotions or frames and their habitual principles of action. The former may be likened to the little eddies near the margin of a river, which at different times flow towards all points of the compass. The latter are the current constantly tending the same way, and which make it evident in what direction the great volume of water is running. In one of his affectionate letters to Mrs. Hawks, it relates to the religious depression which she often suffered. He compares an afflicted believer to a man that has an orchard laden with fruit, who because the wind has blown off the leaves, sits down and weeps. If one asks, what do you weep for? Why, my apple leaves are gone. But have you not your apples left? Yes. Very well, then, do not grieve for a few leaves, which could only hinder the ripening of your fruit. Pardon and promises that cannot fail lie at the root of your profession, my dear daughter. And fruits of faith, hope, and love that no one can question have long covered your branches. The east wind sometimes carries off a few leaves, though the rough wind has stayed. And what if every leaf were gone? What if not a single earthly comfort were left? Christ has prayed and promised that your fruit shall remain, and it shall be my joy to behold it in all eternity. Not less injurious to the spiritual progress of others is a habit of mental introspection. We don't mean the salutary practice of self-examination, which is commended alike by the apostolic injunction and Christian experience. But we speak of a continual peering inward on their thoughts, emotions, affections, convictions of sin, and various exercises of mind, instead of looking away from them all to Christ. It is a natural proneness of a doubting and fearful mind, which it is often hard to resist. But like Mary's visit to the sepulcher after the resurrection, it is a seeking of the living among the dead. Some persons in their desponding moods, Mr. Spencer says, think only of themselves and their sins. Nothing can magnify equal to melancholy, and nothing is so monotonous. A melancholy man left to himself in the sway of his melancholy will not have a new idea once a month. His thoughts will move round and round in the same dark circle. This will do him no good. He ought to get out of it. Depression never benefits body or soul. We are saved by hope. But next in danger to this mistake of looking to themselves for help and light is their making a test of the experience of others for the trial of our own. In a letter to Mr. Anderson, Dr. Thomas Chalmers speaks of the besetting anxiety that attends such a practice, concerning which he makes the following excellent suggestions as the promptings of his own observation and consciousness. When you read books upon the subject of conversion, you see a certain process assigned. and in such a confident and authoritative way, too, that you are apt to conceive that this is the very process and that there can be no other. I compare it with my own history and my own resolutions, and I am apt to be alarmed at the want of correspondence and a good many particulars. Thomas Scott's force of truth is an example. Philip Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, another. And last, though not the least, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I pronounce them all to be excellent, in that there are many exemplifications such as they described, but the process is not authoritative, nor is it universal. The Spirit takes its own way with each individual, and you know it only by its fruits. I cannot say of myself that I ever felt a state of mind corresponding to John Bunyan's slew of despond. Indeed, I blame myself most sincerely that I cannot excite in my heart a high enough conception of sin and all its malignity. I hope I have the conviction, but I cannot command a degree of emotion that I should like. And in the hardness of heart not so tenderly alive as it ought to be, to the authority of my lawgiver, and the enormity of trampling upon him, I feel how far and very far I am at this moment, From the measure of the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus our Lord Now what am I to infer from this that I have not yet surmounted the impassable barrier which stands between me and the gate of life? so one would suppose from John Bunyan and so I would suppose myself were it not for the kind assurance of my Savior whose every testimony is truth and every tone is tenderness and He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. This is my firm hold, and I will not let it go. I sicken at all my own imperfect preparations. I take one decisive and immediate step and resign my all to the sufficiency of my Savior. Many Christians of unequal experience are wont to make an idol of comfort. This temptation is akin to that already mentioned, which rests the believer's hope on the unstable bases of frames. But it implies an erroneous view of the scriptures, and a mistake of the only source from which solid and enduring comfort can ever emanate. In his life, written by Clark, Dr. Harris is quoted by as exposing, with much discrimination, this among other mistakes of disturbed minds that are seeking relief. What an idol, he says, do some make of comfort, as if it were their Christ. It absorbs their thoughts, and they seem to care for nothing but this. And when their comfort comes, they are apt to lose it, some by nourishing too great scrupulosity, and others by contracting carelessness and hardness of heart. But if we miss or lose our comforts for other causes than our own remarkable default and disobedience, we must acquiesce in the pleasure of God till the blessed day dawns. But why look so intently after this, when if we study and understand the covenant of grace, and are but sincere, it will give us quietness under our manifold infirmities and trials, even though comforts flow not in upon us? But another error of these seekers after comfort is, to mistake its abatement for an absolute removal. In some cases, perhaps their fears may be just, and yet many are ready to mistrust the least declension of it for its loss. They ought to understand that comfort long enjoyed does not make the impression it did at first, especially if they came out of great darkness. For then it is like standing in the open sun after having just come out of a dungeon. The change at first is very impressive, but after a long and habitual sunshine, Though the heat and benign influences are just the same, yet use and time abate gradually the transports of the sensation. So the peace of such believers, unlike the steady flow of a river, is as unstable as the waters of the always-changing ocean. Many excellent Christians in reading the teachings of Christ appear to make the same mistake as did the sons of Zebedee. They are looking for the crown without the antecedent cross, for the victory of faith without the good fight through which Paul gained it, and everybody else who has gained it at all. And their desire to be filled with comfort, which is one of the fruits of sanctification, they lose sight of the process of trial by which God is pleased in most cases to carry on and mature this work of the Spirit. Such mistaken disciples expect to enjoy in the present life. William Mason says, that unmingled happiness which God has promised only for the future. Oh, give me comfort, or I die, saith the soul of such an one. For surely were I a child of God, I should not be thus tried, afflicted, and distressed. Nay, saith the Savior, you know not what ye ask. Do you forget the exhortation with speech to you as to children? Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked of him? Did I bid you believe on me? Believe also my words. Through much tribulation you must enter my kingdom. We often pray like Peter to be excused being washed by our Lord, but we consider neither his love nor our own advantage. If I wash you not, you have no part with me. If you be without chastisements, Then are you not sons? I will purge away your dross and your tin, and purify you in the furnace. Then shall your graces shine brighter, your faith grow stronger, your love burn more fervent, and your obedience be more cheerful. Happy to live not so much on comforts as on the God of all comforts. But the worst of all forms of temptation is when it tends to despair. The unhappy condition of which we have treated assumes many phases and is modified by circumstances almost numberless. In all cases it is attended with mental suffering more or less aggravated. but the malady sometimes reaches its dreadful climax in a state of despair. In most instances of this kind, the symptoms of bodily disease are so apparent that all religious counsels may be deferred as superfluous until the physical state has been changed by proper medical treatment. Sometimes, however, when there are no perceptible indications of impaired health, the mind sinks into a state of hopelessness which is promoted and nurtured by perverted views of truth or a misapplication of its meaning. They are afraid to pray, perhaps, because the sacrifice of the wicked is abomination, or at some former time they may have eaten and drunk damnation to themselves by partaking unworthily at the Lord's table. Not long ago, a pastor told me of an interesting female member of his church who had been despairing of her salvation many years because of her having been guilty, as she supposed, of this presumptuous act. Very often in this sickly state, the mind is tempted to ponder the divine decrees or the mystery of election, or try to reconcile the divine purposes and foreknowledge with human free agency. It endeavors to pry between the folded leaves of the Book of Life, which is forbidden even to Gabriel, to comprehend that which is incomprehensible, and to know that which passes knowledge. The forlornness and desperation that such diseased musings lead to are indescribable. But cases of this kind so closely resemble those in which the mind is brooding over an imagined sin against the Holy Ghost. that the counsels addressed to the former are not less adapted to instruct the latter. Persons under the power of temptation in this form not only neglect the means of grace, but by a constant rumination on their wretchedness only make it the more difficult to dislodge the delusion and minister effectual relief. But despair never made a human being better, it has made many a devil worse. Mr. Sprintzer says that at one time there was in his congregation a woman about 40 years of age who was a wonder to me. She was one of the most intelligent and well-educated of the people. She had been brought up from her childhood in the family of a clergyman as his daughter. was very attentive to the observance of the Sabbath, and was never absent from her seat in the Church. As a mother of a family, she had few equals. Everybody respected her. But she was not a member of the Church, and whenever I had endeavored to call attention to the subject, She was so reserved that I could not even conjecture what was her particular state of mind. I was told that she never spoke to anyone in respect to her religious feelings. One day I called upon her and frankly told her my embarrassment about her. I mentioned her uniform taciturnity, my motive in aiming to overcome it, my supposition that some air kept her from religion, and my inability to conjecture what it was. I said to her that I had not a doubt there was something locked up in her own mind which she never whispered to me. She seemed very much surprised at this declaration, and I instantly asked her if it was not so. With some reluctance she confessed it was, and then after no little urgency she said she would tell me the whole, not on her own account. but that her case might not discourage me from aiming to lead others to Christ. She then said that her day of grace was past, that she had had every possible opportunity for salvation, that every possible motive had been a thousand times presented to her, that she had been the subject of deep convictions and anxiety often. She had lived through three remarkable revivals of religion in which many of her companions had been led to Christ, and that she had again and again attempted to work out her salvation, but all in vain. I know my day is gone, she said, and I am given over. She spoke this in a decided manner, solemnly and coldly, unmoved as a rock. As I was silently thinking for a moment how I could best remove her error, she went on to say that she had never before now mentioned this, that she fully believed in the reality of experimental religion, and ascended to everything she had ever heard me preach, except when once or twice. I had spoken of religious despair. But inasmuch as her day of grace was past, she did not wish to have her mind troubled on the subject of religion at all, and asked me to say nothing more about it. I inquired how long she had been in this state of mind. She told me she had known for 18 years that there was no salvation for her. I inquired if she ever prayed. She said she had not prayed for 18 years. I asked if she did not feel unhappy to be in such a state. She said she seldom thought of it as it would do no good, and she never intended to think of it again. I called to see her time after time about once a week for six weeks, examined all her reasons for thinking that her day of grace had gone by, except one, and convinced her that they were false. Evidently she had become intellectually interested. There was but one point left. She had never at any preceding interview expressed a wish to see me or ask me to call again. I now called her attention summarily to the ground we had gone over, and how she had found all her refuges of life swept away save one, as she herself had acknowledged, and if that were gone she would think her salvation possible. I then asked her if she wished to see me again. She replied that her opinion was unchanged, but that she would like to hear what I had to say about the remaining point, which, as she truly said, I had avoided so often. I called the next day and took up the one point left, this last item which doomed her to despair. As I examined it, reasoning with her and asking if she thought me right from step to step as I went on, the intensity of her thoughts became painful to me. She gazed upon me with unutterable astonishment. Her former cold and stone-like appearance was gone. Her bosom heaved with emotion, and her whole frame seemed agitated with a new kind of life. To see the dreadful fixedness of despair melting away from her countenance, and the dawnings of inceptive hope taking its place, was a new and strange thing to me. It looked like putting life into a corpse. As my explanation and argument drew towards a close, she turned pale as death. She almost ceased to breathe, and when I had finished and in answer to my question, she confessed that she had no reason to believe that her day of grace was past, and instantly she looked as if she had woken up in a new world. The tears gushed from her eyes in a torrent. She clasped her hands, sprung from her seat, and walked back and forth across the room, exclaiming, I can be saved! I can be saved! I can be saved! She was so entirely overcome that I thought she would faint, or perhaps her reason give way. I was afraid to leave her and remained, saying nothing till she became more composed when with a silent bow I withdrew. The next Sabbath morning she was at the meeting for inquirers and appeared like other awakened sinners, with nothing remarkable about her except her manifest determination to seek the Lord with all her heart. In about three weeks she became one of the happiest creatures in hope I ever saw. She afterwards united with the church and yet lives a happy and decided believer. This will be continued in the next podcast. Chapter 4 will be Councils, the councils which such cases of suffering require. This is the Puritan and Reformed Audiobook Podcast. This book is by Joseph Jones. It was published in 1860.