when they shall be perfect in holiness, even as their Father who is in heaven is perfect." No contrast can be greater than between a Christianity thus practical, and the ordinary course of the world. Such a contrast was now about to be exhibited in the character of Mr Williams; and, from a paper in his own handwriting, we are apprised of the circumstances in which it originated. These are so peculiar, that some may think it would have been wise to suppress them. But on the principle of allowing the subject of this Memoir to be, as much as possible, his own biographer, we could not ignore facts which he has detailed so fully. They have their own significance. They harmonise with the eager temperament and lively imagination of the writer. They are not without their import as a contribution to spiritual pathology. Nor should the value of the result be affected by the anomalies of the process. The last three books of The Course of Time were written in the inspiration of a hectic fever, and Kubla Khan was composed in a dream; but they are fine poems, notwithstanding. And, even allowing that a good deal of the morbid and visionary may have mingled with higher processes at this juncture of Mr Williams's history, the result was a sober and healthful reality. That result was, a disposition so devout and benevolent, a life so holy, a spirit so * Lights and Shadows of the Life of Faith. By the Rev. W. K. Tweedie, Edinburgh. self-sacrificing, that, whatever circumstances may have attended its commencement, every Christian will feel that God himself was its Author. Mr Williams's mind was marked by a certain fervid exuberance. However charming in personal intercourse, with a fluent pen this fulness of emotion is apt to produce redundant writing. For the sake of our readers, we shall, therefore, take the freedom of shortening the paragraphs, and omitting expletive words and unimportant sentences. Were we editing a British classic, we should not venture on such retrenchments; but in the present case, we feel that our responsibility is for the author's sentiments and statements of fact, and that condensation is not a licence, but a duty. With this preliminary remark, we proceed to give Mr Williams's narrative of the singular illness which issued in his conversion. Not "I bless God that ever I was afflicted. only do I date my conversion from my illness, but I believe that this illness was designed for my conversion. It was a seizure more remarkable than any of which I remember to have heard or read; and, apart from the inward working of the mind, it presented a series of extraordinary symptoms, which seem to defy solution. Myself a medical man, and for many years accustomed to witness disease in every form, I have been able to explain, to some extent at least, almost every case; but for the cause of my own illness, and for the explanation of its strange symptoms, my knowledge and means of judging fall far short. But whether mere natural causes occasioned all the bodily sensations or not, scarcely signifies: the mental changes, I am fully assured, were altogether the work of God. "At the very outset, I should acknowledge that I had no previous belief in the truth of Christianity. I viewed it sometimes in one light, sometimes in another. I regarded it, for the most part, as an absurdity. At its many votaries I wondered, and their understandings I looked down upon as strangely deluded. I could not comprehend how a God should die, nor even bring my mind to admit that an atonement was necessary. The works of infidels, however, I always read with dissatisfaction or disgust; and any scurrilous attack on the faith of others I should have been ready to oppose. But into the truth of the matter I never thought of inquiring; and, as far as my perusal of it went, the Bible was a mere lumberbook. Science, literature, and my profession, were my whole delight; but the truth or falsehood of Christianity I felt it no part of my business to examine. "Of natural religion I had something in my heart. Many a time have I lifted my eyes from nature up to nature's God, and have adored his excellency as revealed in his beautiful and magnificent works. I knew myself to be a creature sprung from God; but I never dreamed that I was a creature accursed before him. I knew God to be infinitely just; but I never feared that that justice would consign me to eternal misery. I knew that I oftentimes acted contrary to my conscience; but I believed that intellectual enlightenment and the mere force of reasoning could carry human nature to perfection, and place it far above the control of passion. I deified human nature as capable of transcendent virtue, and absolutely denied its innate corruption. I hoped that the soul was immortal, but could never feel convinced that it was so; but as to everlasting torments,I viewed the doctrine as sacrilege and a defamation of the justice of God. The existence of a devil I believed no more than any other bugbear. "The only instances when confidence in my own opinions has been altogether shaken, were, I well remember, moments when, without an assignable reason, I have awakened from sleep, and an indescribable awe and terror have seized on my soul, filling it with undefined apprehensions of the future.* *To such lucid moments does Jane Taylor refer, in lines not the less poetical because of their simple truthfulness : "And yet, amid the hurry, toil, and strife, 66 of my profession. Such is a slight picture of my state of mind previous to my illness. Up to the moment when it seized me I had been engaged in the active duties I had visited many patients, and during the evening had felt fatigued and languid, and anxious to seat myself comfortably in my arm-chair. A little after ten o'clock I saw the last of the persons waiting for me, and instantly I felt myself severely unwell. I went up-stairs, and threw myself on my bed. In a few minutes I felt inexpressibly ill. The first sensation was an amazing weight on the chest, with difficulty of respiration; the carotids of my throat striking like hammers on my head, and a feeling as though torrents of air were rushing into my brain, and the head were When things to come, without a shade of doubt, Those lucid moments suddenly present A glance of truth, as though the heavens were rent; And though o'erwhelming to the dazzled brain, |