THE ANTAGONIST POWERS.

21

could have put my hand on the very spot where he stood, and I shrank from that side with horror and loathing. But, blessed be God! on the opposite side stood, equally revealed to my spiritual senses, the Power unto Salvation, the very embodiment of love; and to this I turned as to a refuge. I shrank from the Evil One, and poured out my prayers to Christ, whose protection was evident to me. Thus I lay, when, all of a sudden, the most brilliant light darted. into the room, and filled me with astonishment. Now, I thought, the time is surely at hand. God is visibly making manifest his approach. Quickly will the angels of God be descending, and I shall behold my Redeemer. By the vigour thus imparted I was enabled to sit up in bed, and, with a feeling like that which Lazarus might have experienced, conscious of a supernatural presence, I called out to my friends, 'Did you not see the light?' Next minute the impression came over me that I was yet to live; and at the same time, inspired with the certainty of knowing what I ought to take, I told my assistant to bring me forty drops of the tincture of opium, and twenty drops of the muriated tincture of iron, and to repeat the dose every twenty minutes. After taking the first dose, I continued sitting in bed, feeling as though entranced; and, what is singular, my arms, when extended at an early part of the evening, had remained so, evincing the cataleptic state. I took the second dose, and lay down. These doses, so large that my assistant

afterwards wondered what could have possessed him to give them, were the means of my recovery. After a miserable interval, during which the body seemed to be sinking into corruption, and the mind itself seemed to have lost all power of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, a profound sleep closed my eyes. It lasted upwards of twelve hours, and, awaking as from a dream, there remained no trace of my former state, except extreme debility. I never had the slightest relapse, but made rapid progress in recovery."

An interesting volume was lately published, in which a Christian scholar recalls the workings of his mind during a long period of derangement; * and we believe that both science and religion are eventually served by accurate statements of cases in which moral and physical phenomena mingle. We are too ignorant of pathology to be able to explain all the symptoms which Mr Williams has so vividly described; and it would be very presumptuous in us to profess to account for those sensations which the patient, himself a medical man, modestly acknowledges as beyond the range of his own experience or reading. Yet there are one or two circumstances of which an ordinary spectator may possibly judge as accurately as the patient himself, with all his professional training.

For instance, it was at the close of a laborious

* Autobiography of the Rev. William Walford. Edited by the Rev. J. Stoughton.

day, and when excessively fatigued, that Mr Williams was first seized with those singular sensations in his head, and with the brilliant accompanying ideas. Now, to say nothing of any intermediate cause, such as determination of blood to the brain, we know that excessive application or exhaustion is not unfrequently followed by similar odd sensations. Dr Moore mentions Dr Isaac Watts, who, after great exertion of mind, thought his head too large to allow him to pass out at the study door; as also the case of a gentleman who, after delivering a lecture at the College of Surgeons, said that his head felt as if it filled the room.* With Mr Williams, the sensation was "as though torrents of air were rushing into his brain, and the head itself expanding." Nor do we suppose that it is at all uncommon for nervous exhaustion to be followed by such cataleptic seizures as Mr Williams experienced, when his eyes were fixed, and when he had lost the power of speech, as well as voluntary respiration. The "inspired certainty" with which he

"The Power of the Soul over the Body." By George Moore, M.D. Fourth edition, p. 264.

To our lay ignorance, the most perplexing complication of this illness is the tetanic access which marked the second stage. Perhaps some light may be thrown on it by the following case detailed by Dr Joseph Williams, who describes the patient as suffering from cerebral irritation, mixed up with hysteria and violent tetanic spasms. "She declared the pain was so great that she should go mad. Alarmed at the tetanic symptoms more especially, I examined carefully the thumb and fingers, to ascertain if these had been injured; inquired minutely if she had lately pricked her finger, or

prescribed for himself the tonic opiate, need not surprise us. Suggested by some constitutional craving, invalids often fancy that if they could only obtain a given antidote, they would instantly be well. And they frequently are right. Sometimes the specific is a strange one, and would not readily have occurred to a man of science. In the present instance, we presume that science would have countersigned the patient's prescription, had it only known all the circumstances; but then it must be remembered that in the present instance the patient himself was a doctor.

Intense mental conceptions so strongly impressed upon the mind as, for the moment, to be believed to have a real existence," are amongst the most frequent spectral illusions.* As coming near this class, we must regard that "extraordinary sense of the bodily presence of the Power of Darkness standing by the side of his bed," which filled the imagination of the patient towards the close of his illness, as well as the brilliant light which fol

received any blow or fall, stating to the friends that I had never seen such symptoms but where a nerve had been irritated. Examined the mouth; the teeth perfect, undecayed: but still dissatisfied, I took out my pencil-case and gently struck each tooth; on tapping the second superior molar of the affected side, great pain ensued, and on repeating this it was increased." On removing the tooth it was detected that pus was pressing on the pulpy portion of the nerve; and thus incipient mania was cured, and the life of the patient was saved.-See Williams on Insanity, p. 260.

* See Hibbert on Apparitions. Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, Part 3.

GREAT TRUTHS AND A GREAT CHANGE. 25

lowed. To bystanders no light was visible, no presence was palpable. Unlike the voice and the light on the road to Damascus, which the spectators heard and saw, these manifestations were confined to the individual's own mind.

Still these ideas were substantially correct. Disease might embody them in forms too material ; and yet they were truths. It was true that sins unnumbered stood chargeable against one who had hitherto lived without God in the world. It was true that God was offended, and death was coming. It was true that boundless dismay and terror environed the Christless transgressor. The name of Jesus had no more effect in tranquillising the conscience and kindling hope than that blessed name should ever have. And the instinct which shrank from the Power of Darkness and cried to Jesus for protection, was itself a token that a new life was dawning. There might be nervous excitement, but there was also a spiritual awakening. There might be morbid sensations; but the pervading conviction was scriptural, and the consequent change of thought and feeling was permanent. That change we shall leave Mr Williams to describe.

"It was on the fifteenth day of September 1846 that I was taken ill. It is now September 1847 when I am writing this. The delightful feelings of the first few days of convalescence I remember well. Joyfully exulting in the interposition of