to be justified by the Blood of Christ?’” Whether the voice were supernatural or not, he was not, “in twenty years’ time,” able to determine.  At the time he thought it was.  It was “as if an angel had come upon me.”  “It commanded a great calm upon me.  It persuaded me there might be hope.”  But this persuasion soon vanished.  “In three or four days I began to despair again.”  He found it harder than ever to pray.  The devil urged that God was weary of him; had been weary for years past; that he wanted to get rid of him and his “bawlings in his ears,” and therefore He had let him commit this particular sin that he might be cut off altogether.  For such an one to pray was but to add sin to sin.  There was no hope for him.  Christ might indeed pity him and wish to help him; but He could not, for this sin was unpardonable.  He had said “let Him go if He will,” and He had taken him at his word.  “Then,” he says, “I was always sinking whatever I did think or do.”  Years afterwards he remembered how, in this time of hopelessness, having walked one day, to a neighbouring town, wearied out with his misery, he sat down on a settle in the street to ponder over his fearful state.  As he looked up, everything he saw seemed banded together for the destruction of so vile a sinner.  The “sun grudged him its light, the very stones in the streets and the tiles on the house-roofs seemed to bend themselves against him.”  He burst forth with a grievous sigh, “How can God comfort such a wretch as I?” Comfort was nearer than he imagined.  “No sooner had I said it, but this returned to me, as an echo doth answer a voice, ‘This sin is not unto death.’” This breathed fresh life into his soul.  He was “as if he had been raised out of a grave.”  “It was a release to me from my former bonds, a shelter from my former storm.”  But though the storm was allayed it was by no means over.  He had to struggle 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,”