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a larger discipline of trials, and of spiritual sorrow intermingled, that must prepare the mind and heart of Cowper for the work God had for him to do. Other processes, deep, secret, unseen, unknown, were to pass within the soil, rough and painful at the time, and rarely resting, before it could be fitted for the creation of that precious fruit.

But if ever a saint on earth knew the whole meaning of that expression, a first love, it was Cowper. There was nothing, ever after, to surpass it. The perfect day, even if Cowper had come to it on earth, and had continued to enjoy it, could never on earth have been arrayed in such intense, attractive loveliness, as the beauty, the peacefulness, the sweetness, the purity, and the heavenly colors of that morning without clouds, after a night of such blackness, driving tempest, and distracting madness and despair. It was this heavenly experience to which Cowper looks back with such mournful longings, in the most sacredly beautiful and widely known perhaps of all the hymns in our language:

Where is the blessedness I knew

When first I saw the Lord?
Where is that soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

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These two verses are a parenthesis of prayer, the full meaning of which, only he who wrote these stanzas, looking back to the blissfulness and glory of his earliest experience, could fully understand. But the yearning desire, O for a closer walk with God is the breathing of every Christian heart.

In this serene and happy frame after his recovery, Cowper remained twelve months still with Dr. Cotton at St. Albans. Meanwhile he had resolved, by God's help, never to return to London, and, for this purpose, that no obligation might rest upon him to resume his residence there, he resigned the office of Commissioner of Bankrupts, which he held at a salary of sixty pounds per annum, although this procedure left him with an income so small as to be hardly sufficient for his maintenance. His beloved brother resided at Cambridge, and at Cowper's desire made many unsuccessful attempts to procure for him a suitable dwelling in the neighborhood of the University. Cowper now mentions a day in which, with great earnestness, he poured out his soul to God in prayer, beseeching him, that wherever it should please God in His Fatherly mercy to lead him, it might be into the society of those who feared His name, and loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth. What followed he regarded as a proof of God's gracious acceptance of that prayer, having received immediate information of lodgings taken

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for him at Huntingdon, about sixteen miles from Cambridge, where God, he says, like an indulgent Father, had ordered every thing for him, and had prepared for him a more comfortable place of residence than he could have chosen for himself.

Thus, after more than eighteen months spent at St. Albans, he set out for Cambridge and Huntingdon, taking with him an affectionate servant, who had watched over him during his whole illness, and who earnestly begged to be permitted still to be with him. He passed the whole time of the way in silent communion with God; and those hours, he says, were among the happiest he had ever known. "It is impossible to tell," is the strong language of Cowper, "with how delightful a sense of His protection and fatherly care of me it pleased the Almighty to favor me during the whole of my journey." In this happy frame of mind he took possession of his lodgings at Huntingdon, whither his brother accompanied him from Cambridge on Saturday, and then bade him farewell.

And now, like a little child left alone for the first time among strangers, his heart began to sink within him, and he wandered forth into the fields melancholy and desponding at the close of the day, but, like Isaac at eventide, found his heart so powerfully drawn to God that, having encountered a secluded spot beneath a bank of

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shrubbery and verdure, he kneeled down and poured out his whole soul in prayer and praise. It pleased the Saviour to hear him, and to grant him at once a renewed sense of His presence, a deliverance from his fears, and a sweet submissive assurance that wherever his lot might be cast, the God of all consolation would still be with him.

The next day was the Sabbath, and he attended church the first time since his recovery, and of course the first time for nearly two years, and he found the House of God to be the very gate to Heaven. He could scarcely restrain his emotions during the service, so fully did he see the beauty of the glory of the Lord. A person with whom he afterward became acquainted sat near him, devoutly engaged in the exercises of Divine Worship, and Cowper beholding him, loved him for the earnestness of his manner. "While he was singing the Psalms," Cowper says, "I looked at him, and observing him intent upon his holy employment, I could not help saying in my heart with much emotion, The Lord bless you for praising Him whom my soul loveth."

Oh, this was the very spirit and temper of the saints and angels in glory; and, indeed, such was the goodness of the Lord to Cowper, that though his own voice was stopped in silence by the very intensity of his feeling, yet his soul sang within him, and leaped for joy. By the good pro

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vidence of God, the reading of the Gospel for the day happened to be the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and Cowper felt the whole scene realized with himself, and acted over in his own heart; and the joy and power of the Word of God, with that heart thus quickened by the Holy Spirit to receive it, were more than he could well support. He hastened immediately after church to that solitary place in the fields where he had found such sacred enjoyment in prayer the day before, and now he found that even that was but the earnest of a richer blessing. "How," exclaims Cowper, "shall I express what the Lord did for me, except by saying that He made all his goodness to pass before me. I seemed to speak to Him face to face, as a man converseth with his friend, except that my speech was only in tears of joy and groanings which can not be uttered. I could say indeed with Jacob, not how dreadful, but how lovely is this place! this is none other than the house of God !"

There, in this sacred spot, and in the deep delight of such devout and blissful experience, is the very locality and atmosphere of that perfectly beautiful hymn which Cowper wrote, entitled "Retirement." There was the calm retreat; there the unwitnessed praise; there the peace, and joy, and love; there the holy discipline of communion with the Saviour, by which He prepared His serv