THE

HEAVENLY CURE.

257

rience; he had known the screws reversed, the
chords jarring in conflict and chaos; and he had
known the harp tuned again by the Maker, and
yielding a celestial melody. He had known the
wounded spirit, and the heavenly cure.
No poet
on earth ever descended into such depths, and came
forth again from them, to sing on earth strains so
resembling those that employ the happy spirits in
heaven. If the desire of Satan to have and to sift
as wheat those whom he sees most likely to make
a breach in his kingdom, were always attended with
a result so mortifying, one would think he must,
ere this, have changed his mode of tactics. And,
indeed, in spiritual as well as temporal things, it
may be said,

That Satan now 's grown wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor.

If he can make any one say, "I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," he is very near the accomplishment of his purposes; but very far from it while he merely succeeds in keeping the soul troubled, distressed, and selfdespairing.

CHAPTER XXI.

COWPER'S HAPPY EXPERIENCE. HIS RELIGIOUS ENJOYMENT OF NATURE.-GENIUS AND HUMILITY.-DANGER AND DISCIPLINE.SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE FURNACE.-MALADY IN 1787.

It was with an eye and heart thus blissfully enlightened that Cowper had been taught to look upon Nature; and inasmuch as he has told us that, both in his delineations of Nature and of the human heart, he had drawn all from experience, and nothing from second-hand, we can not but personify the author when we read those exquisite passages in "The Task" descriptive of the filial delight with which the Christian child and freeman looks forth upon the works of God. The poet that could write, out of his own experience, the close of the fifth book of "The Task," "The Winter Morning Walk," and that of the sixth book also, "The Winter Walk at Noon," must himself have been the happy man, appropriating Nature as his Father's work, must himself have felt the dear, filial relationship, the assurance of a Father's love, and of a child's inheritance in heaven. Notwithstand

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259

ing the cloudy, fathomless, despairing deeps through which his soul, much of the time, had to struggle, yet it was he himself that felt compelled to exclaim, when gazing forth into the blue abyss upon those starry hosts that navigate a sea that knows no storms, My Father made them all!

His soul,

Much conversant with heaven, did often hold,
With those fair ministers of light to man

That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp,
Sweet conference.

There was a morbid, brooding obstinacy in his mental malady, a sullen and inveterate self-tormenting ingenuity of argument, and perverseness of conclusion against himself, that held him for a while, held him habitually, while he listened to himself; but sometimes the spell was broken, oftener, indeed, than his black-browed accusers suffered him to admit, and he enjoyed with his whole heart the opening heavens, and received sweet earnest of the presence of his God.

With animated hopes my soul beholds,
And many an aching wish, your beamy fires,
That show like beacons in the blue abyss,
Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home
From toilsome life to never-ending rest.

Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires

That give assurance of their own success,

And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend.

It must have been in the deep consciousness of communion with his Maker, in the profound ex

260

COWPER ON THE MOUNT

perience of gratitude, and faith, and love, that he wrote those closing lines of the fifth book of "The Task." He may have had to go down from the mount immediately afterward, to converse with suffering and gloom; but he was on the mount then, a mount of transfiguration, and the Lord of Nature and of Grace was there, communing with him.

A voice is heard, that mortal ears hear not,

Till Thou hast touched them; 'tis the voice of song,

A loud hosanna sent from all Thy works;

Which he that hears it with a shout repeats,
And adds his rapture to the general praise.
In that bless'd moment, Nature throwing wide
Her vail opaque, discloses with a smile
The Author of her beauties, who, retired
Behind His own creation, works unseen
By the impure, and hears His power denied.
THOU art the source and center of all minds,
Thou only point of rest, Eternal Word!
From Thee departing, they are lost and rove
At random, without honor, hope, or peace.
From Thee is all that soothes the life of man,
His high endeavor, and his glad success,
His strength to suffer and his will to serve.
But O Thou bounteous Giver of all good!
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the Crown!
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor,
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.

One may say with perfect truth that if all Cowper's sufferings had taught, or enabled him to write, only those two last lines; yet, teaching him that, as his own deep experience, they were well endured, they were infinitely precious. Nevertheless,

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261

hidden so often and so long from the enjoyment of the light he was the means of communicating to others, Cowper's case is a most extraordinary illustration of the grand poetical aphorism,

"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves."

God will so "seal instruction," according to that wondrous revelation of the manner of His dealings with those whom He means to save, in the thirty-third chapter of the Book of Job, as to "hide pride from man." He will seal His most precious gifts with the great seal of humility. He did so with Cowper. The possession and exercise of such surpassing powers of genius would have been dangerous and self-pernicious otherwise.

And therefore perhaps it was, that not till he was fifty years of age, and not till he had passed through a baptism of such suffering in the valley of the shadow of death as few men upon earth have encountered, did God permit the genius of Cowper to unfold itself, and the tide of inevitable praise to set in upon him. And even then He so disciplined Cowper, as to make him feel as if that very genius were rather an external angel, commissioned of God to help him through his sufferings, than an inward self-possession, which he could command and exercise at will. He was naturally ambitious of distinction; what fallen mortal ever was not ? and in any period of elevation, when the