his knees smiting together, and his quivering lips uttering the piercing cry, "Oh, brother, I am damned! Think of eternity, and then think what it must be to be damned.” While in this condition he penned those piteous lines:"Man disavows and Deity disowns me

Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;

Therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

It is sad to think how one, who has since poured into so many broken hearts the balm of Gilead, should have had his own wrung with what he called "unutterable anguish," and yet this bitter experience may have taught him afterwards to say with more emphasis of that fountain the "thief rejoiced to see,"

"And there have I, as vile as he,
Washed all my sins away.

The Rev. Martin Madan, a cousin whom he had hitherto avoided came to him in this time of need, and told him of Jesus. As they were seated on the bedside Cowper burst into a flood of tears, as a ray of hope flit across the dark horizon, but shortly afterwards actual brain disease came on that resulted in insanity, and poor Cowper was taken to St Alban's.

Here it was that in less than two years he was restored mentally and saved spiritually, and in a double sense was found"sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind." In after years how exquisitely he described this experience in poetic form:—

"I was a stricken deer that left the herd

Long since with many an arrow deep infixed
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by One who had Himself
Been hurt by archers. In his side He bore
And in his hands and feet the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and healed and bade me live."