The Beginning of Better Days
The most eventful date in a human history is the commencement of its heaven-ward career; and, provided it is really to the Better Country that the pilgrim is travelling, it is immaterial whether hope or fear had the greatest influence on his outset. “Wherever it begins, every conversion ends in Christ. Some, like Matthew Henry and Henry Martyn, may have made the transition, they scarce know how: but all agree to approve of God’s way of saving sinners by Jesus Christ alone; all desire to advance the glory of God their Saviour; all regard Christ’s yoke as easy, and his burden as light; all combine to mourn for sin with deep and godly sorrow; all arrive, sooner or later, at a good hope through grace concerning their own personal salvation; all profoundly revere the statutes and ordinances of their Lord; all desire to spread the savour of his name; all long and pray for the day when they shall be perfect in holiness, even as their Father who is in heaven is perfect.”
No contrast can be greater than between a Christianity thus practical, and the ordinary course of the world. Such a contrast was now about to be exhibited in the character of Mr Williams; and, from a paper in his own handwriting, we are apprised of the circumstances in which it originated. These are so peculiar, that some may think it would have been wise to suppress them. But on the principle of allowing the subject of this memoir to be, as much as possible, his own biographer, we could not ignore facts which he has detailed so fully. They have their own significance. They harmonise with the eager temperament and lively imagination of the writer. They are not without their import as a contribution to spiritual pathology. Nor should the value of the result be affected by the anomalies of the process. The last three books of The Course of Time were writ ten in the inspiration of a hectic fever, and Kubla Khan was composed in a dream; but they are fine poems, notwithstanding. And, even allowing that a good deal of the morbid and visionary may have mingled with higher processes at this juncture of Mr Williams’s history, the result was a sober and healthful reality. That result was, a disposition so devout and benevolent, a life so holy, a spirit so
* Lights and Shadows of the Life of Faith. By the Rev. W. K. Tweedie, Edinburgh.
self-sacrificing, that, whatever circumstances may have attended its commencement, every Christian will feel that God himself was its Author.
Mr Williams’s mind was marked by a certain fervid exuberance. However charming in personal intercourse, with a fluent pen this fulness of emotion is apt to produce redundant writing. For the sake of our readers, we shall, therefore, take the freedom of shortening the paragraphs, and omitting expletive words and unimportant sentences. Were we editing a British classic, we should not venture on such retrenchments; but in the present case, we feel that our responsibility is for the author’s sentiments and statements of fact, and that condensation is not a licence, but a duty. With this preliminary remark, we proceed to give Mr Williams’s narrative of the singular illness which issued in his conversion.
“I bless God that ever I was afflicted. Not only do I date my conversion from my illness, but I believe that this illness was designed for my con version. It was a seizure more remarkable than any of which I remember to have heard or read; and, apart from the inward working of the mind, it presented a series of extraordinary symptoms, which seem to defy solution. Myself a medical man, and for many years accustomed to witness disease in every form, I have been able to explain, to some extent at least, almost every case; but for the cause of my own illness, and for the explanation of its strange symptoms, my knowledge and means of judging fall far short. But whether mere natural causes occasioned all the bodily sensations or not, scarcely signifies: the mental changes, I am fully assured, were altogether the work of God.
. “At the very outset, I should acknowledge that I had no previous belief in the truth of Christianity. I viewed it sometimes in one light, some times in another. I regarded it, for the most part, as an absurdity. At its many votaries I wondered, and their understandings I looked down upon as strangely deluded. I could not comprehend how a God should die, nor even bring my mind to admit that an atonement was necessary. The works of infidels, however, I always read with dissatisfaction or disgust; and any scurrilous attack on the faith of others I should have been ready to oppose. But into the truth of the matter I never thought of inquiring; and, as far as my perusal of it went, the Bible was a mere lumberbook. Science, literature, and my profession, were rny whole delight; but the truth or falsehood of Christianity I felt it no part of my business to examine.
“Of natural religion I had something in my heart. Many a time have I lifted my eyes from nature up to nature’s God, and have adored his excellency as revealed in his beautiful and magnificent works. I knew myself to be a creature sprung from God; but I never dreamed that I was a creature accursed before him. I knew God to be infinitely just; but I never feared that that justice would consign me to eternal misery. I knew that I oftentimes acted contrary to my conscience; but I believed that intellectual enlightenment and the mere force of reasoning could carry human nature to perfection, and place it far above the control of passion. I deified human nature as capable of transcendent virtue, and absolutely denied its innate corruption. I hoped that the soul was immortal, but could never feel convinced that it was so; but as to everlasting torments, — I viewed the doctrine as sacrilege and a defamation of the justice of God. The existence of a devil I believed no more than any other bugbear.
“The only instances when confidence in my own opinions has been altogether shaken, were, I well remember, moments when, without an assignable reason, I have awakened from sleep, and an indescribable awe and terror have seized on my soul, filling it with undefined apprehensions of the future.*
* To such lucid moments does Jane Taylor refer, in lines not the less poetical because of their simple truthfulness: — “And yet, amid the hurry, toil, and strife, The claims, the urgencies, the whirl of life, — The soul — perhaps in silence of the night — Has flashes, transient intervals of light;” Such is a slight picture of my state of mind previous to my illness. Up to the moment when it seized me I had been engaged in the active duties of my profession. I had visited many patients, and during the evening had felt fatigued and languid, and anxious to seat myself comfortably in my arm-chair. A little after ten o’clock I saw the last of the persons waiting for me, and instantly I felt myself severely unwell. I went up-stairs, and threw myself on my bed. In a few minutes I felt inexpressibly ill. The first sensation was an amazing weight on the chest, with difficulty of respiration; the carotids of my throat striking like hammers on my head, and a feeling as though torrents of air were rushing into my brain, and the head were
When things to come, without a shade of doubt,
In terrible reality stand out.
Those lucid moments suddenly present
A glance of truth, as though the heavens were rent;
And through that chasm of pure celestial light,
The future breaks upon the startled sight;
Life’s vain pursuits, and Time’s advancing pace,
Appear with death-bed clearness, face to face;
And Immortality’s expanse sublime,
In just proportion to the speck of time:
While Death, uprising from the silent shades,
Shews his dark outline ere the vision fades;
In strong relief against the blazing sky
Appears the shadow as it passes by.
And though overwhelming to the dazzled brain,
These are the moments when the mind is sane;
For then, a hope in heaven — the Saviour’s cross,
Seem what they are, and all things else but dross.”
Essays in Rhyme.
itself expanding. The agony became insupportable, and I knocked for some one to come to me. Meanwhile my mind acquired a wonderful vivacity. Thought upon thought came pouring in with a distinctness of apprehension, enlargement of view, and faithfulness of memory, such as I never before experienced. A power to comprehend my personal identity, and to understand my relation to time and eternity, was wonderfully given me. The passing moment seemed without beginning or end. I felt as though immortal faculties, immortal relations, were beginning to be recognised. The thought began to stagger me, that the hand of death was grasping the cords of life. With the thought, darkness — thick, palpable darkness — gathered on my soul. A mountain load seemed to crush my breast. It was girt as with bands of iron. My heart felt too big for its wonted space. A horror of anguish filled my whole being. Unnumbered sins sprang up before my astonished conscience, and Death in his terror rose up to my gaze. Look where I would, there was no hope. One wide, unbounded ocean of dismay and terror, lashed with tempestuous howlings, roared on every side; and the thought of an offended God pierced my soul with madness and despair.
“In this state I lay for hours. Meanwhile my sister, alarmed by my knocking, had come and found me speechless. Others of my friends were sent for, then medical attendance, llecourse was
B had to remedial measures; but I still grew worse. The night passed, and the morning found me the same. A painfully vivid consciousness of every thing going on around me added greatly to my distress. The first faint glimmer of light that broke into my soul was when the name of Jesus was uttered. With the very thought of that name the hope of mercy was allied, and like a drowning man I clung to that hope. In the agony of my soul I called upon that name; and in the mean while, finding that one of God’s servants (Mr M., senior) had entered the room, I felt a new hope, as if the very presence of a man of God was a source of safety. He bade me look to Jesus. With the very bidding, I felt an infinite joy in so doing. Faith in that holy name rapidly gained the ascendant. My darkness was turned into light, and in a short time I felt a sweet sense of the pardoning mercy of God. After this I grew better and better, and all my symptoms remitted, till I felt nothing except the languor resulting from the violence of my previous sufferings.
“Towards the evening, however, a relapse took place, with phenomena essentially different. Beginning with the same contraction of the chest as before, there followed tetanic spasms — a violent jerking of the upper part of the body from side to side, interrupted by quiet intervals, sometimes by a complete rigidity of the neck and spine. So sensitive was I to touch, or to the impression of a breath of air, that the approach of any one evincing an intention to disturb me would throw me into convulsions; and, suspecting tetanus or hydrophobia, the three medical attendants inquired whether I had been bitten by a dog, or had sustained any mechanical injury. With short intermissions, this state of things lasted for successive days, till my strength was nearly exhausted. Towards the close of the fourth day, and during the succeeding night, my eyes were upturned in their sockets; I retained not the slightest power of voluntary breathing; I was incapable of speech; and the attempt to swallow a drop of water brought on spasms which threatened suffocation.
“During all this period I was possessed of per feet consciousness; nor had I any pain. The only painful sensation was the impossibility of resisting the convulsive movements of my body, and the fearful constriction of my chest. At first I was, as it were, a mere spectator and observer of the symptoms — thinking, and even reasoning upon them; and when abstracted from their consideration, I felt that I could calmly meditate on God’s mercies. I had no painful conflicts about my state, but a settled serenity — a tranquillity for which I could scarcely account, unless from the conviction that my salvation was sure. But during the last night of this stage, I experienced wonderful evidence of a world to come. My friends were assembled at various distances around my bed. The curtains were drawn, and a candle yielded its obscure rays. I heard the sobbings of my relations. I knew that they looked on my life as fast fleeting. I was myself convinced that I should not recover. I had pictured my body carried to the grave, and had marked in my mind’s eye all the attendant circumstances. Mentally I had taken leave of earth, and I lay in perfect peace, assured of my salvation. A dead silence now reigned around; and as I waited the moment of my final change, it was an intense and deeply absorbing thought that soon the great scene would be revealed. Whilst lying thus, I thought I heard a gentle knocking. My soul started in expectation. Inwardly I exclaimed, ‘I come, Lord Jesus! ‘Relapsing into quietude, I felt all but dismissed. It had the effect of so far arousing me, that I got power to speak, and called to my kindred, who came around me in surprise and anticipation. I took leave of them. I told one to be watchful, and spoke to the others, till power of speech again forsook me. As I lay, I drew my hand to my breast, to examine its beatings. I felt they were small and weak, and I was content, for I should soon be in an other world. I was even anxious to die; for I feared lest, living again, I might lose what now seemed so sure. Then it was that a new order of feelings came over me. I had the most extraordinary sense of the bodily presence of the Power of Darkness standing by the side of my bed; not that I imagined that I saw anything, but I felt as if I could have put mj 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 vigor 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 doze every twenty minutes. After taking the first doze, 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. 1 took the second doze, and lay down. These dozes, 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.
clay, 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 unfrequeritly 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.
*t* 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 folreceived 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.
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 tranquillizing 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
Divine Providence and mercy, which had brought me out of thick darkness into the glorious light of truth, 0 what a heaven flitted through my soul! Holiness with its celestial gilding seemed to tinge every object around me. The world was no longer the same world; its people no longer the same beings. Myself and my fellows I no longer regarded as creatures of a moment’s duration, but I saw eternity impressed as a seal on the whole generation of men. The universe was no longer a confused assemblage of indistinct parts, moving towards a gloomy terminus, but, as far as the Divine purposes were concerned, a bright whole of uniform perfection, and the entire expanse filled with love, unbounded love. God himself seemed to move everywhere. All was joy to my soul. I looked on myself as a brand plucked from the burning, and rejoiced in the sure hope of salvation. Jesus was most precious to me, — my glory and in finite joy. The Bible, hitherto a sealed book, was now a river of water to my thirsty soul. I was astounded with its contents. As I turned over its pages, wonder upon wonder ravished my delighted heart. I felt that I would care to live only for the sake of reading it. It was a glorious light. At times its heavenly rays would subdue me into a mellow and peaceful benignity; at others, rouse me into ecstatic bliss. Everywhere was the authority, the love, of God recognised. Its power to command my obedience was as the thunder-clad arm of Omnipotence; and its pleadings for holiness were as the gentle whisperings of love, to which my heart, my mind, my soul answered assent. How I wondered at my former darkness! How amazed did I feel that the precious light had so long shone in my way, and I never had perceived it! I resolved to make it the absolute rule of my life.
“These first days were as though they had been a foretaste of heavenly peace. Never shall I forget my first mortification at finding that sin still existed within me. There had been no actual committal of an offence that my conscience charged me with; yet a sudden and unexpected change had come over me. There was a cloudiness in my mind; my faith was dim; my heart had ceased to exult. It was as though all had been a bright and glorious dream, and I had now awakened to the stern realities of a cold and miserable world. Alas, the bitterness of that moment! I strove to recall my hopes — they seemed delusion. I read my Bible — the bright revealing light which had heretofore almost made the very print more clear was gone; and, although I still knew it to be the Word of God, the page had ceased to enkindle rapture or inspire emotion. I knew not how to account for this state. I had believed that the work of change and renovation had been completed, at least carried to so high a degree that it was im possible I could wilfully sin against God again. I abhorred the thought, yet here I was in darkness, and sin palpably abounding in my heart. How sad was the sight of myself! It was the first glimpse at the inherent corruption and original depravity of my heart. It was the first of a series of painful but important lessons which convinced me that God had only hitherto instructed me in the first principles, and laid the foundation for my faith; but that the work of grace had to be carried on, and an absolute change of heart effected, by many a severe and fiery ordeal.
“In the course of weeks, I was enabled to take a trip into North Wales; here my connexion with the world was first re-established. All the avocations of man, that were apart from his religious duties, appeared to me to have vanity legibly stamped on them. On my route I stopped a short time in Liverpool, but the bustle and commotion excited no pleasurable sympathy; for I felt that it all was vanity. The whirl, the din, the confusion, all told me of the world’s spirit; and in the countenance of the busy throng I could not read one expression in unison with my own feelings, or which came home to my heart. At Beaumaris I abode at a commercial hotel, and there, in the presence of the usual visitants of an inn, I took out my Bible, glorying in the thought that I was thus unfurling Christ’s banner. One of the company entered into conversation, and boasted of his religious acquisitions, and of the high position he held in the church to which he belonged as teacher and deacon. But gradually he drank to inebriation. I was glad to find a room to myself, and in dejection to ponder over this first instance of a false professor.
“My stay in North Wales, especially my visit to Llanberis and Snowdon, afforded my mind the healthful occupation of contemplating and adoring God as revealed in his works. To me the God of nature and the God of revelation now were one, and I began more sensibly to feel the relation wherein we stand to God by the conjoint link of creation and redemption. How glorious to know that a pathway had been opened for the rebellious sinner to the favor of the great Eternal, whose hand had formed the mighty fabric of the universe, and who had given the being and life we enjoy, but from whom I had so long been severed, and to whom I had never felt my relation, nor acknow ledged my obedience! But the great Eternal was now the Lord my God; and I, the creature of his hand, could, through the Redeemer, look up and believe that the Power which guided the planets in their course would direct me in all my ways, and preserve me by his providential care. I felt that he had first loved me. I felt that God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. I felt that it is the First and the Last who there expresses his care for all the family of man, including myself, a worm so insignificant. At that mercy I could only wonder and adore, and, with faint conceptions of his love and grace, I could but humble myself before him.”