this heavy stroke with that resignation to his will which none but Himself can give, and which he gives to none but his own children. How blessed and happy is your lot, my dear friend, beyond the common lot of the greater part of mankind; that you know what it is to draw near to God in prayer, and are acquainted with a throne of grace! You have resources in the infinite love of a dear Redeemer which are withheld from millions: and the promises of God, which are yea and amen in Jesus, are sufficient to answer al your necessities, and to sweeten the bitterest cup which your heavenly Father will ever put into your hand. May He now give you liberty to drink at these wells of salvation, till you are filled with consolation and peace in the midst of trouble. He has said, "When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."* You have need of such a word as this, and he knows your need of it, and the time of necessity is the time when he will be sure to appear in behalf of those who trust in him. I bear you and yours upon my heart before him night and day, for I never expect to hear of distress which shall call upon me with a louder voice to pray for the sufferer. know the Lord hears me for myself, vile and sinful as I am, and believe, and am sure, that he will hear me for you also. He is the friend of the widow, and the father of the fatherless, even God in his holy habitation; in all our afflictions he is afflicted, and chastens us in mercy. Surely he will sanctify this dispensation to you, do you great and everlasting good by it, make the world appear like dust and vanity in your sight, as it truly is, and open to your view the glories of a better country, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor pain; but God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes forever. Oh that comfortable word! "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction;" so that our very sorrows are evidences of our calling, and he chaciens us because we are his children.

self; he was hurried to Cambridge by the dangerous illness of his brother, then resid ing as a fellow at Bene't College. An affection truly fraternal had ever subsisted between the brothers, and the reader wil recollect what the poet has said, in one of his letters, concerning their social intercourse while he resided at Huntingdon.

In the first two years of his residence at Olney, he had been repeatedly visited by Mr. John Cowper, and how cordially he returned that kindness and attention the following letter will testify, which was probably writ ten in the chamber of the invalid.

March 5, 1770.

My brother continues much as he was. His case is a very dangerous one-an_imposthume of the liver, attended by an asthma and dropsy. The physician has little hope of his recovery, I believe I might say none at all, only, being a friend, he does not formally give him over by ceasing to visit him, lest it should sink his spirits. For my own part, I have no expectation of his recovery, except by a signal interposition of ProviIdence in answer to prayer. His case is clearly beyond the reach of medicine; but I have seen many a sickness healed, where the danger has been equally threatening, by the only Physician of value. I doubt not he will have an interest in your prayers, as he has in the prayers of many. May the Lord incline his ear and give an answer of peace. I know it is good to be afflicted. I trust that you have found it so, and that under the teaching of God's own Spirit we shall both be purified. It is the desire of my soul to seek a better country, where God shall wipe away all tears from the eyes of his people; and where, looking back upon the ways by which he has led us, we shall be filled with everlasting wonder, love, and praise.

I must add no more.

My dear cousin, I commit you to the word of his grace, and to the comforts of his Holy Spirit. Your life is needful for your family: may God, in mercy to them, prolong it, and may he preserve you from the dangerous effects which a stroke like this might have upon a frame so tender as yours. I grieve with you, I pray for you; could I do more I would, but God must comfort you.

Yours, in our dear Lord Jesus,
W. C.

TO MRS. COWPER.

Yours ever, W. C. The sickness and death of his learned, pious, and affectionate brother, made a very strong impression on the tender heart and mind of Cowper-an impression so strong, that it induced him to write a narrative of the remarkable circumstances which occurred at the time. He sent a copy of this narrative to Mr. Newton. The paper is curious in every point of view, and so likely to awaken sentiments of piety in minds where it may be most desirable to have them awakened, that Mr. Newton subsequently commiu. afflic-nicated it to the public.*

Here it is necessary to introduce a brief

* For this interesting document, see p. 483.

In the following year the tender feelings of Cowper were called forth by family tion that pressed more immediately on him

* Isaiah xliii. 2.

† Isaiah xlviii. 10.

sometimes thinking of an unseen friend, and be stowing a letter upon me. It gives me pleasure to hear from you, especially to find that our gracious Lord enables you to weather out the storms you meet with, and to cast anchor within the veil.

the wisdom and majesty of God, than to suppose that he would intrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not mean, 1 suppose, to be understood to have received her intelligence from the fountain of light, but thought herself sufficiently honored by any who would give her credit for a secret intercourse of this kind with the prince of darkness.

Mrs. Unwin is much obliged to you for your kind inquiry after her. She is well, I thank God, as usual, and sends her respects to you. Her son is in the ministry, and has the living of Stock in Essex. We were last week alarmed with an account of his being dangerously ill; Mrs. Unwin went to see him, and in a few days left him out of danger. W. C.

You judge rightly of the manner in which I have been affected by the Lord's late dispensation towards my brother. I found in it cause of sorrow that I had lost so near a relation, and one so deserveely dear to me, and that he left me just when our sentiments upon the most interesting subject became the same, but much more cause of joy, that it pleased God to give me clear and evident proof that he had changed his heart, and adopted him into the number of his children. For this, I hold myself peculiarly bound to thank him, because he might have done all that he was pleased to do for him, and yet have afforded him neither strength nor op-ative afford a pleasing insight into the reportunity to declare it. I doubt not that he cesses of his pious and sympathizing mind; enlightens the understandings, and works a and, if they have awakened the interest which gracious change in the hearts of many, in they are so calculated to excite, the reader their last moments, whose surrounding friends will feel concerned to find a chasm of ten are not made acquainted with it. years in this valuable correspondence; the more so as it was chiefly occasioned by a cause which it will soon be our painful office to detail in the course of the ensuing passages, In the autumn of the year in which he sustained the loss of his excellent brother, he wrote the following letter to Mr. Hill.

The letters of the poet to this amiable rel

He told me that, from the time he was first ordained, he began to be dissatisfied with his religious opinions, and to suspect that there were greater things concealed in the Bible than were generally believed or allowed to be there. From the time when I first visited him after my release from St. Alban's, he began to read upon the subject. It was at that time I informed him of the views of divine truth which I had received in that school of affliction. He laid what I said to heart, and It is impossible to read this and the four following began to furnish himself with the best writ- letters of Cowper to Mr. Hill, as well as a preceding one ers upon the controverted points, whose in page 49, and not to remark their altered tone and diminished cordiality of feeling. The forgetfulness of forworks he read with great diligence and at- mer ties and pursuits is often, we know, made a subject tention, comparing them all the while with of reproach against religious characters. How then is Cowper to be vindicated? Does religion pervert the the Scripture. None ever truly and ingenu-feelings? We believe, on the contrary, that it purifies ously sought the truth, but they found it. and exalts them; but it changes their current, and fixes A spirit of earnest inquiry is the gift of God, them on higher and nobler objects. Cowper's mind, it must be remembered, had experienced a great moral who never says to any, Seek ye my face in revolution, which had imparted a new and powerful imvain. Accordingly, about ten days before pression to his views and principles. In this state of things, Mr. Hill (lamen.ing possibly the change) solicits his death, it pleased the Lord to dispel all his his return to Loud, and to his former habits and assodoubts, to reveal in his heart the knowledge ciations. But the r1sh for these enjoyments was gone; they had lost their power to charm and captivate. "I am of the Saviour, and to give him firm and unnow more than ever," says Cowper, "unwilling to revisi shaken peace, in the belief of his ability and those noisy and crowded scenes, which I never loved, an i willingness to save. As to the affair of the which I now abhor; the incidents of my life have given an entire new turn to my whole character and conduct, fortune-teller, he never mentioned it to me, and rendered me incapable of receiving pleasure from nor was there any such paper found as you the same employments and amusements of which I could mention. I looked over all his papers before readily partake in former days." (See page 50.) Hill reiterates the invitation, and Cowper his refusal. Thus one I left the place, and had there been such a party was advancing in spirituality, while the other reone, must have discovered it. I have heard mained stationary. The bond was therefore necessarily weakened, because identity of feeling must ever constithe report from other quarters, but no other tute the basis of all human friendships and intercourse; particulars than that the woman foretold him and the mind that has received a heavenly impulse cannot return with its former ardor to the pursuit of earthly when he should die. I suppose there may objects. It cannot ascend and descend at the same mobe some truth in the matter, but, whatever ment. Such, however, was the real worth and honesty he might think of it before his knowledge of Mr. Hill, that their friendship still survived, and memorial of it is recorded in lines familiar to every reader of the truth, and however extraordinary her of Cowper. predictions might really be, I am satisfied hat he had then received far other views of

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.*

Olney, Sept. 25, 1770. Dear Joe,-I have not done conversing

"An honest man, close button'd to the chin, Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within."

grace stamping the same common image and superscription on both hearts. A friendship founded on, such a basis, strengthened by time and opportunity, and nourished by the frequent interchange of good offices, is perhaps the nearest approximation to happiness attainable in this chequered life.

Such a friendship is beautifully portrayed by Cowper, in the following passage in his Poem on Conversation; and it is highly probable that he alludes to his own feelings on this occasion, and to the connexion subsisting between himself and Newton.

True bliss, if man may reach it, is compos'd
Of hearts in union mutually disclos'd;
And, farewell else all hope of pure delight!
Those hearts should be reclaim'd, renew'd, up-
right:

Bad men, profaning friendship's hallow'd name,
Form, in its stead, a covenant of shame:

But, independently of this circumstance they present far higher claims. They portray the varied emotions of the human heart in its conflicts with sin, and aspirations after holiness. We there contemplate the depression of sorrow and the triumph of hope; the terrors inspired by the law and the confidence awakened by the Gospel; and, what may be considered as the genuine transcript of the poet's own mind, especially in the celebrated hymn, (" God moves in a mysterious way," &c.,) we see depicted, in impressive language, the struggles of a faith trying to penetrate into the dark and mysterious dispensations of God, and at length reposing on his un changeable faithfulness and love. These sentiments and feelings so descriptive of the exercises of the soul, find a response in every awakened heart; and the church of Christ will never cease to claim its property in effusions like these till the Christian warfare is ended, and the perceptions of erring reason and sense are exchanged for the bright visions of eternity.

99

It is to the friendship and intercourse formed between these two excellent men, that we are indebted for the origin of the Olney Hymns. These hymns are too celebrated in the annals of sacred poetry not to demand special notice in a life of Cowper, who contributed to that collection some of the most beautiful and devotional effusions that ever enriched this species of composition. They were the joint production of the divine and the poet, and intended, (as the former expressly says in his preface) "as a monument to perpetuate the remembrance of an intimate and endeared friendship They were subsequently introduced into the parish church of Olney, with the view of raising the tone and character of church psalmody. The old version of Sternhold and Hopkins, previously used, and still retained in many of our churches, was considered to be too antiquated in its language, and not sufficiently imbued with the characteristic features of the Gospel dispensation, to be adapted to the advancing spirit of religion. It was to supply this defect that the above work was thus introduced, and the acceptance with which it was received" that clouds and darkness ar round about fully justified the expectation. Viewed in him," though "righteousness and judgment this light, it is a kind of epoch in the history are the habitation of his throne," to suspend of the Established Church. Other commu- the powers of this interesting sufferer, and nities of Christians had long employed the once more to shroud them in darkness. instrumentality of hymns to embody the feelgs of devotion; but our own church had not felt this necessity, or adopted the custom;

The undertaking commenced about the year 1771, though the collection was not finally completed and published till 1779. The total number contributed by Cowper was sixty-eight hymns. They are distinguished by the initial letter of his name. It was originally stipulated that each should bear their proportion in this jcint labor, till the whole work was accomplished. With this understanding, the pious design was gradually proceeding in its auspicious course when, by one of those solemn and mysterious dispensations from which neither rank nor genius, nor moral excellence can claim exemption, it pleased Him whose "way is in the deep," and whose "footsteps are not known," and of whom it is emphatically said

prejudice had even interposed, in some instances, to resist their introduction, till the right was fully established by the decision of law.* The prejudices of past times are, however, at length, rapidly giving way to the wishes and demands of modern fiety; and we can now appeal to the versions of a Stewart, a Noel, a Pratt, a Bickersteth, and many others as a most suitable vehicle for this devotional exercise. The Olney Hymns are entitled to the praise of being the precursors of this improved mode of psalmody, jointly with the collection of the Rev. M. Ma dan, at the Lock, and that of Mr. Berridge, at Everton.

But souls, that carry on a blest exchange
Of joys they meet with in their heavenly range,
And, with a fearless confidence, make known
The sorrows sympathy esteems its own;
Daily derive increasing light and force
From such communion in their pleasant course;
Feel less the journey's roughness and its length,
Meet their opposers with united strength,
And, one in heart, in interest, and design,
Gird up each other to the race divine.

*The Rev. T. Cotterill, formerly of Sheffield, and in much esteem for his piety and usefulness, was the firs. who established this right by a judicial proceeding.