courtship, in its commencement and termination, preserves the singularity which distinguished most of the leading transactions of his life. His partiality to singing led him to unite himself to the choir that attended Aberford Church, which union continued for the space of ten years. Here he became acquainted with her who was destined to be his bride, and to survive him as his widow. The first time he saw her, which was during divine service, it was powerfully impressed upon his mind, that she would one day become his wife. Under such impression, and in great simplicity, he walked up to her immediately on leaving the church, and unbosomed his feelings and thoughts on the subject. She heard his first lispings with surprise, and felt their force; for from that period they delighted in each other's society, and were finally united in holy matrimony in Spofford church. She was six years older than himself. On leaving the hymenial altar, and reaching the church door, a number of poor widows pressed around him to solicit alms. His heart was touched; the tear was in his eye; "I began the world," said he to himself," without money, and I will again begin it straight.” The thought was no sooner conceived, and the generous impulse felt, than the hand, which emptied the pocket, scattered the last pence of which he was possessed among the craving applicants. The bride being entitled to some property, and work pouring in upon him, his exhausted stores were soon recruited: and believing that a blessing followed the donation, he appended to a narrative of the event, in a tone of triumph, "The Lord gave me a good wife, and I have never wanted money since that day.'

The fine glow of devotional feeling occasionally experienced in his youth, had for some time become extinct; and he had not in his present situation, been brought into contact with any decidedly religious character, to revive it, except the mother of his wife, who was a member of the Wesleyan Connexion. He complained that at this period, his wife and himself were "both strangers to saving grace"-that "the parish" could not boast of a single Methodist-and that there was not "one" of his "own family that knew the Lord." His mother-in-law, who, it would seem, did not reside in the same parish with himself, often spoke to him on the subject of religion, and interceded with God both for him and his partner. Example, exhortation, and prayer, were ineffectual. The appcal was to be made to the passions; and through these was the entrance to be made, which would effect his deliverance from the thraldom of Satan. His mother-in-law sickened and died. The happiness she experienced in her last hours, softened the heart and re-awakened the attention of Samuel to the concerns of his soul. This, however, but for what he denominated a "vision," had been "as the early dew that passeth away.'

Three days after her dissolution, he dreamed that she appeared to him arrayed in white, took him by the hand, and affectionately warned him to flee from the wrath to come; stating, that if he did not repent he would never meet her in the paradise of God. At the close of the address, the visionary form vanished; conviction, while he slumbered, seized his spirit; he awoke in terror, and to use his own language, "jumped out of bed"-thus furnishing another exposition of

the language of the "man in the land of Uz""When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint; then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions." This sudden spring from the bed roused his wife; his groans and distress alarmed her; and supposing him to have been suddenly seized with some complaint that threatened his life, she was proceeding to awaken the neighbours, and to call them to her assistance, when she was arrested in her course, in the midst of the darkness with which she was surrounded, with a sentence wrung from the depths of his agonized spirit, and uttered in sobs-"I want Jesus-Jesus, to pardon all my sins." It was sufficient for her to know that he was not in immediate danger from affliction; her fears were therefore quickly dissipated, but she could afford him no consolation. This he seemed to feel, and observed, "I had no Paul to say to me, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;' nor any praying wife to pray for me." It was the midnight of desolation; and the only light by which the way of mercy could be discovered, was from within. The flood of day which was poured upon his mind, was as strong as it was sudden; and differing in degree from that with which he was visited under the ministry of Mr. Wesley, he now beheld both sides of his casenot only the absence of all good, but the presence of real evil. "My eyes," said he, "were opened -I saw all the sins I had committed through the whole course of my life-I was like the psalmist -I cried out like the gaoler." He added, with considerable emphasis, "I did say my prayers," continuing, "as I never did before;" meaning,

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that he had only SAID them previously to this period. Hefurther observed, that it might have been said of him, as of Saul, "Behold, he prayeth."

The ministerial instruction which he had at different periods received, led him, in the midst of much ignorance on other subjects, to adopt the proper means, and to look to the true source of happiness, in order to its attainment. He had heard of one Jesus of Nazareth, like Saul; and though that Jesus had not before been experimentally revealed to him, yet such was the nature of the light which he received, that it enabled him to recognise in HIM from whom it proceeded, the face of Saviour and a Friend. The Sun of Righteousness, like the orb of day, discovers himself by his own shining. It is in his light, that we see light. Samuel was in the light, in the midst of natural darkness; and though he could not hear the prayers of a wife, he had confidence in the intercession of a Saviour.

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Jesus," said he, "was my advocate; I put in my case, and he pleaded for me before the throne of God. I believed that the blood of Christ was shed for me; and the moment I believed, I found peace. I could adopt the language of the poet,

'My God is reconcil'd,

His pardoning voice I hear:
He owns me for his child,

I can no longer fear;

With confidence I now draw nigh,
And Father, Abba, Father, cry."

His state, as an inhabitant of the natural world, afforded a fair exemplification of the change through which he passed. He reposed himself in darkness-lay in that darkness, like the dead in the tomb-and was passing through

this insensible state, to the light of another day. On the same evening, as a sinner before his God, he lay down in the darkness of a deeper night than that which veils the face of nature-was the subject of a more terrible death than that of which sleep is but the image-awoke in spiritual light-and was, ere the natural light broke upon his eye, enabled to exult in the dawn of a fairer morning, than ever beamed upon our earth—a morning which can only be surpassed by the morning of the resurrection, when the just shall kindle into life at the sight of the Sun of Right-eousness, to which this, through the vivifying rays of the same Sun, formed the happy prelude. Spiritual life succeeded spiritual light. To object to the genuineness of the work, because of its suddenness, would be to plead a “needs be" for our continuance in a state of comparative darkness, danger, misery, and death, in opposition to the end proposed by the scheme of human redemption, through Jesus Christ, which was to complete our deliverance from such a statewould be to prescribe limits to the power, goodness and purity of" the HOLY ONE of Israel," as though he were unable to effect such a change, but by degrees, unwilling at once to soothe our sorrows, and approving of our continuance in a state of moral defilement-would be to doubt the veracity of the Holy Ghost, in his statements of the sudden illumination of Saul, the sudden conviction of the multitude under the preaching of Peter, and the instantaneous pardon of the penitent thief-and would, finally, be to obstruct the course of our obedience, in compliance with all the exhortations which urge us, and all the injunctions which bind us to an immediate pre