so, but could not prevail, for the Lord was stronger than he, and by a succession of humbling and purifying trials, not only brought the rebel to repentance and submission, while he was for several years captain of a Guinea ship; but afterwards, while he was tide- surveyor at Liverpool, prepared him to enter the Holy of holies in the Christian temple, as a minister of the gospel.
As in providence the dealings of the Lord with this refractory subject had been at once more severe and merciful than in the usual course of a sinner's experience, so in grace also the divine discipline by which he was trained seemed no less signally sovereign and peculiar. "The words which his mother taught him" had never been erazed from his mind, nor had they otherwise died in his heart than as good seed, to be re-quickened in due season. In full manhood, then, while prosperously engaged in that infamous commerce, of which he had not yet learned the unlawfulness,— so blinding and deluding is sin of any kind, his conscience was awakened, his fears were alarmed, and the fountains of that great deep, the natural heart of man, "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked," were broken up; all was darkness, horror, and confusion within. Then "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light; and there was light".Gradually as the six days works of creation, in which, without agent or auxiliary, God wrought alone the regenerating change went on in this new creation of a human soul; till, as "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy," when "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them," so may we believe that there was joy in the presence of the angels of God over this one
