to see if it was there also. To his surprise, the more he read, and the more he searched, the more he found about it, until at last it seemed to him written everywhere.
Happily, he was not left long to ponder on this doctrine; only just long enough to make it a step in his deliverance. For at this time it did nothing more than make him feel man's utter impotency and his entire dependence on the grace of God for salvation. It stopped once and for ever all resolutions, vows, fastings, and other vain efforts at making himself righteous. It led him one more step down into the deepest, darkest dungeon of despair; the belief that he himself was not, could not be, one of the elect, and that therefore for him there was no salvation.
It was near Christmas 1773, he was standing on a ladder pruning a large pear-tree; a whole stream of thought was passing through his soul. He reviewed all the struggles he had been through; how he had resolved, and how he had broken his resolutions; how hard he had tried; how he had battled and prayed, and all in vain; how diligently he had read the Scriptures, but how impossible it had been to make them agree; how great had been the fight, and how thorough the defeat. He recalled the facts of his life, especially the stigma on his birth. The offspring of adultery, how could he possibly be among the elect? "Oh," he cried in his agony, "that I was a brute, a reptile, or an insect! Oh that I could sink into non-existence!—that death temporal could but finish all! Oh that there were no judgment to come! But I know there is and a final doom fixed; and I shall shortly know the worst of it; for I am almost mad and almost dead!"
As he thus sank in utter despondency, and the very lowest depths seemed to be reached, suddenly a great light shone in upon his soul, and he thought he saw two rays lighting up this awful doctrine upon which he had been pondering. One ray seemed to light up all the commandments, threatenings, and curses; the other all the promises and divine invitations. The vision was so dazzling, so powerful, that it seemed to take away his senses; and in terror he descended from the ladder, crying out, as he looked every way, and saw nothing but the vision, "What is it? what is it?" Immediately, he says, he heard a voice saying, in plain words, "Lay by your forms of prayer, and go and pray to Jesus
