'Simpleton, etc., think you that the company of women and children will save you, when the mightiest spirits (angels they call themselves) cannot now rend you from our grasp? As soon as we choose, we will tear your silly soul out of your carcase; and _then_ we will make a veritable Lucifer of you. '_Lucifer_! LUCIFER! star of the morning! how art thou fallen, and become as one of us!' Ha! ha! ha! yes! yes! you must go with us. We fancy you. For a callow priest, you have a deal of music in you. Would-be Samson, you must grind in our prison house and sport in our temple; the pillars whereof you can never cause to tremble.' They said that I was a 'coward--dared not face a set of shadows, figments of the brain, empty nothings.' I saw that 'vain was the help of man;' and, retiring to my room, had an awful season of worse than 'temptation combats.' Then came the last scene in the tragic part of my unromantic experience. One of the artful dodgers, having transformed himself into an angel of light (in my hearing, not in my sight), informed me, at about eight o'clock in the evening, that, though my destruction appeared imminent, there was one way of escape left. My own prayers were useless: but if I would get down on my knees, and repeat a confession and supplication at his dictation, it might avail. Enslaved as I was, I of course complied; and then underwent a humiliation that, even in my horrified state, was very bitter. I had always, in my most puritanical days, kicked at the doctrine that we are all such abominable, hell-deserving, _self_-degraded creatures, responsible for our own ruin, that it is the wonder of creation that God would give our souls any least chance of heaven. I had always felt with Tennyson: 'Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; Thou _madest_ man, and Thou art _just_.' But now I was forced to change all this; and for once I uttered a perfectly orthodox prayer. Slow and distinct came the words, which I must perforce repeat as slowly, though every one was a bitter pill. I was made to say that I was entirely mistaken in supposing myself a Christian (in the 'evangelical' sense); that I had been a fool, a braggart, a sort of impostor; that my life had been one series of shams and follies; that I had disgraced my religious profession, etc., etc., _ad nauseam_, winding up with the abject declaration that I deserved to go straight to 'the city of Dis, and the three-headed dog;' and that if I was spared, it would be 'a miracle of mercy.' The higher powers must have thought that I had swallowed enough of this hell-broth; for, at this juncture, the dictation and compulsion suddenly ceased. I stood upon my feet, no longer a slave. It seemed as if some grand, calm Ithuriel had touched with his spear-point the venomous toad that sat by my ear, or the wily serpent that 'held me (enchanted) with his glittering eye.' From that moment to this, I have not been, for an instant, seriously annoyed by invisible disturbers of the peace.