After some time I so far rallied as to make an effort to pray; but I had no power to kneel before the Lord. Having betrayed my trust, I thought the divine anger had waxed hot against me, and that the weighty penalties of the holy law would fall upon and grind me to powder; nor had I courage to open my Bible, as each of its denunciations seemed to stand in battle-array against me. I could neither eat nor sleep, so that my health visibly declined. My wife sent for medical help; but my case came not within the powers of the healing art. Indeed I was ashamed to see the good man who paid the professional visit. Nothing was fitted for my malady, save the balm of Gilead, and the heavenly Physician whose favour I had forfeited. Hope itself seemed to expire; the enemy of my soul whispered: ‘It will require at least twenty years to recover what you have lost; and where will you be by that time?’ Such, indeed, was my deplorable condition that I felt persuaded I should not survive many days. At last, when despair had almost devoured me, a gleam of encouragement, as the first dawn of light on the horizon’s extremest verge, arose on my soul. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. The relief was like life from the dead, and came just in time to save me from impending destruction. The resurrection of Lazarus was scarcely a greater miracle than this timely and critical deliverance; for in each instance there was an exertion of nothing less than Omnipotence. Animated by this beginning of renewed confidence, I ventured again to approach the throne of grace. It was 252in the evening, at the family altar; and there the Lord, in His infinite mercy, was pleased to cancel my transgression, and write His pardon on my heart. With him who had fled to Tarshish, when overtaken in his folly, I was empowered to plead, ‘I am cast out of Thy sight, yet will I look again toward Thy holy temple.’ The Saviour looked on me as heretofore. The glance of Him I had denied humbled me at His feet, and I felt ready to hide myself in the dust. The undeserved and extraordinary manifestation of divine clemency I now experienced was so overwhelming that my faculties were hardly able to sustain it, and I had nearly fainted. That night, after a long and wearisome season, I retired to rest rejoicing; and from that period, all praise be to God, I have never been deprived of an abiding sense of His favour, and of my acceptance through the merit of His Son. I have great reason to be thankful that for several years last past I have proved the all-sufficiency of divine grace, and have been able, in some humble degree, I trust, to walk circumspectly, redeeming the time. I have long since discovered, and hope never to forget, that the work of God in the soul of man is to be progressively matured. In the journeyings of a Christian, no idle delays can exist with safety. He pulls against wind and tide; and if he cease to labour, the opposing current must waft him back.