Sometimes loud
voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered
impious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant
mountain-tops, on which the sun shone brightly, but from which he
was separated by a waste of snow. He felt the devil behind him
pulling his clothes. He thought, that the brand of Cain had been set
upon him. He feared that he was about to burst asunder like Judas.
His mental agony disordered his health. One day he shook like a man
in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his breast. It is
difficult to understand how he survived sufferings so intense and so
long-continued. At length the clouds broke. From the depths of
despair the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An
irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing
of which he was himself possessed. He joined the Baptists, and
became a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a
mechanic. He knew no language but the English, as it was spoken by
the common people. He had studied no great model of composition,
with the exception--an important exception undoubtedly--of our
noble translation of the Bible. His spelling was bad. He frequently
transgressed the rules of grammar. Yet his native force of genius,
and his experimental knowledge of all the religious passions, from
despair to ecstasy, amply supplied in him the want of learning.
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