Page:The English Peasant.djvu/344

 parson, but," pointing with his finger up to the stars, "go there; if I was in your case I would go there."

Next Sunday he humbly waited after service, and when all the quality had partaken, his old friend motioned him to the communion table. However, he came away with all his guilt and distress just as great as when he went, and began to think that religion, instead of making him better, every day made him worse. His body got weaker and weaker, so that he had hardly strength enough to go about his work, while his mind was more and more harassed, so that he became peevish and ill-tempered, a burden to his wife as well as to himself.

But he was not left without teaching. Every now and then the Divine Light burst in upon him, and flooded his soul with joy; but dark clouds of unbelief rose again, and he sank into a deeper night than before.

Early in his narrative he describes with great beauty one such moment of Divine illumination:—

"Going one morning to my labour, groaning under the perilous state my soul was in, and I think as completely miserable as any mortal could be and live, it came suddenly into my mind, 'I wonder in what part of the world Jesus Christ was born?' though at that time I had no more knowledge of Him, who He was, or what He came to do, than one of the Arabs in the deserts of Arabia.

"I was wondering where He was born, and it came into my mind that He was born in the East, because our clergy turn their faces to the East when they read their creeds. I then looked from point to point eastward; determined to be sure to dart my eyes, if possible, straight to the spot, if I darted them slowly round two quarters.

"However, when my eyes came to the sun, which was just then risen above the hills, I felt such a love and spirit of meekness flow into my soul, from the thoughts of Christ's name and birth, as I never had felt before.

"I burst out, and wept so loud, that I believe a person might have heard me at a distance of twenty or thirty rods. And although I had at that time no idea of what Christ came to do, or what He died for, yet I had an amazing sense of His sufferings on