Page:The English Peasant.djvu/345

 my heart, which filled me with love to Him, and I pitied Him in my soul, and found a great dislike to the Jews for using Him so cruelly; still, however, I remained profoundly ignorant of the benefits of His cross."

On another occasion he was at Kingston Church, listening to the anthem, when the sweet music so carried him above all his despair that he could not tell whether he was in the body or out of it.

While this internal conflict was going on he was often the mark for the gibes and mockings of his fellow-workmen; so much so that he was glad to accept a gardener's place at Sunbury, and so ease himself from this annoyance.

He was aware that the man whose successor he was to be had cut his throat, after robbing his master; but he was much cast down when the old woman in charge of the house took him up into the chamber where the unhappy man had slept, and after dilating on the circumstances, and pointing out the marks on the floor, she told him that this was the room he was to occupy, and the bed upon which he was to sleep.

It is impossible to do justice to the terrific struggles the soul of the poor gardener now went through. The prey of violent temptations by day, the thought of sleeping in the same apartment in which Satan had already conquered a fellow-mortal took away sleep at night. At last the battle became so sore, and his despair so great, that he sat down and seriously meditated making terms with the fiend. But as the thought came upon him, a profound fear of God, he says, took possession of his soul, utterly destroying the potency of the temptation, so that he arose and went into the garden to his labour. As he worked he began to pray; and as his eyes involuntarily rose to heaven he saw a rainbow spanning the firmament. "There is a God, and the Bible is true!" he exclaimed. "God's Word says, 'I will set My bow in the cloud,' and there it is; my eyes now see it: there is a God, and God's Word is true!"

The memory of that rainbow encouraged him for a time, and he became still more earnest in his endeavours to keep from sin. He determined again to take the Sacrament, and to fit himself for it; and to do battle against the enemy he fasted so continuously