and graces, and sublimated frame render me more humble in the sight of God? Am I sensible of my own unworthiness in my own eyes! Oh, take heed! and beware how you make a Christ of your graces! To conceive in your heart that you are wholly spiritual, is only an opinion; to boast of it by the tongue, is only profession; but to take well what I mean, argues a teachable spirit.

I believe then that the Lord has done great things for you; but it is my judgment that there is much painful experience in store for you. He who has, in rich mercy, imparted to you many right views, can alone preserve you from wrong ones. It is not enough to set an instrument in tune, it must be kept in tune; and it is not enough for you to have experienced a great change, or to have your feelings in a good frame; they have need, daily and hourly, to be kept by grace in a good and gracious state.

SECTION LI.

A BELIEVER IN DREAMS.

TIMOTHEUS.-EPAPHRAS.-PHILEMON.
SHEMAIAH-A Dreamer. Jer. xxix. 24.

Timotheus.-How unsearchable and most mysterious are the Lord's dealings with his people! Ordinarily the appointed means of grace, a preached gospel, searching the Scriptures, &c. are the instruments of conversion. But, sometimes, men are effectually worked upon by means they themselves never contemplated, or ever

looked for.

Epaphras.-Our God is undoubtedly a God of means; he works not immediately by himself, but by instruments of his own appointment; but, though this be the usual method of the divine proceedings, there are many and great exceptions. It often pleases the Lord to show his sovereignty, and that he is the self-existent, acting irrespectively of all appointed rules and created intelligences, and working not only above means, but without them, and sometimes contrary to them.

Timotheus.-The conversion of my friend, here present, is an instance in point; he owes what he knows of a Saviour to a providence the most extraordinary; at the same time that which has been made use of in his conversion, has proved, in his after experience, no ordinary source of distress.

It seems to me to have given a complexion to the whole of his spiritual life.

Philemon.-Very precious are all means that tend to lead a soul to the Saviour, but none is so precious in itself, or so commanding in its influence, as that particular means which the eye of the enlightened conscience can clearly discern in its spiritual birth.

Timotheus. Fearing lest I should err in judgment in the present case, I deemed it advisable that my friend should hear for himself, and after stating his own case, reap the benefit of your judgment and long experience; his mental distress seems to me to arise from a superstitious feeling, which the circumstances of his conversion, no less than his natural temperament, tend to increase; but to be brief, and cut short farther remarks, it will be best for him to be the medium of communication himself.

Shemaiah.-Most gladly, dear Sir, do I open my mind to you, and give you a summary of my experience, which, when I disclose, you will also deem most extraordinary.

I owe my first abiding impression to a dream in the dead of night; it seemed to me, on one occasion, (and the impression is even now vivid and strong,) that there were but a few more fetches of my breath, and a few more groanings in my spirit, before I should leave this my earthly tabernacle, and appear in judgment before the great white throne of my God. I saw in my dream, that my days were all numbered, but not quite ended; there was a little space afforded me for the exercise of faith and repentance unto life :

my first impression was, to snatch the earliest opportunity of tendered mercy, and to escape; but such hideous forms and ghastly spectres as I shall soon have to mention, presented themselves to me in my dream, that I felt affrighted, and I appeared to myself to possess no power at all, no, not so much as even to move; I tried in my dream, long and sore, to overcome them, and to the best of my strength and ability, and with sensations of actual conflicts; I attempted to scare them away, with frowns on my countenance, and with angry looks, and bitter speeches; I also bridled up myself with haughtiness of manner, but it was all to no purpose; they cared not for these things, they stood as with eyes immovably fixed on their prey, and ready to devour me whole.

At that awful hour, which I well remember, and never can forget, I was filled with amazement; and lo, in my dream, not only did I see a legion of devils without, but I had the bitter experience and full persuasion that they were all within me likewise; but I wrestled with my spirit much, and reasoned with myself more, that these things could not be; said I, how can my soul be the dwelling-place of Satan? How can I be the seat and citadel of all sorts of monstrous things, such as red dragons in the wilderness, and fiery flying scorpions in the desert? &c. How can I be possessed of these monsters? I, who can bless God, and say, that I am not as other men are, a drunkard, a liar, a Sabbath-breaker, or a thief? I, who have lived respectably with my acquaintances, and irreproachably among my

neighbours, so that not one of the living, nor any that are dead, could ever see a beam or a mote, or a black, in my eye!

But while I was thus struggling with my feelings in my dream, and partially at times triumphing, there was one spectre that stepped forward, different from all the others, and he seemed to come forth to me as the son of consolation; and though I viewed him, by his appearance, as a stranger, yet he proved my familiar; and though I looked on him as a friend, yet he is my greatest enemy; for the moment his face stood full to my face, his very image was reflected to my inmost soul; it was none other than the old serpent himself, under a beautiful disguise, the devil as an angel of light!

By this appearance a flood of light was poured upon my soul, and lo, the suspicion was stirred up, and the flash of conviction pierced into the deepest recesses of my heart, that all that I had seen was but the modification of one and the same wicked being, who assumes many shapes, and has manifold names, because of his manifold nature and power of iniquity, and because no one name is sufficiently comprehensive to include all his vile wickedness; and hence I concluded that all these names and representations of him were intended by God, to set out the multifarious wickedness of my nature and my inward capacity of evil.

The impression also was made upon me deeply, that all these manifestations of the powers of darkness to my soul were in rich mercy; the numbers of them did but enhance the divine com