FLAVEL'S "DAY OF HEAVEN."
This distinguished Nonconformist divine, who lived about the end of the seventeenth century, in his Treatise on the Soul of Man relates of himself—so at least it is understood, though he speaks in the third person—that for a day he was wrapt in such intimate spiritual communion with heaven, as exhausted the powers of physical nature, and for a time appeared to leave him on the brink of the grave. This singular season of trance he used to style "one of the days of heaven;" and he affirmed, that in that time there came to him more insight into the heavenly life, than he had all his days gained from books or sermons.
"Being on a journey, he set himself to improve his time by meditation; when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving himself faint through a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his horse, and sat down at a spring, where he washed and refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were the will of God, that he might then leave the world. His spirits reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame. He passed all that night without a wink of sleep, the joy of the Lord still overflowing him, so that he seemed an inhabitant of the other world." It was taken by his religious friends as a special promise of heavenly favour, that at the birth of Flavel a pair of nightingales made their nest close to the chamber of his mother, and welcomed him into the world with their delightful warble.