Some few years after my interview with Mr. Tennent, and when its vivid impressions had nearly faded from my recollection, I received the following letter, which I read with intense delight:—
"My Dear Sir,—It is possible that you may have forgotten me long since; but a slight reference to the remarkable incidents connected with our interview, will probably bring me to your remembrance. We met on a Saturday evening, in a woodman's cottage, at Broadhurst; we afterwards knelt together in the cottage of a poor woman, who, doubtless, has passed into a happier world long ere now. We parted under an arrangement to meet again; but the sudden illness and death of my old friend, Captain Dunlop, with whom I was then staying, compelled me to leave his house rather abruptly. In a note which I sent to you I remember saying, that if the Bible should ever be again as precious to me as it once was, you should hear from me. And now I redeem my pledge, which you will be kind enough to accept as my apology for obtruding this letter upon you.
"When we met in the woodman's cottage I was a proud sceptic, looking with haughty disdain and contempt on every one, illiterate or intelligent, who professed a belief in the authority of the Bible. But what I heard and saw that never-to-be-forgotten Saturday evening, and subsequently in the death chamber of my old friend, was like the shock of an earthquake; it shook my sceptical opinions from their foundation, and so scattered them, that I never afterwards could gather them up, nor did I ever make an effort or feel an inclination so to do. The sweet calm of the poor woman's cottage, when placed in contrast with the terrific storm of the mansion—the assurance of the poor woman that she was going to heaven, and the equally strong assurance of my old friend, Captain Dunlop, that he was going to hell—were so strongly imprinted on my imagination, that they followed me day and night. I grew sick of life, and more than once was strongly tempted to hasten on a doom which I thought inevitable, and which at times I longed to have decided and settled for ever. I dared not enter a church; the sight of a Bible had the same effect on my nervous sensibility which we may suppose the re-appearance of a murdered man would have on the living monster who took away his life; and when in company, if religion became the subject of discussion, I felt interdicted from taking any part, either for or against it. This painful state of mind continued for more than two years; there was at times a lull in the storm of anguish; but after a while it came back with still greater fury, and, like my departed friend, I often said, 'Yes! I shall be a wreck, and lost.'
MR. TENNENT AND THE TRACT SELLER.
Vol. i. p. 151