ercise,
and filled up every space of time with conversation and social
enjoyment; he had no warning of the strain, except an unaccustomed
weariness, of which he made light, drawing upon his nervous energy to
sustain him; the wearier he grew, the more keenly he flung himself into
whatever interested him, learning, as he thought, that the way to
conquer lassitude was by increased exertions, the feeling of fatigue
always passing off when he once grew absorbed in a subject. He took to
sitting up late and rising early, and he had never seemed to himself
more alert and vigorous in mind, when the collapse came. He was
suddenly attacked, without warning, by insomnia.

One night he went to bed late, and found it difficult to sleep;
thoughts raced through his brain, scenes and images forming and
reforming with inconceivable rapidity; at last he fell asleep, to awake
an hour or two later in an intolerable agony of mind. His heart beat
thick and fast, and a shapeless horror seemed to envelop him. He
struck a light and tried to read, but a ghastly and poisonous fear of
he knew not what, seemed to clutch at his mind. At last he fell into a
broken sleep; but when he rose in the morning, he knew that some
mysterious evil had befallen him. If he had been older and wiser, he
would have gone at once to some sensible physician, and a short period
of rest would probably have restored him; but the suffering appeared to
be of so purely mental a character, that he did not realise how much of
it was physical. For that day and for many days he wrestled with a
fierce blackness of depression, which gradually concentrated itself
upon his religious life; he became possessed by a strong delusion that
it was a punishment sent to him by God for tampering with freedom of
thought, and little by little a deep moral anxiety took hold of him.
He searched the recesses of his heart, and ended by painting his whole
life in the blackest of colours.

In the endeavour to find some degree of peace, he read the Scriptures
constantly, and the marks he made in his Bible against verses which
seemed to hold out hope to him or to plunge him into despair, remained
through the after years as signs of this strange conflict of mind. His
distress was infinitely increased by attending some services at a
Mission which then happened to be proceeding which, instead of
inspiring him with hope, convinced him that his case was past recovery.
For some weeks he tasted, day