Most folks wil know who have read this blog for any length of time that I am an exclusive psalmodist. However, I often read hymns as poetry, and who cannot but love the prose of William Cowper.  He was an interesting figure in Christian history.  I think I know a little of the darkness and torture of mind he suffered, because I have times where I suffer similar tho mine are brief and fleeting compared to his, and always with a precipitating factor.  “Insanity” is one of the better known symptoms of Porphyria, thanks to the history, and the movie  and the continued debate that still surrounds the life of  King George III the porphyric King of England;

Cowper once tried to kill himself three times in a single day; if not for the care of his friend, John Newton he would have no doubt done so.  Newton shared his home with Cowper for many a year.  And he said he got used to living with a man with such darkness. But Newton had a tender heart,  and saw his friends need. He didn’t dismiss or ignore or turn his back on  him when he was tormented and tortured, or without a doubt, Cowper would have killed himself.  The same tortured mind that wrote the Castaway, was also responsible for such wonderful prose contained within “Light Shining out of Darkness” and Cowper knew that darkness all too well, and yet the Lord did provide, with the help of his friend Newton to give him enough light in that darkness, enough provision that he was preserved and didn’t take the course of ending his life at this own hands. Oh for more hearts like that of John Newton in our often cruel, uncaring world today where many folks look out for themselves first and foremost and the William Cowper’s of today are sometimes left in more torment and torture by cruel indifference.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death (Book III, Hymn 20, page 573)

My soul is sad, and much dismay’d;
See, Lord, what legions of my foes,
With fierce Apollyon at their head,
My heavenly pilgrimage oppose.

See, from the ever-burning lake,
How like a smoky cloud they rise!
With horrid blasts my soul they shake,
With storms of blasphemies and lies.

Their fiery arrows reach the mark,
My throbbing heart with anguish tear;
Each lights upon a kindred spark,
And finds abundant fuel there.

I hate the thought that wrongs the Lord;
Oh! I would drive it from my breast,
With Thy own sharp two-edged sword,
Far as the east is from the west.

Come, then, and chase the cruel host,
Heal the deep wounds I have received!
Nor let the power of darkness boast
That I am foil’d, and Thou art grieved!