(Cowper’s Hymn) “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up His bright designs And works His sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.” “…He was born November 15, 1731 at Great Berkhampstead near London, a town of about 1500 people. His father was rector of Great Berkhampstead and one of George II’s chaplains. So the family was well to do, but not evangelical, and William grew up without any saving relation to Christ. His mother died when he was six and his father sent him to Pitman’s boarding school in Bedfordshire. It was a tragic mistake, as we will see from his own testimony later in life. From the age of ten till he was seventeen he attended Westminster private school and learned his French and Latin and Greek well enough to spend the last years of his life fifty years later translating Homer and Madame Guyon. From 1749 he was apprenticed to a solicitor with a view to practicing law—at least this was his father’s view. He never really applied himself, and had no heart for the public life of a lawyer or a politician. For ten years he did not take his legal career seriously, but lived a life of leisure with token involvement in his supposed career. In 1752 he sank into his first paralyzing depression—the first of four major battles with mental breakdown so severe as to set him to string out of windows for weeks at a time. Struggle with despair came to be the theme of his life. He was 21 years old and not yet a believer. He wrote about the attack of 1752 like this: (I was struck) with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same, can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies, to which before I had been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had not one to direct me where to find it. He came through this depression with the help of the poems of George Herbert (who lived 150 years earlier). These contained enough beauty and enough hope that Cowper found strength to take several months away from London by the sea in Southampton. What happened there was both merciful and sad. He wrote in his Memoir: The morning was calm and clear; the sun shone bright upon the sea; and the country on the borders of it was the most beautiful I had ever seen…Here it was, that on a sudden, as if another sun had been kindled that instant in the heavens, on purpose to dispel sorrow and vexation of spirit, I felt the weight of all my weariness taken off; my heart became light and joyful in a moment; I could have wept with transport had I been alone. That was the mercy. The sadness of it was that he confessed later that instead of giving God the credit for this mercy he formed the habit merely of battling his depression, if at all, by seeking changes of scenery. It was the merciful hand of God in nature. But he did not see him, or give him glory. Not yet….”
-John Piper
Link: http://www.desiringgod.org/biographies/insanity-and-spiritual-songs-in-the-soul-of-a-saint