Ephesians 1:13 In whom you also trusted, after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that you believed… It was in the course of studies in the Campo Santo of Pisa, in 1845, assisted by daily reading of the Bible, that Mr. Ruskin came into vital knowledge "of the relations that might truly exist between God and His creatures." On his journey homewards he became ill, and the thought of the pain which his death might occasion to his father and mother preyed upon his mind. He thereupon "fell gradually into the temper, and more or less tacit offering, of very real prayer," Through "two long days, and what I knew of the nights," he continued in this mental attitude of earnest prayer. What followed is the memorable experience of which we have spoken. "On the third day, as I was about coming in sight of Paris, what people who are in the habit of praying know as the consciousness of answer came to me; and a certainty that the illness, which had all this while increased, it anything, would be taken away. Certainty in mind, which remained unshaken, through unabated discomfort of body, for another night and day, and then the evil symptoms vanished in an hour or two, on the road beyond Paris; and I found myself in the inn at Beauvais entirely well, with a thrill of conscious happiness altogether new to me." The "happy sense of direct relation with heaven" experienced by Mr. Ruskin was not permanent. "Little by little, and for little, yet it seemed invincible, causes," he says, "it passed away from me." But he chronicles its departure as the gravest of all his losses, and evinces no doubt that it was a reality while it lasted. The same state of mind has, he remarks, been "known evidently to multitudes of human souls of all faiths, and in all lands." Often it was, he has no doubt, a dream; but often, also, he conceives it to have been "demonstrably a reality." If it has been a reality, in the innumerable multitude of cases in which it has been experienced, from that of Abraham to that of Bishop Hannington, then the fact of intercourse between God and man is scientifically verified. Parallel Verses KJV: In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, |
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