One of the
most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was
Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed that he could never arrive
at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with
longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken
assurance ever since, in the period of his conversion, he had
dreamed that he saw the words 'calling and election sure' standing
by themselves on a white page in the open Bible. Such colloquies
have occupied many a pair of pale-faced weavers, whose unnurtured
souls have been like young winged things, fluttering forsaken in the
twilight.
It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had
suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a
closer kind. For some months he had been engaged to a young
servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual
savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to
him that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in
their Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that
Silas's cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and
amidst the various queries and expressions of interest addressed to
him by his fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred with
the general sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special
dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a
visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his
friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within his soul.
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