Guessing by the title of it that he would find some phrases of his own profession spiritualized in a manner which he thought might afford him some diversion, he resolved to dip into it; but he took no serious notice of anything it had in it; and yet, while this book was in his hand an impression was made upon his mind (perhaps God only knows how) which drew after it a train of the most important and happy consequences.

He thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall upon the book which he was reading, which he at first imagined might happen by some accident in the candle: but lifting up his eyes, he apprehended, to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it were suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded on all sides with a glory; and was impressed, as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him, to this effect (for he was not confident as to the words)--"Oh, sinner! did I suffer this for thee?
and are these thy returns ?" Struck with so amazing a phenomenon as this, there remained hardly any life in him, so that he sunk down in the arm-chair in which he sat, and continued, he knew not how long, insensible.' 'With regard to this vision,' says the ingenious Dr.Hibbert, 'the appearance of our Saviour on the cross, and the awful words repeated, can be considered in no other light than as so many recollected images of the mind, which, probably, had their origin in the language of some urgent appeal to repentance, that the colonel might have casually read or heard delivered.

From what cause, however, such ideas were rendered as vivid as actual impressions, we have no information to be depended upon.

This vision was certainly attended with one of the most important of consequences connected with the Christian dispensation--the conversion of a sinner; and hence no single narrative has, perhaps, done more to confirm the superstitious opinion that apparitions of this awful kind cannot arise without a divine fiat.' Dr.Hibbert adds, in a note--'A short time before the vision, Colonel Gardiner had received a severe fall from his horse.

Did the brain receive some slight degree of injury from the accident, so as to predispose him to this spiritual illusion ?'--HIBBERT'S PHILOSOPHY OF APPARITIONS, Edinburgh, 1824, p.
190.
NOTE 5 .-- SCOTTISH INNS The courtesy of an invitation to partake a traveller's meal, or at least that of being invited to share whatever liquor the guest called for, was expected by certain old landlords in Scotland, even in the youth of the author.