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WESTIN, JiREV FRÅN C. O. ROSENIUS
325
About eight years ago, I was induced by a friend to visit a young
student, knowing and very gifted, who had sunken down into the
miseries of drunkeness and poverty. I found him in a miserable little
room, that had but one chair and a poor bed. The only visible society
of the youth was a serpent, which he had stuck up in a large
glass-vessel-—a. hideous image of the enemy of his soul. His high-colored face
bore evident marks of the ravaging vice of which he was a captive,
but at the same time, he was near despair in feeling that he was unable
to break these fetters. I had some hearty and serious talks with him,
and when I found that I could use him to help me in writing, I took
him to my house, hoping by this means to separate him from the
temptations to which he would be exposed if he remained in the
depraved society with which he had hitherto mingled. He lived at my
house a whole year. His health and looks improved with every day, and
soon we saw with joy that he began to listen to the voice of God in
His Word. It is true, we could never perceive that he was really
awakened and had a deeper knowledge of his sinfulness; but he was
convinced of the truth of the Divine Word, and of the necessity for
every one to be converted to God. This he evidently showed by his
zeal for the conversion of his eight sisters and brothers, all of whom
lived in the deepest spiritual darkness, and he not only sent them
religious books, but also wrote to them and exhorted them to repent.
In the meantime he had been so restored and strengthened, that we
thought it our duty to enable him to continue his medical studies at the
university of Upsala. The two following years he often wrote to me
from that town, and subscribed to my periodical " the Pietist;" but
since that time he discontinued to write, and I did not, for years, hear
anything from him. But now some weeks ago, I was visited by a young
and lovely Christian gentleman—it was a brother to our Ludvig K.—,
who told me with a face beaming with joy in the Lord, that out of the
nine brothers and sisters, seven were converted and believing children
of God, and only two yet unconverted, servants of sin and unbelief.
And the instrument, which it had pleased the Lord to use for effecting
all this, had been the letters written to them by their brother Ludvig,
and the books we had sent them. This is an example of the spiritual
receptivity of which I have before spoken. We were both moved to
tears of joy. But I hasten to tell you the end of his relation. You may
easily imagine my affliction and astonishment, when he added: " But
who are these two unconverted ones ? Ludvig is one of the two." By
the counsel of the ungodly, " through philosophy and false deceit," at
the university, he had been led into the paths of unrighteousness, and
had now wrought out for himself a religious system, according to which
he was trying to be at once the friend of the Lord and of the world.
The religious views and convictions of his converted brothers and
sisters he now looked upon as exaggeration.
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