Depression: What is It?⤒🔗

One Introduction to Psychology defines depression as “a morbid sadness, dejection, or melancholy.”¹ H. Norman Wright puts it in this way: “In simple terms, depression is merely a negative emotion due to self-defeating perceptions and appraisals. However, it may also be a sign of serious, even malignant disease.”² A person can be depressed because of the ‘blahs’ or ‘blues’.” He can also be depressed because of “a neurotic or psychotic disorder.” It can be a mild or moderate depression. It can also be a severe depression. “It can be harmless or life threatening.”

What are some of the characteristics of depression?

1. It is “a feeling of overall gloom.” When you feel depressed, you feel down, you “lose perspective,” and you feel you are not able to carry on your life activities or are able to function only at 50% of 70% of your capacity.

2. You experience changes in physical activities – eating, sleeping, sex.

1. Some lose their appetite for food, while others overeat.

2. Some “can’t get to sleep at night” or “can’t sleep through the night” or don’t seem to sleep at all, while others seem to “sleep constantly.”

3. “Sexual interest wanes.”

3. It is a feeling of overall hopelessness. If you then have a “fight” with your wife or with your husband, your marriage simply looks hopeless to you.

4. It is a feeling of no more self-confidence. When in “normal” circumstances you “have a business problem,” you might react to it “with some tension and frustration” but you would “promptly and appropriately” deal with it. However, when you are depressed and you have a business problem, you feel as if you are “a lousy businessman,” and you “battle with problems of self-confidence instead of dealing with the issues in front of” you. “Your self-confidence is very low.”

5. You withdraw from others because you fear you are not understood and are being rejected. You cancel activities that you used to enjoy. You fail “to return phone calls.” You do not answer the telephone. You try to avoid seeing others and talking with others. 

6. There is a desire to escape from problems and even from life itself, and you begin to think of “leaving the home or running away.” You have thoughts of committing suicide.

7. You tend to be “over-sensitive to what others say and do” and to “misinterpret actions and comments in a negative way and become irritable” and cry “easily ... because of these mistaken perceptions.”

8. You feel angry and bitter. Your feeling angry with yourself may be the result of feeling worthless. Your feeling angry at others may be the result of not knowing how to deal with the situation you are in. Often this anger is directed outward, sometimes inward.

9. You feel guilty. The basis for feeling guilty “may be real or imagined.” Often these feelings flow from assuming that you are in the wrong somehow, or that you are “responsible for making” the lives of “others miserable because of the depression.”³

10. Clinical depression is defined as “a state of sadness that is severe enough to have observable physiological symptoms, such as insomnia, anorexia (loss of appetite), and fatigue.”⁴

11. Manic depressive illness is defined as a “relatively infrequent disorder marked by severe mood swings from delusional, grandiose elation to severe depression with suicidal compulsions.”⁵

Who Suffers from Depression?←⤒🔗

The book, Introduction to Psychology, which was initially printed in 1982 indicates that 1 out of 20 Americans are “medically diagnosed as suffering from depression,” that many more persons are “having symptoms of depression but not seeking treatment.” This book was initially printed in 1982. The March 5, 1990 edition of US. News and World Report indicates that 1 in 12 Americans suffer from depression.⁶ H. Norman Wright wrote in 1989 that “medical practitioners” diagnose 7 out of 10 patients whom they see “for emotional problems” as having depression, that altogether there were 35 million depressed persons in the USA, and that “25 percent of the beds in public mental-health facilities, and 50 percent of the beds in private mental-health facilities have depression.”⁷

H. Norman Wright goes as far as saying that at “some time in our lives depression affects each one of us.” It affects “both sexes, people of all ages, the rich and the poor.” It also affects ministers of the Gospel. ⁸ Babies can suffer from depression and “people who are over one hundred years old.” Some think that twice as many females suffer from depression as do males. I don’t know if it is true. It seems to me that men “deal with their depression differently than do women.” Women visit medical clinics more often than do men and thus are treated two or three times more often than men for depression. That as such does not indicate that women suffer from depression more than do men. It may well be that men less easily “admit weakness” and less easily “reveal inner feelings.” After all, more men are alcoholics than are women, and “the rate for successful suicides is three times higher for men than for women.”⁹ It occurs very often in the 40-59 age group, although it may occur in “any period of stress.”¹⁰  It also occurs often in the Christian church.

Causes of Depression←⤒🔗

The writers of Introduction to Psychology: Christian Perspectives and Applications suggest that “pent-up anger ... is the root of nearly all clinical depression.”¹¹ Children, they say, “easily pick up a tendency to repress anger from a parent.” Apparently many parents “discourage their children from sharing angry feelings, even appropriately.” So these children learn “to fear anger.” They “grow to feel that being aware of their anger or expressing it will result in rejection or punishment.” They therefore repress anger. What often happens then is that they displace their anger “on something or someone else.”

Perhaps some of us know from experience what it is to grow up in a home “with chronically depressed parents.” You perhaps have learned “similar attitudes.” Your “pent-up anger eventually” affected your “nervous system” which adjusted to “the depressed lifestyle” and produced “harmful and far-reaching effects.” Perhaps you too have used depression as “a powerful way” to manipulate others or “as a mechanism to vent” your anger on others or to get even with others. You perhaps found too that that sometimes relieves the anger, but you make life quite difficult and miserable on others.

Some use depression “to gain attention from others.” Others use depression as “a conscience-pleaser,” in that when a person is depressed, “the self is turned against self,” and then when as a pastor I speak with such persons, they say to me, “I feel I am getting what I deserve.”

Again others who suffer from depression mask their depression by way of “physical complaints such as headaches or bodily aches and pains that seem to have no basis in organic pathology.” I am not suggesting that all headaches or bodily aches and pains are “face-saving mechanism to cover up emotional conflicts.” But if there does not seem to be a basis in organic pathology, it may well be.

Also depression may be the result of “the stress of adjusting to change.”¹²For instance, “a change of residence” can result in depression. When we move from Strathroy, Ontario, to Abbotsford, B.C., we suffer loss of friends.

Depression as Related to Spiritual Problems←⤒🔗

In pastoral experience we often encounter depression related to spiritual problems. Although there are more, allow me to highlight only three of them:

1. Depression can be the result of the wrong attitude to sin. The depression is then not merely the result of the fact that we have sinned but rather the result of the wrong way in which we react to it. The difficulty is that we do not confess our sin and do not flee to Christ for pardon and thus do not disown it or mortify it. Instead, we despair of our sin being forgiven. The result is that we react in a way similar to Cain before he murdered his brother Abel. You will remember that he “dropped” and hid his face. The K.J.V. translates: Cain “was very wroth, and his countenance (= face), fell” (Genesis 4:5). It is also possible to translate the word “wroth” as “depressed.” Then Genesis 4:5 and 6 reads: “And Cain was greatly depressed and crestfallen... Why are you depressed and why are you crestfallen (= lit., why is your face fallen?)”¹³If for this depression we do go for therapy but this depression is not dealt with at its source, it is not dealt with properly, and we cannot become well.

2. Depression can also be the result of vain regrets. If we have done things in life in which we hurt others and we are bitterly and deeply ashamed of them but we find we cannot undo them, we cannot repair them, then they can bring a futile, disabling gloom over us. The proper attitude is to ask God to forgive the mistakes of the past, to care lovingly for the victims of our folly and to give us grace in the present to run the race set before us while looking unto Jesus (cf. Hebrews 12:1, 2).

3. Depression can also result from having wrong expectations as to the way the Lord God deals with His people. You see, there are Christians who expect the pilgrimage through this life to be easy, and when adversities come their way, they begin to suspect that there is something seriously wrong. They fail to realize that the Lord explicitly says that “the present time” is one of suffering (Romans 8:18), and that it is through much tribulation that men must enter into the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). They fail to realize that the Lord says that He chastens and disciplines every one of His children. Christians must expect to encounter many things that are not joyous but grievous, and must watch for the danger of becoming weary and despondent under His rebuke (Hebrews 12:5).

The Church’s Responsibility←⤒🔗

What responsibility does the Church have in connection with this problem? Larry Crabb¹⁴correctly has been calling for the church to “reclaim its job of healing people who are struggling emotionally” instead of immediately sending them to professional counselor or referring them to a psychologist and a therapist. We need to realize again that “the Scriptures and Christianity ... meaningfully address the core concerns of our lives.”¹⁵

Crabb makes a point we need to consider. I wish to mention the following aspects.

The Church as Health-Giving Community←↰⤒🔗

The Church is to give support and encouragement to all who are liable to depression. The Apostle Paul writes that in bereavement we are to comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18). In the next chapter he writes that we are to “comfort the feeble-minded” and “support the weak” (vs. 14). The old are to comfort the young, and the young are to support the old. Pastors are to minister to the members of “their” congregation, but the members of the congregation are also to minister to their pastors. The New Testament pictures the Church as a health-giving community where burdens are shared, neuroses are dispelled, problems are resolved and every opportunity is given for the development of mature and well-integrated personalities.

The Church as a Spiritual Atmosphere of Hope←↰⤒🔗

The Church must exercise the utmost care as to the spiritual atmosphere with which it surrounds its people. That is, in preaching and pastoral care ministers must not seek to spread gloom, by putting the emphasis exclusively on the law, on denunciation, on threats of doom and on searching questions as to the grounds of assurance, without any proper emphasis on comfort and light, hope and encouragement. We may not give the impression that it is wrong for a Christian to be happy. We may not give the impression that if you are happy there is probably something wrong with you and you are not a Christian at all.

How important this is! Take, for instance, assurance. Some teach and believe that you are not entitled to assurance unless you have experienced first intense inner conflict. Some who fear and love the Lord but who have not experienced that are depressed by its absence. So they put the focus not on faith in the promises of the Gospel but on conviction of sin and the intensity of the inward struggle. We must be keenly aware that in this way we are making a dramatic shift from the Reformation. The Reformers asked: “How can a man who is a sinner be right with God?” Some preachers ask: “How can I know that I have passed from death to life?” The Reformers based forgiveness and assurance on the promise of the Gospel. Some preachers base it on possession of “the marks of grace.” What they do in effect is making possession of the marks of grace the ground of justification instead of the promises of the Gospel. Calvin’s doctrine was that faith was faith in the promise of the Gospel, and that faith, whether small or great, in the promise of the Gospel contains assurance that God loves you. Some say that assurance is possible only by a voice from heaven that we are born again. In the absence of such a voice many fall victim to depression.

The message of the Church should be precisely one of hope and should create the atmosphere of joy and optimism. The nature of the Gospel and the special function of the Church is: “The Lord hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” (Isaiah 61:1b)

David Kingdon emphasizes this: “Learn to live by faith. When we suffer from depression we often tend to forget the great truth of justification. We feel full of self-pity. And self-pity ... arises from self-justification.” He suggests that “when in our depression we pity ourselves we need to ask whether we have really learned to live by faith.” He alerts to the reality that “the awareness of our ungodliness threatens so often to drive us into deep depression.” He asks: “When this happens have we not forgotten that God justifies the ungodly? (Romans 4:5). Satan does indeed charge us with ungodliness, and so does our conscience.” But we must meet the charges brought against us and especially the charge that we are ungodly – as indeed we are – by pointing not to God’s work in us but to His work for us... We must accept our acceptance in the Beloved. We must ever look in faith to the substitutionary death, the justifying resurrection, the glorious ascension, and the prevailing intercession of our Saviour (Romans 8:34). This is the way of joy. It is to look to God’s work for us, outside of us.”¹⁶

The “directions and advices” that the late Dr. John Colquhoun ¹⁷ gave to Christians afflicted with melancholy are also to the point:

1. Endeavour to understand well the covenant of grace.

2. Be firmly persuaded that the Incarnate Redeemer with his righteousness and fulness is in the Gospel offered to you as sinners of mankind.

3. Love not the good things of this world so as to place either your happiness or your confidence in them.

4. Be not solitary, but as little and as seldom as possible.

5. Recollect frequently that, although it is a sin to yield to temptation, yet it is not a sin to be tempted.

6. Consider how much it gratifies Satan, to see your indulging gloomy and desponding thought.

7. Meditate frequently on the promises and grace of the Gospel, but let each of your meditations be short and easy.

8. Be frequently employed in ejaculatory ¹⁸ prayer, and let your stated prayers be shorter than ordinary.

9. Be not discouraged though in your holy exercises you have no lively feelings, nor elevating conceptions.

10. Be diligent, from principles of faith and love, in doing the work of your lawful calling.

11. Represent your case to some skillful, cheerful, and humble minister or private Christian, and follow diligently his directions.

12.  If you have reason to apprehend that your malady (illness) is increasing, you ought to consult a skillful physician, and, in the hope that you shall in due time recover, to observe carefully his prescriptions.

13. Finally, Trust that the Lord Jesus, Whose infinite compassions fail not, will, as far as it shall be for His glory and your good, command deliverance for you.¹⁹

Constructive Biblical Guidance←⤒🔗

As Church we must be able to give constructive biblical guidance and support to those smitten with depression. How?

1. The Church should be there to help. Pastors, elders, deacons, their wives and the other brothers and sisters should give themselves to help those who are in emotional stress. According to Larry Crabb, the “church needs to take the role of spiritual, godly men and women far more seriously.”²⁰   We should not immediately refer them to a family physician or a counselor or psychiatrist. Mind you, in some cases this is altogether a must. There is clearly a need for professional counselors for those who suffer from depression and who cannot find the kind of help given in the church. For instance, in many cases of clinical depression, there is “effective medical treatment which may need to be prolonged.”²¹ One of the pastoral skills in this field is to be able to distinguish between those brothers and sisters who require medical attention and those who do not. In case of tendency to self-destruction, such a referral and sometimes hospitalization is imperative. It is a great blessing that where depression is the result primarily of hereditary or environmental factors, much can be done by the use of the anti-depressant drugs and other therapy. But even when our depressed brothers and sisters are being treated by psychiatrists or counselled by psychologists, we as officebearers should pastor to them and as brothers and sisters in the congregation surround with love, which at any rate gives a listening ear to and a praying heart for them.
   
   Why do I suggest that when Christians are depressed, they should not right away resort to psychiatry? One reason is that much modern psychiatry is based on anti-biblical psychology. A non-Christian psychiatrist has no understanding of the spiritual problems which often underlie depression both in Christians and non-Christians. Another reason is that the Lord God has appointed in the church pastors, elders and deacons whose calling it is to deal with the emotional as well as with the other problems of His people. I realize that I as a pastor lack the technological resources of the psychiatrist. But my elders and deacons and I have other resources of our own: the Word of God, prayer, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, Christian experience, and the supportive resources of a Christian congregation.

2. We should help the brother or sister suffering from depression to work his or her way through the depression in such a way that we honour the confidentiality of the depth of the depression. Grief is an intensely intimate, personal thing into which not just about everybody should be allowed to intrude. As far as possible, work your way through it with them keeping confidentiality and helping them fight their own emotional battles. If too many persons get involved in all the details, the brother or sister suffering from depression may lose all self-respect.

3. We must remind the brother or sister suffering from depression that his or her condition is not unique. He may feel a sense of utter isolation and hopelessness and concludes that no Christian has ever had such an experience, and that he therefore is no Christian. This, however, is not what the Word of God teaches. It teaches that many saints in the past have plumbed the depths of depression: Elijah under the juniper tree, the Psalmist crying from the depths and Paul declaring that he was pressed down beyond measure and despaired even of life (1 Corinthians 1:8). They knew what it was to be in an abyss of gloom and even of bitterness against God. Their experiences are recorded in part to prevent us from feeling utterly hopeless.

4. At a more complicated level I find that sometimes Christians become depressed because they nurture depression. What I as a pastor then try to do is challenge the depression itself. “Do you have a right to be depressed?” This is the approach we frequently find in Scripture. For example, the author of Psalm 42 asks his soul: “Why art thou cast down, o my soul?” Similarly, the Lord challenges Elijah (1 Kings 19:9), “What doest thou here?” The Lord Himself approaches even Cain in this way (Genesis 4:6): “Why are you wroth (= depressed) and why is your face fallen?” The thought that underlies these questions is that the depression to which they refer is thoroughly unreasonable and unjustified. Sometimes it is only a sinful reaction to the ordinary problems of life. More seriously it may be a strategy we adopt deliberately, retreating from the real life into a pseudo-illness to justify our own self-pity and attract the sympathy of others. Or it may be an act of regression, in which we try to escape into our childhood, to absolve ourselves from responsibility, escape the burden of decision-making and exempt ourselves from the ordinary rigours of earning a living.
   
   I don’t mean to say that these are the motives behind all depressions but behind some, perhaps even quite a few. That’s why we need to probe delicately but thoroughly. Otherwise too many lives are wasted and talents squandered through this misdirected self-indulgence.
   However, when I challenge the depression itself and point such a brother or sister to the call of the Lord to always rejoice in the Lord (Philippians 4:4) and to be always contented (Tenth commandment and Philippians 4:11), I find some of them respond by saying that they cannot do that and conclude that therefore their Christianity is non-existent. To them I show from Scripture that eminent men of God like Job, Moses, David and Paul sometimes found it really hard to be reconciled to the will of the Lord God.
   
   Moreover, I find that when brothers and sisters in their depression use religious language, it does not necessarily mean that their depression is spiritual. Clinical depression often fastens on to religion and feeds on it. It may well be that someone who is convinced that he or she has committed the unpardonable sin or is reprobate is not suffering from spiritual depression but from a clinical one which is fuelling itself with religious considerations. I tend to say that psychiatric referral is imperative in such an instance.
   You see, clinical depressions are usually caused by a combination of factors. In some instances there is a biochemical problem. This is particularly true of manic depression, where the individual alternates between high and lows. Such depressions, however, reflect a complex interaction between internal and external factors. Some people have an inborn predisposition to depression and when they come under stress their psyche goes under. An already vulnerable personality becomes even more so in the event of illness.

Dangers Associated with Depression←⤒🔗

We must also be alert to certain dangers associated with depression. One of these is the strong temptation to resort to alcohol. However, if there is one time above all others when people should practise total abstinence, it is at this time. After all, alcohol is a depressant, reduces efficiency and carries the risk of addiction. Similar dangers exist in connection with tranquillo-sedative drugs such as Librium and Valium which are easily prescribed. They also reduce efficiency and carry similar risks of addiction. Moreover, the anxiety and tension which they are intended to relieve are themselves emotional states forbidden to the Christian. An inherited predisposition to it implies that we shall be tempted to lapse into despairing gloom. It does not mean such lapses are inevitable, because with every temptation God provides a way of escape. By grace those who tend to become depressed can manage their temperaments so as to conform closely to God’s ideal for our emotional lives.

Be Realistic←⤒🔗

Finally, we must all learn to be realistic. To a large extent, depression is rooted in our aspirations to be successful or our dreams to become prominent. None of us is as successful as we like to be and none of us possesses all the gifts we think desirable. It can be very difficult indeed to live with ourselves. But live with ourselves we must, recognizing freely that we have only two talents (or maybe only one); that at many points we perform badly; and that many of our dreams must perish with ourselves. We must learn that God forgives failure; that no man is condemned for not being talented enough; and that it is better to do our duty badly than not to attempt it at all. We must learn to see ourselves through God’s eyes. He knows the very worst about us; yet He loved us and gave Himself for us.

Pastoral Depression and Recovery←⤒🔗

What if pastors or counselors suffer from a melancholic temperament themselves? According to Brian Beardsworth, depression “is very common in ministers, many of whom are conscientious and introspective”²² and “has a profound effect on their general health, family relationships and the quality of their ministry.”  ²³ David Kingdom spoke in March 1982 at a Leicester Ministers’ Conference on “Ministerial Depression.” and recommended the following pastoral counsels:

1. If you suffer from a melancholic temperament learn to discipline it. When you feel yourself beginning to brood, center your thoughts upon Christ. Meditate on Him. See Him as He gives himself for others. Then you will be less absorbed in yourself and less inclined to pity yourself. Seek to bring every thought into captivity to Christ...

2. Do not be afraid to complain to God when you are depressed. David complained when his soul “refused to be comforted” (Psalms 42:2). Only the last three lines of this psalm are a prayer – the rest is a complaint, although in the context of prayer… David did not bottle up his anguish within himself. No, he complained, he cried, he unburdened himself to his God...²⁴

Pastors must lay out the Christian calling to the brothers and sisters and help them towards fulfilling it. The calling in this instance is to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), to have hearts that make melody to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19) always and in all things and to be content whatever our circumstances (Philippians 4:11). It is something that we can learn. We can come to be persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord and learn to be content (Philippians 4:11). The Word of the Lord our God holds out not only the obligation to manage our temperaments but also the promise and the hope of significantly modifying them. But that cannot be left to the individual alone. The life of the whole church must be thoroughly biblical if it is to put melody in the hearts of the brothers and sisters, the young people and the children. The members of the Spirit-filled congregation will focus on the wonderful works of God (Acts 2:11) and accept responsibility for strengthening the weak and encouraging the feeble-minded. The Christian Church is the “primary context for healing.”²⁵

Illustration A←↰⤒🔗

I’m reminded of a marvellous illustration that the late Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave in a sermon on Luke 24:25-27 that I once heard on tape, ²⁶  of how he, in the early 1930s, had counselled a teacher who was suffering from depression and had given up all his church work. He complained of headaches and gastric pains. Dr. Lloyd-Jones asked how long he had had this. He answered him that he had had this since 1915. During World War I, he had volunteered for the navy. Eventually, he was transferred to a submarine, which was sent to the Mediterranean.

He told Dr. Lloyd-Jones: “One afternoon we were submerged in the sea and were engaged in an action. All of us were doing our duties. But suddenly there was a most terrible sound, and our submarine shook. Our submarine had been hit by a mine, and then we sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. You know, he said, I’ve never been the same man. I’ve had this trouble ever since.” Dr. Lloyd-Jones responded: “I understand, but please tell me the rest of your story.”

He answered: “There is nothing really more to say. I’m just telling you that that’s how I feel ever since that happened to me in the Mediterranean.”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones: “But I really would be interested to know the remainder of the story.”

He: “‘But I told you the whole story.” Dr. Lloyd-Jones: “Now I really would like to know the whole story. Start at the beginning again.”

He did. Again he told “how he volunteered, joined the navy, was sent to the submarine, the submarine was sent to the Mediterranean. Everything went all right until the afternoon they were engaged in action, the sudden sound, the submarine shook, and there we went to the bottom of the Mediterranean, and ... ‘I feel like this ever since.’”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones: “But do tell me the rest of the story.”
He said: “But I have no more to tell you.”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones: “Now, let’s go over it all again.” Dr. Lloyd-Jones took him over it step by step. They came to this dramatic afternoon, the sound, the shaking of the submarine. “Down we went to the bottom of the Mediterranean.”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones: “Go on!”
He said: “There’s nothing more to be said.”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones asked him: “Are you still at the bottom of the Mediterranean?”

Obviously, physically he wasn’t, but mentally, he was. He had remained at the bottom of the Mediterranean ever since.

Then Dr. Lloyd-Jones went on to explain to him: “All your troubles are due to the fact that in your own mind you are still at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Why didn’t you tell me that somehow you came up to the surface and that another man or another ship saw you, that you were treated there in a hospital and eventually brought back to Great Britain and put in a hospital?” Dr. Lloyd-Jones got all those facts out of him.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones said: “Why didn’t you tell me all that? You stopped at the bottom of the Mediterranean?”

The doctor explained: “It was because he had done that in his mind, that he had suffered terrible depression during all those years. As a result, however, of this explanation, that man became perfectly well immediately, resumed his duties and within a year became a candidate for ordination in the Anglican Church in Wales.”

Illustration B←↰⤒🔗

His mother died when he was six, and he was sent away to an uncongenial boarding school. As a young man he fell in love with his cousin Theodora, but the romance was broken off. Moreover, “his closest friend accidentally drowned.”²⁷ Afterward he went into a period of dejection from which he was suddenly released one day while contemplating the ocean at Southampton. His heart, he wrote, “became light and joyful in an instant.”

“His first suicide attempt came in his early thirties, days before he was to have publicly examined for a minor governmental post. Cowper attached a garter ²⁸ to the ceiling, and hung himself. He woke up on the floor still alive, the garter having given way.” Later he wrote about this incident in his Memoirs: “Though I had failed in my design, yet I had all the guilt of that crime to answer for: a sense of God’s wrath, and a deep despair of escaping it, instantly succeeded.” He was convinced that he had committed “the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit,” and within a few weeks he suffered what today we would call a psychotic break. He described the onset of this first episode of insanity as “the most horrible dismay of soul ... (and) a strange and horrible darkness fell upon me... At every stroke my thoughts and expressions became more wild and incoherent; all that remained to me clear was the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment.” His brother took him to an asylum run by a moderate evangelical clergyman, the Rev. Nathaniel Cotton, where for the next six months he “suffered terrible visions and voices but finally grew calmer under Dr. Cotton’s mild ministrations.” His brother visited him and assured him that he could be saved as well as anyone. This counsel had been offered to him before, but this time it found response in his heart. Cowper “made an almost instantaneous recovery.” That night he had “sweet dreams” and in the morning he woke with delight. Nevertheless he stayed in the asylum for another year.²⁹

From here on “he lodged with ... a family who shared his religious convictions, the Unwins. When sometime later Mr. Unwin was killed in a fall from a horse, “Cowper remained in the household.” They moved to the parish of the Rev. John Newton, and so began one of the most beautiful friendships anywhere recorded in Church history. Newton aged forty-two, and Cowper, then thirty-five, spent the next twelve years together. He became Rev. Newton’s helper and took up the care of the poor, visited the sick and the dying, journeyed with Newton in the evenings to some preaching engagement and was always present at the meetings for prayer. Rev. Newton has written: “The Lord evidently sent him to Olney, where he has been a blessing to many, a great blessing to myself.”

From time to time there were reminders of Cowper’s earlier mental disorder when depression would occasionally trouble his spirit, and Newton would exhort him “to resist, to the utmost, every dark and discouraging suggestion.”³⁰ Newton’s selection of a text was sometimes influenced by his friend’s condition. Newton and his wife Mary often ungrudgingly gave themselves to all that concerned Cowper’s welfare.

Five years later Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, who was seven years older than he, began making plans to marry. However, as “the wedding (date) drew closer,” his “mental condition grew worse. He had been experiencing bouts of depression for a year,” and then “he suffered his second attack of full-blown insanity. His hallucinations returned, and his friends described him as ‘almost an infant.’” Then for the next thirteen months, he stayed in “the vicarage” of “his friend, the Rev. John Newton, with whom he had been collaborating on a collection of hymns.” Later Cowper wrote: “I did not ... lose my sense but I lost the power to exercise them... I believed that everyone hated me ... was convinced that my food was poisoned...” (etc.) On top of it all, “he made several more suicide attempts. He claimed to have heard God commanding him to sacrifice his own life, just as Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac. When his friends prevented his attempts to kill himself, Cowper heard God’s voice condemning him to eternal punishment for his failure. His psychotic delusions gradually abated, but his sense of exclusion from God’s mercy never left him after that.”³¹

“Amidst these terrible hallucinations, Cowper’s nearest approach to sanity was when his distressed brain found rest upon his pillow and those who watched over him noted, ‘Sometimes the Lord visits him in his sleep, so that his dreams are gracious and comfortable, and his heart drawn forth in prayer; but when awake his distress returns.’”³²“There was no sudden recovery” as there had been in the asylum, and he “never entered a church again.”

His friend, John Newton, whom we know as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace, “tried to reason Cowper out of his despair, but his efforts were fruitless.” The last six years of his life he was “haunted by horrific dreams at night and sunk in speechless torpor³³when awake. Though still cared for by friends, he died under the apprehension that he had offended the Almighty irremediably.”³⁴

What shall we say? Ian Murray comments: “These suicide attempts ... were not rational acts of an unbeliever, in final rebellion against God. They were the pathetic acts of a child of God, whose disturbed mind believed that in his case suicide was agreeable to God’s will. That self-destruction is a sin from which particularly every Christian must flee is plain from the Word of God and anything tending to lessen the terrible character is suicide is reprehensible ... Yet since, in Cowper’s case, the citadel of his mind reeled in derangement and was seized by delusion, it may not be concluded that this judgment on his part and the corresponding attempts at suicide, from the intent of which God graciously preserved him, proved the unreality of his faith and of his security in Christ.”³⁵

It’s not a very encouraging story, although I do know that the articulation of his own doubts and weariness of spirit has spoken to and for countless other disheartened souls. I myself love many of his hymns. Take, for instance, his;

There is a fountain filled with blood,
The dying thief rejoiced to see Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,
That fountain in his day;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
And there have I, as vile as he, Lose all their guilty stains.
Washed all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb! Thy precious blood
E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Shall never lose its power,
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Redeeming lover has been my theme,
Be saved, to sin no more.
And shall be till I die.

But when this lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave
Then, in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing Thy power to save.

Who knows how many hearts have been eased by expressing their misery in Cowper’s words? He groped toward “redeeming love” and away from “redeeming love” throughout his life, despairing in the darkness, but clinging to a fraying thread of hope. When he couldn’t muster courage to enter a church during the latter part of his life, his hymns were there. They are still there, giving a tongue to the pain of the doubter, the weak, the sufferer, the morbid.

“It is worth observing,” Ian Murray continues, “that Cowper’s spiritual counsellors – of whom John Newton was chief – were not men who made feelings the index of a Christian’s spiritual state. The invariable tendency of melancholy, when found in a Christian, leads him to account for his misery in terms of being deserted by God. Newton and his school knew full-well that our acceptance with God through Christ’s blood is not to be treated as being synonymous with our consciousness of God’s presence. If the two things are regarded as inseparable, then what an old Puritan rightly affirmed could never be true: “God sometimes puts His children to bed in the dark.” Newton constantly laboured to stress the objectivity of the promises of God in Christ.”³⁶

Why “is it that some of God’s children are permitted to languish in such a condition when they are in the hand of the heavenly Father Who is both loving and omnipotent? All physical suffering” may already be very difficult for us to square with God’s love and omnipotence, “but when the suffering of a Christian lies primarily in the mind, and is therefore of a nature which debars the sufferer from all consciousness of the consolations of the Gospel,” we are faced with a very painful problem. Nevertheless, then “we are brought back to a fundamental spiritual fact: there are matters about which the Christian has to be prepared not to get light in this world for it clear that there are some dispensations about which God is reserving the explanation until eternity. There are mysteries which He calls us now to leave unsolved.”

When Cowper at last left this vale of tears, Newton, seventy-five years old and looking forward to going home, wrote to tell a friend of the news, as follows:

My most dear and intimate friend, William Cowper, has obtained a release from all his distresses. I preached a funeral sermon for him on the 11th instant from Ecclesiastes 2:2, 3. Why was he who both by talents and disposition seemed qualified, if it were possible, to reform the age in which he lived, harassed by distresses and despair, so that the bush which Moses saw all in flames was a fit emblem of his case? The Lord’s thoughts and ways are so much above ours, that it becomes us rather to lie in the dust of adoration and silence than to inquire presumptuously into the grounds of his proceedings. It may reconcile us to lighter troubles, when we see what the Lord’s most favoured and honoured servants are appointed to endure. But we are sure that he is rich enough, and that eternity is long enough to make them abundant amends for whatever His infinite wisdom may see meet to call them to, for promoting His glory in the end; for this bush, though so long in the flames, was not consumed, because the Lord was there. The last twelve hours of his life he lay still, and took no notice, but so long as he could speak, there was no proof that his derangement was either removed or abated. He was, however, free from his great terrors. There was no sigh either of joy or sorrow when near his departure. What a glorious surprise must it be to find himself released from all his chains in a moment, and in the presence of the Lord whom he loved, and whom he served!³⁷