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I've been reading a paperback copy of The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd by John Piper. It gives an account of the lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper and David Brainerd. The one character that I was drawn to was that of the famous Christian hymn writer William Cowper (pronounced Cooper.)

William Cowper was born in 1731 and died in 1800. That makes him a contemporary of John Wesley and George Whitefield, the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in England. He embraced Whitefield’s Calvinistic theology rather than Wesley’s Arminianism. But it was a warm, evangelical brand of Calvinism, shaped (in Cowper’s case) largely by one of the healthiest men in the eighteenth century, the “old African blasphemer,” John Newton. Cowper said he could remember how, as a child, he would see the people at four o’clock in the morning coming to hear Whitefield preach in the open air. “Moorfields [was] as full of the lanterns of the worshipers before daylight as the Haymarket was full of flambeaux on opera nights.”

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement, his life was utterly uneventful—the kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But those of us who are older have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement, his life was utterly uneventful—the kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But those of us who are older have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 85.

Cowper rarely found his work fulfilling, and it was more his father's ideal of what he should do than his own:

From 1749 he was apprenticed to a solicitor with a view to practicing law. At least this was his father’s view. He never really applied himself and had no heart for the public life of a lawyer or a politician. For ten years he did not take his legal career seriously but lived a life of leisure with token involvement in his supposed career.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 86.

In 1752, he was struck by a paralyzing depression, which he recollected in his memoirs:

[I was struck] with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same, can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies, to which before I had been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had no one to direct me where to find it.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), pp. 86-87.

John Piper writes, "In 1752 he sank into his first paralyzing depression—the first of four major battles with mental breakdown so severe as to set him to staring out of windows for weeks at a time. Struggle with despair came to be the theme of his life. He was twenty-one years old and not yet a believer" (p. 86.)

So in December 1763 he was committed to St. Albans Insane Asylum, where the fifty-eight-year-old Dr. Nathaniel Cotton tended the patients. Cotton was somewhat of a poet, but most of all, by God’s wonderful design, an evangelical believer and a lover of God and the Gospel. He loved Cowper and held out hope to him repeatedly in spite of his insistence that he was damned and beyond hope. Six months into his stay, Cowper found a Bible lying (not by accident) on a bench.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 92.

Though, fearing damnation, Cowper came to believe that he was not utterly forsaken of God. He felt compelled to turn to the Bible for answers. The first that seered his conscience was Romans 3:25: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (KJV). Of this magnanimous discovery, he wrote:

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel... Whatever my friend Madan had said to me, long before, revived in all its clearness, with demonstration of the spirit and with power. Unless the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have died with gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport; I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), pp. 93-94.

He had come to love Dr. Cotton so much that he stayed on another twelve months after his conversion. Though one might wish the story were one of emotional triumph after his conversion, he continued to struggle with depression. One of Cowper's most renowned hymns, 'There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,' contained these heartening words: "The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away," wrote Cowper.

"Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be until I die."
—William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
—William Cowper, God Moves In A Mysterious Way