that the beginnings of "a right spirit” have been given us, that we have some abiding desire for spiritual happiness, and some kind and degree of faith, however weak or diminutive, in the great things which revelation declares, then it behoves us to pray with a more hopeful and confiding spirit; to grasp, though it be with a feeble hand, the inestimable promise; and by the very act and exercise of faith, and the aids it will procure, to give to it a new expansion through the soul, that it may triumph over the noxious vapour which depresses and obscures it now.

XXV.

ON THE DEVOTIONAL TEMPERS PROPER TO

CONVALESCENCE.

Not only is the human frame, in some instances, so constituted, as greatly to resist or exclude the painful and debilitating sensations, but it also appears that there are minds possessing so happy a degree of independence on the body, as to be far less affected than others are by equal measures of its fatigue or weakness, its disorder or pain. Whether this privilege be the effect of a mental and moral strength intrinsically greater, able to withdraw or control itself away from mere sensation, or whether it arises from a less strict and sympathetic connexion between thought, or those organs which develop it, and the other organs, no earthly physiologist can tell. The question

cannot even be stated with precision; it turns on that close secret within us, which the acutest reasoner should be humbled by his incapacity to unlock, the subsistence of a thinking power in a material structure.

But many minds,- and not among the least perspicacious,—so far from enjoying that peculiar independence, are exceedingly influenced by diversities of bodily feeling. Slight ailments produce in them such indisposedness for thought, as nothing but the strong sense of duty or impulse of circumstances can overcome. When the sensations are heightened into positive pain or unequivocal debility, then intellectual vigour (except by some special counteraction which cannot be ordinarily looked for) is proportionately broken or relaxed.

There is beauty in that simple scriptural figure, as applied to the moral and religious constancy of a patriarch, "his bow abode in strength; "* but it would be no unapt image of that bodily vigour without which devotional energy is often found to languish. Perhaps this sense is included in the figure as used by Job, "My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand." The bow is a delicate, though a primitive weapon.

* Genesis xlix. 24.

Too much tension makes it unelastic; and the field of Cressy may remind us, that let but a thunder shower relax the string, and it will abide in strength no longer.

How painful to the Christian, if in seasons. when he is most admonished of dependence on the Sovereign of life, and when mortal disease, though not perhaps imminent, is far more feelingly anticipated than in days of health, he thus finds a diminished power and readiness to commune with his Divine Supporter; with Him who, when "flesh" shall irrecoverably "fail," can alone be "the strength of his heart and his portion for ever."

Yet, although the tone of health which conduces to mental animation be rightly termed a privilege, we can conceive that to some minds its partial absence may be always salutary; and that its heavier occasional interruptions are to all Christians a means of spiritual good; if only to disturb that "temple-haunting" pride, which, even amidst the warmth of real devotion, "hath found a nest for herself." The snares of false worship are remote from our eyes and from our thoughts; even if our birth-place did not preclude temptation to gross and palpable idolatries, few could "set up a golden image in the plain :"

but many may resemble the Assyrian in the dreams of pride, setting up a visionary image in the heart. Not that these dreams are sent of God, but He permits our vanity to raise them, and would teach us the lowliness of wisdom by their fall. When the faculties are well tuned, and the expansion of thought and exuberance of feeling in prayer or contemplation elate the soul, then, amidst all our humiliating tenets and fluent confessions, the personal idol shines unseen, a "form" not indeed "terrible," but full of grace, whose "brightness is excellent;" and while the lips and even the heart yield homage to Him that formed them, there is a covert sacrifice, a byoffering, to this purloining "Mercurius" within. But let sickness assail the body; let a distempered languor overspread the mind; and where is our household god of talent and elocution now? His showy attributes have vanished; his wand and his wings are "broken together; " he is become "like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors." Thus are we taught, like the men of Lystra, to "turn from these vanities," (which, though in our case latent, are not unreal,) and to bow in fainting humility before the living God; "cast down" into the conviction that self is nothing, and that He is All.