The following is a reading from the book, Man, Moral and Physical, or the Effects of Disease and Health on Religious Experience. This book was published in 1860. The author is Joseph Jones, who was a pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. For my purposes, I'm starting on page 68 of this book, Christian Experience. We have already said that it is a subject which is worthy the attention of all. whatever their character, moral or religious, but it is more particularly the case of the latter that this investigation contemplates. It is to show the influence of the mind and feelings upon the body, as well as the constant and yet often unsuspected actings of the flesh, with its unnumbered infirmities upon the spirit, that the devotional exercises of the latter are greatly affected by the physical condition of the former. And if the foregoing observations have been uninteresting or unintelligible to any, there are those who will understand us now. Here we strike a chord which will vibrate more or less than every changed heart that has been given to the study of its own exercises. No person accustomed to notice his various religious frames can have failed to perceive that these are closely allied to what is usually denominated his constitution. Is there such a blending of the juices of the animal economy as to produce what is called a nervous temperament, or that excess of bile which makes it melancholy? Or is a man gentle or serene, sanguine or timid, cheerful or sad? Or will find that these idiosyncrasies will not be merged and lost in the changes wrought by regenerating grace? His religion will not so neutralize and remove the cause of his lowness of spirits, his timidity, or whatever it may be that is peculiar to his nature, as to make him at all times cheerful and self-possessed. The bashful man will be a bashful Christian, and the bold man, constitutionally, will be bold in a state of grace. After all that the Spirit has accomplished in each, it will still be true in all that the religious character will be tinctured by that of the natural man, as the liquor put into an old cask commonly receives a strong tang from the vessel. In this respect, the Spirit's operation on the soul has been happily compared to the work of a sculptor, who makes a statue of wood, of stone, or of marble, indifferently, according to the material put into his hand. So the spirit informing the new man, still retained so much of the old, is to make it evident what is a rock from which he was hewn. Nor is it a less interesting fact that this gracious influence is so exerted in the various conditions of life where it is felt, as to qualify the soul for the appropriate duties of its particular station. Does regenerating grace find a man in high life or humble? In Caesar's household? Among the fishermen of Galilee? Or the servants of Philemon? It requires no change in his place, but works a change on his heart, and gives new help to discharge his duties better. The same Holy Spirit who makes a Christian master gentle and prudent in commanding, makes a Christian servant faithful and cheerful in obeying. As the astrologer said of Cyrus, that the same stars which made him to be chosen king amongst the armies of men when he came to be a man, made him to be a chosen king among the shepherd's children when he was a child. And rearing the New Testament temple of the Redeemer on earth, there is the same occasion for various gifts and kinds of service that there was in the magnificent structure of Solomon. And hence the innocent and useful differences between men and their fallen state are preserved in turn to a profitable account in their recovery. See a familiar illustration of this in the original teachers of the gospel, or the Twelve Apostles. Simon Peter was by natural temperament ardent, sanguine, precipitate, and his characteristic of the natural man is continually betraying itself after his conversion. You observe it in his conversations with his master, his bold professions, hasty promises which open the way for his sifting by Satan, and his lamentable fall. After the resurrection, see him running with John to visit the sepulchre. And while his timid and cautious companion stoops down at first, and only ventures to look into the place, the intrepid Peter rushes by and plunges into the gloomy abode of the dead, examines the very spot where the sacred dust had rested, and the linen clothes in which it had been wrapped. Both of them regenerated men, and men perhaps of equal piety. but very unlike before their conversion and scarcely more alike afterwards. Dr. Mason used to say that the grace which would make John appear like an angel would be only just enough to keep Peter from knocking a man down. Look next at Paul, whose lofty bearing and undaunted courage by nature was not a wit impaired, but only sanctified by grace and retained to the end of his life. See Luther and Melanchthon as opposite in their Christian character as they were in their original temperament. Melanchthon, Cecil says, is like a snail with his couple of horns. He puts out his horns and feels and feels and feels. No education could have rendered these two men alike. Their difference began in the womb. Luther dashes and saying his things, Melanchthon must go round about. The same divine influence had wrought affectionately on the heart of both, yet like the statue of which we spoke, the image corresponded to the material out of which it had been constructed. That any amount of spiritual influence should ever destroy these physical characteristics and make men of such diverse temperaments alike, is to be expected no more than that it should make them of one stature, or give them the same features or complexion. It would be recollected how Caesar recognizes the influence of temperament when he objected to Cassius because he was lean and thought too much. He wished to have around him sleek-headed men and such as sleep nights would he were fatter. Such men as Cassius feared are usually lean because their too much thinking develops a brain and a nervous system at the expense of some function, any animal or organic. Men of this sort, according to Dr. Johnson, will be found thin and sallow, with weak digestion and quickness or irritability of nerve, like Lord Wellington or Bonaparte, till the latter became bloated by disease. Martin Luther's amazing executive powers were as closely connected with his physical qualities as with his moral. His great mind was lodged in a body which seemed to have been created for just such a tenant. His frame was large, well proportioned, athletic, and capable of enduring without fatigue any amount of labor and privation. He was affable, hopeful, and a stranger to those bodily ailments that so beset and embittered the life of the sedentary and studious. Dr. Cox is reported to have said that it was well that Luther was not a dyspeptic. for the Reformation would have been delayed had he wanted a good digestion. But there are other, and in some respects more marked and painful illustrations in the morbid experience of some Christians, which are at once an effect and a symptom of the state of their health. The Reverend Timothy Rogers, a minister in London near the close of the 17th century, who was happily delivered from long affliction and great spiritual distress produced by this cause, describes the condition as one which is in every respect sad and overwhelming. And a letter to a friend he says, quote, it is a state of darkness that has no discernible beams of light. It is a land of darkness on which no sun at all seems to shine. It does generally indeed first begin at the body and then conveys its venom to the mind. And if anything could be found that might keep the blood and spirits in their due temper and motion, this would obstruct its further progress and in a great measure, keep the soul clear. End quote. How many belong to that class who are familiarly said to look only at the dark side of every object and are unwilling to engage in any enterprise from an anticipation of its failure? Whether the happiness of this world or the next be their pursuit, the prospect is cheered by scarcely a ray of hope. Such a tendency to gloom is a thorn in the flesh by which they are often tormented. Nor is any class more exposed to the buffetings of this minister of Satan than the teachers of religion. How often do we witness the sad spectacle of those whose manifold bodily infirmities, brought on by sedentary habits, great anxiety, or excessive study and exhaustion of sensorial power, defraud them of all the consolations of that benign system of faith which they are unable to expound so successfully to others. Instead of an open, cheerful expression of countenance, we often see a wrinkled, contracted, sinister look which speaks anything but in favor of the benign religion of the gospel. Thus Christianity itself is made to suffer from the physical sufferings of its professors and expounders, delight-minded and thoughtless imbibe a prejudice against it from observing the careworn and sorrowful features of some of its advocates. They think it to be a legitimate effect of their principles and are made to shun the places and books and people whose influence appears to be so detrimental to all earthly enjoyment. Unhappily, these outward tokens of disquietude are but too significant of what is passing within. It to face be covered with gloom, it is only an index of the state of such a Christian's heart. When in the retirement of his closet, he pours out his exercise and lamentations and confessions of sin and supplications for relief. At one time, he feels that he has grieved the Spirit, that his best services are only hypocritical forms, and surely God has forsaken him. His heart appears like another millstone in his bosom, the cage of every unclean bird. The arrows of the Almighty are within him, the poison whereof drinketh up his spirit, and the terrors of God do set themselves in array against him. Again the scene is wholly changed, the turbid current of his thoughts has become clear as crystal. The rain is over and gone, and the time of the singing of birds has come. The change in his exercises is like the transition from the terrific tempest to the serene sky and air, and pleasant sun that follow it. Wherever he is aware, his soul makes him like the chariots of Amenadab. His doubts are solved, his fears are gone, and his present joys perhaps are in proportion to his previous sadness. He is brought into Christ's banqueting house and a banner over him is love. He is stayed with flagons and comforted with apples and restored to the joys of salvation. There's such spiritual fluctuations as these to which so many Christians are subject. very often produced by physical causes is as capable of proof as it is that an excited pulse and increased heat are symptoms of fever. They are the reflected influence of some bodily malady upon the soul. They arise, as Reverend Dr. J.R. McDuff says, from a diseased body, an overstrung mind, a succession of calamities, weakening and impairing the nervous system. We know how susceptible are the body and mind together of being affected by external influences, of that constitution which in our ignorance we call union of soul and body. We know little respect in what is cause and what is effect. We would fain believe that the mind has power over the body, but it is just as true that the body rules the mind. Cause is apparently the most trivial. A heated room. Lack of exercise. A sunless day. A northern aspect will make all the difference between happiness and unhappiness. Between faith and doubt. Between courage and indecision. To our fancy, there is something humiliating in being thus at the mercy of our animal organism. We would feign fine, nobler causes for our emotions, but many of those sighs and tears and morbid, depressed feelings which Christians speak of as a result of spiritual darkness and the desertion of God are merely the result of physical derangement, the penalty often for the violation of the law of health. The atmospheres we breathe is enough to account for them. They come and go, rise and fall with the mercury in the tube. These are cases not for the spiritual but for the bodily physician. Their cure is in attendance to the usual laws and prescriptions which regulate the healthy action of the bodily functions. We once knew a man of superior natural gifts and piety, an officer of the church who suffered occasionally from such a cause. The effect on his devotional feelings was so marked that you could discover the state of his health in his prayers. They were always excellent and edifying, yet there was at times a subdued manner or a sadness which indicated the influence of bodily infirmity and of the struggle of the soul to resist a tendency. Many have discovered that their periods of spiritual depression are always contemporaneous with periodical changes in their physical condition, or with that sort of indisposition which proceeds from gastric derangement or an affection of the liver. How many thousands are daily affected by changes in the atmosphere, scarcely less than was Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay? whose most extravagant outbreaks of passion and cruel exertions of despotic power generally occurred during the seasons of hypochondria, which were most frequent when the wind was northeast, but which ended with a change to southwest when he would begin to sing and laugh to himself and was readily accessible. Sir Woodbine Parish informs us in his narrative of a visit to Bwyneth Eddeth, that a sort of moral derangement prevails when the wind blows from the north, that quarrels and bloodshed are much more frequent at such times than at any other. He relates that a gentleman of amiable manners, under ordinary circumstances, was so affected by this wind that whenever it prevailed he would quarrel with anyone he met, and he was at last executed for murder after having been engaged in street fights with knives at least twenty times. The cases in which this sort of morbid suffering is exemplified are so numerous that their name is Legion. They find that their state while here is a conjunction of their soul to a frail, distempered body, and so near a conjunction that the actions of the soul must have great dependence on the body. Its apprehensions of spiritual good are limited by the frailty of the body, and the soul can go no higher than the body will allow. We have known instances in which the seasons of spiritual joy and depression alternated like an intermittent disease coming and departing at regular intervals. And the church of the late Dr. Spencer of Brooklyn, New York, was an excellent female whose mind was found to be shrouded in darkness and gloom. After many conversations held at different times for months, one day I called upon her. He says, and to my surprise found her calm of that her distress of mind had given place to gladness. But three days after this, her light had departed and she had relapsed into her former state of despair. Not long after, she became hopeful and happy for a little season and then as depressed and sorrowful as ever. These alternations from gloom to gladness were inexplicable until I was able to connect them with the state of her bodily health. When I mentioned the cause to her, she admitted the coincidence between the coming of pain into her head and the departure of her spiritual peace. But this explanation seemed credible only during her intervals of peace, which at length became short. In the morning she was always hopeful, but every afternoon in despair. In the morning she believed that her afternoon distress was caused by her bodily infirmity, but would entirely disbelieve it in the afternoon. At length the morbid bodily state which had so affected her mind was changed. The light of Christian hope and joy were no longer withdrawn. Her death was peaceful, without a doubt of a happy immortality." During Mr. Cecil's protracted sickness of three years, the state of his mind fluctuated with his malady. His principal effect was apparent in throwing a cloud over his comfort. He was precisely like a man laden with a heavy weight. As the load was lightened, he began to think, feel, exert, and enjoy himself in his natural manner. When the burden was increased, he sank down again under the oppression. Sometimes these intermissions are much more prolonged as in the case of the late, excellent, and venerable Dr. James Hall of North Carolina. who was of a melancholy temperament, and after finishing his education at Princeton, he fell into a gloomy dejection which interrupted his studies and labors for more than a year. After his restoration, he labored successfully and comfortably in the ministry many years, even to old age, but at last was overtaken again and entirely overwhelmed by this terrible malady. Of all men that I ever saw, Dr. Archibald Alexander says, he had the tenderest sympathy with persons laboring under religious despondency. When on a journey I have known him to travel miles out of his way to converse with a sufferer of this kind, and his manner was most tender and affectionate in speaking to such." A venerable clergyman who had suffered greatly from nervous affections discovered this to be characteristic of his own experience. that when a period of gloom and distress did not terminate for two or three weeks, it would in the meantime recur only every other day. But the more common cases are those in which the cloud, when gathered, remained suspended and unmoved for days or weeks with scarcely a gleam of sunshine. Such a sufferer was the late eminently learned and pious Isaac Milner, dean of Carlisle, whose extraordinary talents and attainments in science were conceded by all, and whose genuine piety was questioned by none but himself, and yet, while the source of so much light and spiritual instruction to others, he was often an opaque and cheerless body to himself. Quote, though I have endeavored to discharge my duty as well as I could, end quote, he writes to Mr. Wilberforce, yet sadness and melancholy of heart stick close by and increase upon me. I tell nobody, but I am very much sunk indeed, and I wish I could have the relief of weeping as I used to do." Again in writing to another, a clerical friend, he says, My views has of late been exceedingly dark and distressing, and a word Almighty God seems to hide his face. I entrust a secret hardly to any earthly being. I know not what will become of me. There is doubtless a good deal of bodily affection mingled with this, but it is not all so. I bless God, however, that I never lose sight of the cross, and though I should die without seeing any personal interest in the Redeemer's merits, I think I hope that I should be found at His feet. I will thank you for a word at your leisure. My door is bolted at the time of my writing this, for I am full of tears. Such spiritual sadness is easily accounted for when it is understood that dr Milner was for upwards of 40 years a victim of some of the most distressing complaints that flesh is heir to Spasms in his stomach severe and uninterrupted headaches oppression of the breath broken slumbers disturbed by frightful dreams were among the diseases which causes physicians to tell him many years before his death and that, with such a pulse as his, a man's life was not worth one minute. Another example is furnished by Mr. Richard Baxter, in whose practical and devotional writings it is easy to discover the constitutional habits and qualities of the man. No person not inspired ever wrote more graphically of heaven and hell, as if he had visited both, and had come back to the earth again to exhort men to seek the one and escape the other. But notwithstanding his preeminent piety, during his early years his mind was greatly troubled with doubts about his own salvation, promoted, says his biographer, by the particular cast of his mind and the state of his body. Though habitually under the government of religious principles, it is well known that he has certain besetting infirmities of temper, which are among the most common diagnoses of what were some of his manifold diseases. The late Dr. Payson was another, whose vibrations of Christian feeling from the joyous to the sad, The cheerful to the despondent melancholy are scarcely less notorious than were his uncommon zeal and ministerial success. The cause is at once explained when his biographer tells us that his physical confirmation was of a very delicate structure, extremely sensitive and easily excited, so that nervous irritability and consequent depression were an ingredient in his nature. Hence, he adds, we have seen him writing bitter things against himself for causes which, with a different temperament, would have given him little uneasiness. The case of David Brainerd, the apostolic missionary, is in some respects more marked and instructive on the subject than even Edward Payson's. But it is easy to make the almost opposite and contradictory details of his diary harmonize with one another. And both with imminent godliness, when the writer of his memoirs, President Edwards, tells us of his frail health and of his constitutional proneness to dejection and melancholy. His willing spirit would have made him a rival of Paul, but under the weakness of his flesh, he sunk before he reached the age of 30. Such illustrations need not be multiplied, and yet we cannot forbear to advert for a moment before we pass on. To the touching case of one in whose character there is an abiding interest which affords a guarantee that the repetition, even of that which is familiarly known, will not be tiresome. And perhaps, within the range of casuistic research, we could not find a more affecting instance of morbid religious affection than that of William Cooper. How long his mind was shrouded in darkness and racked with the most fearful forebodings is as widely known as is his name. In one of his somewhat playful moods, when writing to the Reverend John Newton, quote, my thoughts, he says, are clad in a sober livery, for the most part as grave as that of a bishop's servant. They turn, too, upon spiritual subjects, but the tallest fellow and the loudest among them all is he who is continually crying out with a loud voice, Actum est de te, peristi, it is all over, you are lost. But what was the state of his mind for many years is nowhere described in more affecting terms than in the last original poem which he ever wrote, in which he called The Castaway. It was founded on an incident mentioned in Lord Anson's voyage, which he had read many years before, though the concluding stanzas show that the real subject of his muse was not the sufferer mentioned by Anson. having described the case of the unhappy mariner, his being washed headlong from on board, of friends, of hope, of all bereft, his sinking beneath the whelming brine, then rising to the surface, struggling among the waves, his crying for help, the efforts made to save him, The mournful sound of his voice, heard in every blast of his comrades, as the ship was driven further and further from him, till they could catch the sound no more. When overcome at length and exhausted, he sunk. The poet then adds, I therefore purpose not, or dream, the scanting on his fate, to give the melancholic theme a more enduring date. But misery delights to trace its semblance in another's case. No voice divine, no storm allayed, no light propitious shone. When snatched from all effectual aid, we perished each alone. But I, beneath a rougher sea, am whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. That the cause of Cooper's spiritual depression was disease has been abundantly proved to all, unless it be those who would far sooner tolerate a poet's being a madman than his being a saint. His despondency was produced by physical causage which could not be removed by reasoning any more than a headache or paroxysm of the gout. So the sufferer himself appears to believe, as is more than applied in the following extract from one of his letters, the mind of man is not a fountain but a cistern, and mine, God knows, a broken one. Sally Perry's case has given us much concern. I have no doubt it is distemper. But distresses of mind that are occasioned by distemper are the most difficult of all to deal with. They refuse all consolation. They will hear no reason. God only by His own immediate impressions can relieve them, as after an experience of thirteen years' misery I can abundantly testify. Like other velitudinarians of a particular class, his nerves were as sensitive to atmospheric changes as is the mercury of the barometer. He was joyful or sad as the day was serene or cloudy. I rise cheerless or distressed, he says to one of his friends, and brighten as the sun goes on. He had his four seasons of feeling as the revolving earth described the four grand stages of the sun's progress in the ecliptic. Thus, in another of his letters, he says, I now see a long winter before me, and am to get through it as I can. I know the ground before I tread upon it. It is hollow. It is agitated. It suffers shocks in every direction. It is like the soil of Calibria, all whirlpool and undulation. But I must reel through it, at least, if I be not swallowed up by the way." In a brief notice of Cooper by Mr. Cecil, he alludes to an unfounded report in circulation. that the poet's melancholy was derived from his residence and connection at Olney. The fact, however, Mr. Cecil says, was just the reverse as was attested both by respectable living witnesses and by manuscripts of Cooper's own writing at the calmest period of his life. Many years before and shortly after he began the study of law, he had a fearful attack which was alleviated by reading the Gothic and uncouth poems of pious George Herbert. Disrelief, however, was only for a season. His thoughts were constantly tending back towards the same turbid channel from which they had been diverted. Then again, he would be tempted to all sorts of evil, to murmuring against providence, skepticism, disgust of life, and even to suicide. And yet, whenever relief came, even for a season, it was attended with renewed interest in the Bible and a lively faith in its distinguishing doctrines. The longest and happiest period of his life was at St. Albans under the care of Dr. Cotton, a physician as capable of administering to the spiritual as to the natural maladies of his patients. The vast black wall which he represented as visibly erected between himself and heaven, Dr. Moore says, was some impediment to the right action of his brain in relation to thought and sight. His disease was kept up by monotony in medicine. There were none but quackish attempts at cure except while under the care of Dr. Cotton, who for a time relieved and had his advice been properly followed out, would have probably cured him. It was from his treatment that Cooper first obtained a clear view of those sublime and animating truths which so distinguished and exalted his future strains as a poet. Here also he received that settled tranquility and peace which he enjoyed for several years afterwards. So far, therefore, was his constitutional malady from being produced or increased by his evangelical connections either at St. Albans or at Olney, that he seems never to have had any settled peace but from the truths learned in these societies. It appears that among them alone he found the only sunshine he ever enjoyed through the cloudy day of his afflicted life. While residing with this excellent friend, his distress was for a long time entirely removed by the passage in Romans. Him hath God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past. In his scripture he saw the remedy which God provides for the relief of a guilty conscience with such clearness that for several years after his heart was filled with love and his life occupied with prayer, praise, and doing good to all he had opportunity. Mr. Newton told me Cecil says that from Cooper's first coming to Olney, it was observed he had studied his Bible with such advantage and was so well acquainted with his design that not only his troubles were removed, but that to the end of his life, he never had clear views of the peculiar doctrines of the gospel than now when he first became an habitual hearer of them. That during this period, the inseparable attendance of a lively faith appeared by his exerting himself to the utmost of his power. and every benevolent service he could render to his poor neighbors, and that Mr. Newton used to consider him as a sort of curate, from his constant attendance upon the sick and afflicted in that large and necessitous parish. Chapter Two on Religious Experience, Uses of Knowledge on this Subject. I was a stricken deer that left the herd long since, when many an arrow deep and fixed my panting sides were charged, William Cooper. Though the character of this discussion, as well as its limited scope, have precluded many important remarks which come within the province of the physiologist, yet much that might be written is rendered unnecessary by a knowledge which many derive from their own experience. It is a subject which, as we have said before, is too little examined and understood. Many of our young preachers, Archibald Alexander says in his instructive book on religious experience, when they go forth on their important errand, are poorly qualified to direct the doubting conscience, or to administer safe consolation to the troubled in spirit. And in modern preaching there is little account made of the various distressing cases of deep affliction under which many serious persons are suffering. To no small proportion of the religious, both teachers and people, it seems to be a profound secret how much the exercises of a changed heart may be affected by the health or the condition of the body." They cannot understand how a man's brain and nervous system may so suffer from faults in his digestive organs as to produce irritability of temper, unsteadiness in any pursuit or application, distrust of friends, fear of evil tidings and doubts concerning his own salvation. These are commonly regarded as moral affections, whereas they are in reality physical evils which are to be remedied or removed by physical means. They are as legitimately symptoms of disease as is nausea, dimness of vision, or headache. And as a man unable to judge himself, much less as he qualified to meet the numerous cases that are almost daily presented in an extensive pastoral charge, when unskilled to distinguish with some degree of accuracy between influences which proceed from the body and a principle's disposition and state of the soul, As a part of his furniture for some of the most responsible labors of his calling, he needs a thorough acquaintance with a subject so closely connected with Christian experience. Among the counselors who so much aided the Reverend Timothy Rogers in his period of spiritual darkness, he quotes old Mr. Greenham as saying, quote, that there is a great deal of wisdom requisite to consider both the state of the body and of the soul. If a man that is troubled in conscience comes to a pastor, it may be he will look all to the soul and nothing to the body. If he comes to a physician, he considers the body and neglects the soul. For my part, I would never have the physician's counsel despised, nor the labor of the minister neglected, because the soul and body dwelling together, it is convenient that as the soul should be cured by the word, by prayer, by fasting or by comforting, So the body must be brought into some temperature by physic and diet, by harmless diversions in such like ways, providing always that it be so done in the fear of God. It is not to think by these ordinary means quite to smother or evade our troubles, but to use them as preperatives, in which our souls may be made more capable of the spiritual methods that are to follow afterwards. The practical uses of the knowledge of which we come to speak now cannot be fully enumerated nor adequately described. As the Apostle says of the inspired truth which he commends to Timothy, we would say that it is profitable for doctrine. We mean to say that here is presented a theory and casuistic divinity which solves innumerable cases of constant occurrence, by which many are often confounded with it. It is admitted that there is a difficulty to be encountered in turning such doctrines on the subject of our spiritual maladies to a beneficial result, on account of the inability to convince the sufferer of the real cause of his despondency. He seems to lack the capacity of perceiving, or of applying the sort of truth which his case requires, however plainly it may be set before him. For as President Edwards observes, and speaking of Brainerd, it is rare that melancholy people are sensible of their own disease, and that such things are to be ascribed to it as are undoubtedly as genuine fruits or effects. Otherwise, we should be amazed at the perplexity and disconsolateness of some excellent characters, and the readiness with which they refuse to be comforted. Even the acute and discriminating Dr. Rush, so skillful in explaining and relieving the maladies of others, was utterly deceived in relation to his own. His essay on the influence of physical causes upon the moral faculty evinces mature reflection and accurate knowledge on the subject, and yet when in a state of religious despondency himself, he was assured by his pastor that it was a symptom of disease, he could not believe it. Nor did he become fully convinced that the causes of his spiritual distress was physical, until it had been removed by the improvement of his general health. Indeed, it is commonly found that where mental depression results from impaired health, our attempts to relieve the mind by counsel tend rather to aggravate its sorrow, so long as the physical cause remains unmitigated. Though Reverend Thomas Boston was at one time in such a state of doubt and spiritual depression during his ministry, without perceiving the cause that he was tempted to give it up. But although this eminent Christian scholar was in so great darkness himself, he was a burning and a shining light to others. His exposition of providence under the quaint title of the crook and the lot surpasses any work of the kind in our language. I do not know that I could point out a work, Dr. Archibald Alexander says, which is so well adapted to reconcile the afflicted saint to his lot in this world. and help him to improve the dealings of providence towards him, especially in the dark and cloudy day of adversity. A late preacher well-known by his manifold useful labors writes in his diary, quote, many of my people, and especially females, talk thus to me. I am under continual distress of mine. I can lay hold of no permanent ground of peace. If I seem to get a little, it is soon gone again. I am out at sea without compass or anchor. My heart sinks, my spirit faints, my knees tremble. All is dark above and all is horror beneath. And pray, what is your mode of life? I sit by myself. In this small room, I suppose. And over your fire? A considerable part of my time. And what time do you go to bed? I cannot retire till two or three o'clock in the morning. And you lie late, I suppose, in the morning? Frequently. And pray, what else can you expect from this mode of life than a relaxed and unstrung system, and, of course, a mind enfeebled, anxious, and disordered? I understand your case. God seems to have qualified me to understand it by special dispensations. My natural disposition is gay, volatile, spirited. My nature would never sink. But I have sometimes felt my spirit absorbed in horrible apprehensions without any assignable natural cause. Perhaps it was necessary I should be allowed to feel this, that I might feel for others. For certainly no man can have any adequate sympathy with others who has never thus suffered himself. I can feel for you, therefore, while I tell you that I think the affair with you is chiefly physical. I myself have brought on the same feelings by the same means. I have sat in my study till I have persuaded myself that the ceiling was too low to allow me to stand and rise upright, and ere an exercise alone could remove the impression from my mind. " In the last illness of the commentator, Thomas Scott, his mind was observed by his friends to be gloomy during the paroxysm of his fever, nor could his comfort be restored by any counsel of his pious attendants until the fever had abated. Andrew Fuller also suffered greatly on his deathbed from a similar cause. So when Dr. Maiden once attempted to calm the mind of William Cooper by quotations from the scriptures, it served only to increase his sufferings. It was then at the beginning of a slow nervous fever to which he was liable. But after four months skillful treatment by Dr. Cotton, his health was so far improved that the promises of the gospel were apprehended without hesitation. And whatever his friend Med-On had said to him long before, revived in all its clearness. An aged minister of the gospel says, we have known persons who were poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting after righteousness. glorying only in the cross of Christ, and yet gloomily concluding that they have no lot nor part in the matter, and that their heart is not right with God. And why? The reason is to be found as something beyond the preacher's province. Until there is a change in the animal economy, all the suckers of religion are in vain. In an admirable review of a paper on moral causes of disease by the Secretary of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris, the author reproaches his medical brethren for their ignorance or neglect. He chides them for the overlooking of physiological causes of disease and of the influence of mental emotions on its development, its progress, and its termination. If a patient dies, he says, we open his body, rummage the viscera and scrutinize most narrowly all the organs and tissues in the hope of discovering lesions of some one sort or another. There is not a small membrane, cavity, nor follicle which is not carefully examined. One thing only escapes our attention, which is this, we are looking at merely organic effects, forgetting all the while that we must mount higher up to discover their causes. These organic alterations are observed perhaps in the body of a person who has suffered deeply from mental distress and anxiety, which have been the energetic cause of his decay, but they cannot be studied in the laboratory nor in the amphitheater. Another profitable use of this subject is for the promotion of charity. So far as it is understood and practically felt, it will make us pause before we censor those of our brethren, whose condition rather claims our condolence and hearty commiseration. We think them morose, hypochondriac, or misanthropic, assail them with relry and banter, and on with reproof or fillings of sadness. which they can no more resist nor control than they can prevent a flushed cheek and fever, or a yellow skin and jaundice. We might as well jeer at Dr. Watts for his pygmy size, at Pope for his deformity, or at John Milton for his blindness. Dr. Chain says that of all the miseries which afflict human life or relate principally to the body in this valley of tears, I think nervous disorders in their extreme and last degree are the most deplorable and beyond all comparison the worst. And yet there are many in society, even among the intelligent, who are accustomed to treat all such cases of nervous disorder as only imaginary complaints, which are better managed by ridicule than by sober counsel, whether medical or religious. In order to cure them, they think it necessarily only to divert the attention of the sufferer and convince him that he will be well enough and recover his lost cheerfulness if he will but cease to brood over his own wretchedness. Mix in society and think of other things beside himself. Many will say to such an one, why do you so pour over your case and thus gratify the devil? Whereas it is the very nature of the disease to cause such fixed musing. You might as well say to a man in a fever, why are you not well? Why will you be sick? Some indeed suppose that the melancholy hug their disease and are unwilling to give it up. You might as well suppose that a man would be pleased with lying on a bed of thorns. " That's a quote from Timothy Rogers. The reason of their utter misapprehension of such cases is their own happy exemption from all that sort of morbid wretchedness which they treat with so much levity in others without knowing what they do. To persons of this description, moreover, all our disquisitions on the moral effect of physical causes are much like a treatise in Tamil or Hindustani. They have no just conception of our meaning nor of the utility of what we say. Nor is it among the lighter afflictions of the subjects of nervous affections that they receive so little charity or sympathy from others, whose general intelligence and especially religious pretensions would warrant them to expect more courtesy, at least, if not greater tenderness. It is a foolish course which some take with their melancholy friends to answer all their complaints, and moans with this, that it is nothing but a fancy, nothing but imagination and whimsy. It is a real disease, a real misery that they are tormented with. And if it be a fancy, yet a disease fancy is as great a disease as any other. It fills them with anguish and tribulation. But this so disordered fancy is the consequent of a greater evil. And one of the sad effects that are produced by that black humor that is vitiated all the natural spirits. These afflicted persons can never possibly believe that you pity them or that you are hardly concerned for them. If you do not credit what they say. And truly it often falls out that because melancholy persons do not always look very ill or have pretty good stomachs, and do not at first very much decline in their bodies, other persons that know nothing of the december are apt to think that they make themselves worse than they are. " But if our subject is unintelligible to some, it is not so to others. We describe an experience with which they are woefully familiar, and while they are not slow to condemn themselves for their fretfulness, irritability of temper, and many obliquities of feeling and conduct which they so frequently betray, yet their faults, however numerous, will be judged with least severity by those who best understand the cause. With nerves so disordered and unstrung, there is need of far more vigilance and prayer, to even appear cheerful and amiable, than most good men, without very special grace, are able to maintain. A man may be a good performer, but what can he do with a disordered instrument? The occupant of a house may have good eyes, but how can he see accurately through a soiled window? Let the organ be put in tune, and the glass be made clean, before you call in question the musical skill of the one, or the eyesight of the other. Harsh speeches may fret, perplex, and enrage, but will never do the sufferers any good. In his excellent counsels on the subject of spiritual depression, Timothy Rogers says, quote, Some indeed will advise you to chide and rebuke them upon all occasions. But I dare confidently say such advisors never felt this disease. For if they had, they would know that by such a method they do but pour oil into the flame and chafe and exasperate their wounds instead of healing them. John Dodd, by reason of his mild, meek, and merciful spirit, was reckoned one of the fittest persons to deal with people thus afflicted. Never was any minister more tender and compassionate. If you would be serviceable to such persons, you must not vex them with tard and rigorous discourse. It causes many poor souls to cherish and conceal their troubles to their great torment, because they meet with so very harsh entertainment from those to whom they have begun to explain their case. Our blessed Lord and principal physician was meek and lowly and would not break the bruised reed. nor quench the smoking flax. And the first visit the aforementioned Don Dodd made to Mr. Peacock in his anguish was to put him in mind of God's kindness. This book will be continued in the next podcast. This is the Puritan and Reformed Audiobook Podcast. Tom Sullivan, your narrator.