The following is a continued reading from a book called Influence of Health and Disease on Religious Experience, Joseph Jones, 1860. Another most important use of this subject is for reproof and correction. When thoroughly examined and well understood, it exposes and explodes a popular air in relation to those disordered states of the mind that are supposed by many to be produced by religion. Such events are deplorable whenever they occur, and whatever the occasion. But it would certainly be a remarkable exception to the general doctrines of a philosophy as well as of a religion, if it could be proved that these are the legitimate effect of so pure and benign a cause. This one thing I must testify, Dr. Archibald Alexander says, that I never knew the most pungent convictions of sin to terminate in insanity. And as to the affections of love to God and the lively hope of everlasting life producing insanity, it is too absurd for anyone to believe it." We readily concede that this belongs to a legion of evils, intellectual and moral, as well as physical, which are the natural product of fanaticism and superstition. And this explains the fact that before the revolution, so large a proportion of the insane in France were monks. Indeed, it is difficult to account for many of the effects of enthusiasm in any other way than by supposing it to be a species of insanity, in which the aberration relates usually to one subject while in others the judgment is sound. And it is perfectly obvious that the greatly multiplied cases of this kind of mental disorder at the present time in different parts of our country are the offspring of certain epidemical delusions by which we have been sorely afflicted of late, and which have been promoted by nothing so much as by the notice of others, and especially their attempts to suppress them by coercion. But we are sustained not by the highest medical authority only, but by a faithful examination of the statistics of insanity, when we assert that the hallucinations of those persons whose mental disorder is imputed to religion, are the result of pre-existing disease and only take their form from the accidental habits and feelings of the patients. This has been so fully demonstrated that scarcely any modern writer of eminence advocates the opposite opinion. From the numerous authors whose testimony is easily accessible, we will quote a paragraph from two or three who are in the highest repute. Dr. George Moore, a member of the Royal College of Physicians in London, says that bodily disorder, which favors the manifestation of the mind in an insane manner, may be produced by any of our passions when unrestrained by a holy understanding. The best blessings may thus be converted into curses, the best gifts into the most injurious agents. Some say religion is a frequent cause of insanity. No, true religion is the spirit of love, of power, and of a sound mind. ever active in diversified duties and delights, always busy in a becoming manner and in a decent order. But the wild notions, unmeaning superstitions, spiritual bondage, unrequired and forbidden attempts to reconcile the rites and ceremonies which wayward men have substituted for the liberty of God, begin in disobedience and end in darkness. It is strange fire in the censer which brings down the flaming vengeance and opens a passage to the infinite abyss. Of these subjects of what is called religious melancholy or religious madness, who come under medical treatment, Dr. Ashbel Green says, it is undeniable that the greater part are such as would previously be termed irreligious persons. Their religious anxiety is commenced with their mental aberration and has disappeared on the restoration of health. In such cases, though the apprehension of divine anger may not seem unreasonable, It is as really an illusion as if the despondency had assumed the most alarming type. In fact, where religious anxiety or excitement has any share in producing mental aberration, this will generally put on the form of irreligious profaneness or something contradictory of the previous healthful state of mind. In regard to what are called the moral causes of insanity, Dr. Abercrombie says, quote, This, I think, applies in a peculiar manner to the important subject of religion. which by a common but very loose method of speaking is often mentioned as the cause of insanity. But where there is a constitutional tendency to insanity or to melancholy, one of its leading modifications, every subject is distorted to which the mind can be directed, and none more frequently or more remarkably than religious belief. This, however, is the effect, not the cause, and the various forms which it assumes may be ascribed to the subject being one to which the minds of all men are so naturally directed in one degree or another, and of which no man living can divest himself." Dr. Burroughs asserts in his well-known work on insanity that there is not a tittle of evidence to substantiate that Christianity abstractedly ever made a person insane. Such an accusation is only one of the abortions of infidelity of those who lack knowledge. Dr. Chain's interesting work on partial derangement of mind and supposed connection with religion, he says, quote, I never saw a case of mental derangement, even where it was traceable to a moral cause in which there was not reason to believe that bodily disease could have been detected before the earliest aberration. had an opportunity of examination been offered. Not only does every deranged state of the intellectual faculties and the natural affections depend upon bodily disease, but derangements of the religious and moral sentiments also." And not to multiply authorities, we will add no more than a paragraph from Dr. Combe, who, in full concurrence with the others, maintains that, When fairly examined, the dangers seem to arise solely from the abuse of religion, and indeed that the best safeguard is found in a right understanding of its principles and submission to its precepts. For if the best Christian be he who in meekness, humility, and sincerity places his trust in God, and seeks to fulfill all his commandments. Then he who exhausts his soul in devotion, and at the same time finds no leisure or no inclination for attending to the common duties of his station, and who so far from arriving at happiness or peace of mind becomes every day the more estranged from them, and finds himself at last involved in disease and despair, cannot be held as a follower of Christ, but must rather be held as a follower of a phantom, assuming the aspect of religion. When insanity attacks a latter, it is obviously not religion that is the cause, it is only the abuse of certain feelings, the regulated activity of which is necessary to the right exercise of religion. And against such abuse, a sense of true religion would have been the most powerful protection. Dr. James Johnson contends that in every case where the mind is said to be diseased, it ought to be considered as only a figure of rhetoric. That mind is merely an invisible agent manifesting itself solely through the medium of the corporal organs. When these lasts are deranged, the mental manifestations must also be deranged. But the mind itself remains unchanged, unassailable, imperishable. Even in insanity, it is not the mind which is diseased. Some portion of the brain is deranged and then the mind can no more manifest itself sanely than a musician can bring forth harmonious notes from an untuned instrument. As the mind is not material, neither is it liable to disease or death. If we once admit that it is subject to the one, we must inevitably come to the conclusion that it is liable to the other. With the essence or nature of mind, we are and ever shall be ignorant. It is with the corporal organs through which it reveals its actions that we have to do. If these have come into an abnormal or sickly condition, the effect will be often visible in the corresponding state of the intellect. And if at such a time they be specially conversant with the subject of morals and religion, like a jaundiced eye it will impart its morbid hue to them both. The error of hastily ascribing religious melancholy to the direct agency or influence of religion is exposed in the account given of a patient in the Pennsylvania hospital in 1842 by Dr. Kirkbride, physician to the institution. Quote, a young man of every moderate mental capacity, little education and accustomed to a laborious occupation from too much confinement at his business finds his health failing and gives up his employment for a few months to recruit. At the end of that time, although not well, he is able to return to work, but then discovers that the changes in the times make it impossible for him to find anything to do. His means being exhausted, his body weak, without his customary exercise, his mind gradually becomes in a morbid state. When some excitement from Miller's prophecy occurring in his neighborhood, he immediately attempts to study the subject and to ascertain his truth from close reading of the Bible. an investigation utterly unsuited for his capacity under any circumstances, and the difficulties he encounters at the very threshold lead to a violent attack of mania. The disease was attributed to Miller's prophecy or to religious excitement, but neither of these causes would give a proper idea of the origin of the case. Before being excited on that subject, the patient's mind was ready to be overturned by any abstruse or exciting manner that might be presented to it. Without his loss of employment, this would not have occurred, and without the enfeebled health which accompanied it, his attempted investigation might have been harmless. Within the sphere of our own pastoral labors, there have occurred four cases of the species of mental disorder, three of which were connected with known physical derangement. Two were effectually relieved after a few months by judicious medical treatment, though one of them was so aggravated that the person attempted suicide, and on one occasion nearly affected it. The third still lingers, the sufferer being a victim of bodily disease. And a fourth, there was a constitutional wildness on other subjects than that of religion. And although his temperament was sanguine, his mind habitually cheerful, and his hope of salvation uncommonly firm, yet in a moment of temptation he was overcome and destroyed himself. Another whom we have known for 20 years and esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intellect and piety, has long been subject to periods of religious melancholy when he suspends his business, loses all interest in society, withdraws to his chamber and remains for weeks and months until a cloud of spiritual gloom has passed. He then returns to his secular duties and to the church as if he had never been otherwise and cheerful and happy in his religion, which is at all times a sickness or health his main topic of conversation. No allusion is made to the past. There are no inquiries and he volunteers to give no information. Nor have his friends or physicians ever been able to explain all the phenomena of this case by any of the known doctrines of psychology, physiology, or religion. That his melancholy is not produced by his religion would appear from the fact that at all other times it is the source of his highest enjoyment. But as it regards the cause of these periodical changes in his physical condition, which occasion the spiritual occultation, we do not hazard a conjecture. Not less injurious is the mistake of imputing to satanic agency what is dependent on bodily disease, as is exhibited in the case of the wife of the Reverend John Newton, who was unable to leave the house for nearly two years before she died in 1790. In the beginning of October, she was confined to her bed and was soon after deprived of all locomotive power. In this state, distress arose in her mind, which applied to the whole system of truth, and she said, if there be a Savior, if there be a God, and in this condition continued for a fortnight, when there is reason to believe that her doubts were removed. Mr. Newton accounted for his wife's temporary unbelief by referring it to the influence of Satan. Her case, however, was a case of palsy, depending, as was supposed, upon a disease of the brain, by which her faith, the foundation of her religion, was disturbed, while her affections were uninjured. It is well known that John Bunyan was grievously harassed at times with what he believed to be satanic temptations to the worst species of evil, and that Martin Luther also supposed himself on one occasion, at least, to have been assaulted by the devil. But with regard to certain phenomena which it is common to refer to as influence, such as unbidden and repulsive thoughts and feelings and false perceptions, both voices and visions, that they may be produced by mere morbid physical agency, is unquestionable, because they are frequent accompaniments of pure disease, and yield with the disease to medical treatment. Those, therefore, who are called to counsel persons thus afflicted, should never lose sight of the inquiry, whether such may not be the actual origin of what otherwise might be treated as temptations of the devil. That Satan may have the power of injecting his malicious or blasphemous suggestions immediately into the mind, we have not intended at all the controvert. But we are disposed to adopt the principle of Dr. Chain, that if an appeal to him who conquered Satan, And who will aid all who come to him in faith fails to relieve those who are thus afflicted. They may rest assured that disease and not the devil is the enemy with which they have to contend and they must seek relief accordingly. And if we're oppressed beyond this point with a hypothesis that while disease may be the proximate cause of these distressing horrible calamities, yet Satan may be the agent who employs this instrumentality to harass the Christian. We should be inclined to fall back upon the ground thus quaintly maintained by Richard Baxter, quote, if it were as some fancy a possession of the devil, it is possible that physic might cast him out. For if you cure the melancholy black bile, his bed is taken away and the advantage gone by which he works. cure the choler, and the choleric operations of the devil will cease. It is by means and humors in us that he works." But this injurious influence on the mind has been described not so much to religion in general as to certain forms or sectarian modes in which it has been expounded and that are supposed to be peculiarly adapted to fill the soul with gloom and despondency. Hence a maxim so long in vogue among the Romanists, Spiritus Calvinianus est Spiritus Melancholicus, so nearly English that we need not translate it. Even Esquerol more than hints at Calvinism, as in some cases a cause of religious melancholy, and it is well known that the sentiment wrapped up in this columnius apathagym was a popular solution of the unhappy case of William Cooper. Thus a writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica at that time with great confidence ascribed his mental malady to the theory of justification which he adopted, his natural disposition fitting him to receive all the horrors without the consolations of his faith. Macaulay also favors the same opinion by pronouncing the religious teachers of the poet worthy of incineration, nor is there anything we are constrained to say in the over-cautious, imperfect, and disingenuous. however interesting, memoirs by Haley that forbids this inference. And yet it could not but have been known by the author, or rather compiler of that work, that the period of his life during which he enjoyed, together with the unclouded sunshine of reason, the peace and joy of religion, was the interval from 1764 to 1773, when he believed and openly professed every article of his faith, the effect of which was represented as afterward being so calamitous. It was then that his character was exhibited in all its attractiveness, unveiled by any of the myths that had come over it before, and which gathered again toward the close of his life. He was more cheerful and affectionate in his intercourse, partaking with lively interest in the common concerns of society, and happy in the enjoyment of his religion. And when he became subsequently the victim of his afflictive hallucination, he could not avoid acknowledging that his gloomy persuasion was at variance with every article of his creed, and he was driven to regard himself as an inexplicable exception to his own principles. We have shown already that religious truth of any kind had nothing to do as a procuring cause of William Cooper's malady. It was as clearly a case of hypochondriasis as are those instances in which the patient has fancied himself a teapot or a sack of wool, or as was that of the baker of Ferrara, mentioned by an Italian count, who thought himself a lump of butter and durst not sit in the sun nor come near the fire for fear of being melted and a thinking substance destroyed. We maintain then that this unhappy condition, which without due examination has been imputed to religion, is in effect produced by physical causes. That a different opinion should have obtained to any extent is to be ascribed to misapprehension, perhaps in part, but we doubt not, that more frequently it may be traced to another source, which is thus noticed by Dr. Chain. When a man from having been worldly becomes religious, There is no one against whom prejudice is stronger. No change is less agreeable, not even a change from respectability of conduct to the sort of profligacy which defies public opinion than that which leads a man whose previous motives were of a purely secular kind, to make the attainment of the kingdom of God his first object, by which he necessarily rises in the moral scale. That anyone formally, on our own level, should take or affect to take higher ground offends our self-love. It is a constant rebuke by reminding us of his superiority of principle. Hence it frequently happens that when a man really turns to God, first he is represented as a hypocrite, then a fool, and last of all a madman. That his motives and his judgment will be arraigned, every neophyte may expect, is being a matter of uniform experience. And that madness is a consequence of divine teaching is a conclusion which is as old as the days of Porteus Festus. A well-known minister of London, who has lately died, was called to visit a woman whose mind was disordered, and on remarking that it was a case which required the assistance of a physician rather than that of a clergyman, her husband replied, Sir, we sent to you because it is a religious case. Her mind has been injured by constantly reading the Bible. "'I have known many instances,' I replied, "'a person's being brought to their senses "'by reading the Bible. "'But it is possible that too intense an application to that, "'as well as to any other subject, "'may have disordered your wife.' "'There is every proof of it,' said he, "'and was proceeding to multiply his proofs "'till her brother interrupted him by thus addressing me. "'Sir, I have no longer patience to stand by "'and see you imposed on. "'The truth of the matter is this. "'My brother has forsaken his wife "'and been long connected with an immoral woman. He had the best of wives in her, and one who was strongly attached to him, but she has seen his heart and property given to another, and in her solitude and distress went to the Bible as the only consolation left her. Her health and spirits at length sunk under her troubles, and there she lies distracted, not from reading her Bible, but from the infidelity and cruelty of her husband. The reader need not be told that the miscreant made no reply to his brother's statement, but immediately left the room in the utmost confusion. Another use of this subject, and the last which we shall mention, is for consolation. And for this grateful ministry, its scope is as wide as the office's benignet. As may be well presumed, this doctrine of physical influences is easily capable of being perverted. Some may mistake the buoyancy of animal spirits for the influences of the comforter, and others may ascribe the motions of sin which are by the law to the power of bodily disease. But it is not intended by this admission of the effect of physical causes upon the soul to offer an apology for sin, to furnish a convenient excuse for indolence, sullenness, a cynical temper, or any other culpable dispositions to which a man may be constitutionally prone. All these may be natural, but every criminal nevertheless. The differences wide between a neglect of prayer and watchfulness, occasioned by great fatigue in the performance of other duties, is in the case of the disciples in the garden, and in a mission caused by giving way to an inbred laziness. As a question in morals, the point is material whether a man's hastiness of spirit be a symptom of hepatic disease, or the habitual prompting of a depraved and neglected heart. We are not accountable to God for the difference in our complexion or in the length of our limbs, but he justly makes us responsible for the envy and jealousy and malice of our dispositions. Nor is it enough to refer such perplexing cases to the tribunal of conscience in view of the well-known influence of various moral as well as physical causes in misguiding his decisions. Not long ago we received in a letter the account of a young man of fervent piety who was at this time preparing for the ministry. but in such a state as to be wholly unable to pursue his studies. For several years, he has felt himself urged and almost coerced, as he says, to make various vows to God, promising to spend so many hours a day in devotional exercises and to keep days of fasting and prayer on various accounts. These vows have become so burdensome as to interfere with his duty as well as with his peace. He has forgotten some of the reasons for these vows, and now he feels himself solemnly bound by his vow. but knows not what to do to fulfill it, and some of the occasions on which days of fasting were vowed to be kept have passed, and his vow not fulfilled. He has kept awake a great part of the night, and is incapable of study. I endeavored, says my informant, to show him in what cases vows were not binding, and flattered myself that I had relieved his mind. But in a few days he came back, and I went over to Hull again, but all to little purpose. And by this it may be commonly known that the disease is physical when the clearest reasoning and admitted conclusions produce no effect. Sometime since, says the same correspondent, I was consulted respecting the case of a young man who in obedience to his conscience had vowed that he would never taste butter. But as this entered into so many kinds of food, he was kept in continual perplexity. This, however, seems to have been merely a device of Satan. Not long ago there was a pious and useful pastor in the interior of Pennsylvania who, when pursuing his theological studies, resolved or vowed against so many kinds of food because they were gratifying to his palate that he actually was suffering for want of nutritive food. To what extent such religious whims or any morbid exercise as a person in such an unhealthy mental condition are culpable, is perhaps the most perplexing inquiry which this whole subject suggests. That man is answerable for his conduct so long as exaggerated irritability stops short of derangement, would seem to be an axiom in morals, and yet what shall we understand by derangement? What is that changed condition of the man, or how far must it go in order to release him for the time from the claims of the moral law? It has been confidently asserted that the feelings produced by nervous diseases are not strictly moral, nor are we accountable for them except as we are accountable for inducing that state of physical organization in which they originate. And admitting this also to be true, those cases will nevertheless continually occur, which it will occasion no little perplexity to decide. Moral qualities such as pride, envy, jealousy, covetousness, and so on, we know are hereditary, as well as those that are intellectual. Hence we often find, Dr. Rush says, certain virtues and vices as peculiar to family through all their degrees of consanguinity and duration, as is the peculiarity of voice, complexion, or shape. But however this innate or transmitted tendency to certain kinds of evil may excite commiseration, we regard it not so much as an apology for having yielded to the inclination, as a cogent motive for continual vigilance against it. But notwithstanding the difficulties with which the subject is embarrassed, there is nevertheless much in this doctrine of physical influences for the comfort of those whose wretched experience often makes it so desirable. It is a relief to find that they were in error concerning the nature of their distressing affection, to discover that what was supposed to be an infusion of Satan has been caused perhaps by a mistake in the quality or quantity of their food, or by changes in the atmosphere. They see the danger of making their feelings a test of their Christian character so long as their health is impaired. Indeed, it is painful to read the diaries of many eminent believers and see how they suffered from the imaginary belief of the withdrawal of God's favor manifested, as they supposed, by the variable state of their feelings. Who but the victim himself can conceive of the wretchedness of a soul that vents its anguish in language such as the following, quote, I taste nothing but gall and wormwood, nothing but misery and vexation. I was at ease, but he has broken me asunder. He has taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces and set me up for his mark. His archers compass me round about. He cleaves my reins asunder and does not spare. He pours out my gall upon the ground. I dare not look up to heaven, for there I see how great a God I have against me. I dare not look into his word, for there I see all the threats as so many barbed arrows strike me to the heart. I dare not look into the grave, because hence I am like to have a doleful resurrection. The Almighty is my enemy. The prayers of others can do me no good unless I have faith, and I find I have none at all, for that would purify and cleanse my heart. I do nothing else but sin, and God, as he is holy, must set himself against me, his enemy." The grand difficulty in many of these cases lies in a deranged condition of the animal part. A highly respectable clergyman still living in New England, after having preached with much acceptance and success to a congregation for 20 years, was called to another field of labor, the change proving not so happy in all respects as he had anticipated. His health failed, and with it his hope. On entering the pulpit one Sabbath morning, he sat for a while, then arose, and instead of commencing as usual the exercises of the day, he remarked to the people that he had been deceived in relation to his personal religion. was not worthy of the office of a preacher and could not any longer discharge it. A physician who was present called on him afterwards and was enabled to convince him that the cause of his despondency was physical. In the course of two weeks of medical treatment, it was removed. His Christian hope revived. He resumed his labors as a preacher and has continued to perform them ever since with comfort to himself and usefulness to others. So far, therefore, as it may be shown to the spiritually depressed that their gloominess is a symptom of disease, they may be consoled by the assurance that such distress of their soul is perfectly consistent with its regenerate state and its safety. That the highest medical authority teaches that whenever a change in the temper or mind takes place, without a plain and manifest moral cause, the condition of the liver or digestive organs should be examined. For there will be found the origin of the mischief three times out of four. Let them resort then to such remedies as the exigencies of the case demand, and wait for relief to be afforded through the proper channel. The same consideration, moreover, may often minister substantial consolation in the case of departed friends, whose exercises have appeared more or less ambiguous as flesh and heart were failing under the power of disease. It is an important observation of Pearson in his Life of Mr. Hay of Leeds that good men may be unreasonably depressed and bad men elevated under the near prospect of death. from the mere operation of natural causes. The Savior's declaration makes it fearfully certain that the Judgment Day will reveal many disappointments of some rejected, who died in the confident hope of salvation, of others received, who left this world in darkness and despair. How difficult as well as delicate then, jealous it will cause us to pray and watch against these besetting sins with peculiar vigilance. While our numerous failures in this and every other duty will make us feel our absolute dependence on the Spirit, both for grace to enjoy our religion and strength to obey its precepts, above all it will come into our hearts that great Redeemer who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. We shall look away from our desperate moral defilement to that blood which cleanses from all sin, from our weakness to His strength, from our sins to His perfect righteousness. It is but a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. The day of our emancipation is fast approaching, when the earthly house of this tabernacle will be exchanged for a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The spirit shall no more be impeded by the disorders of the flesh, for this vile body shall be fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body. But as godly William Mason says, we are not to expect the sunshine of joy all through this veil of tears. Comfortable frames and joyful fillings so sweet and delightful are not all always most profitable Were we ever on the Mount of Joy, we should forget we are strangers and pilgrims on earth Be for building tabernacles of rest in a polluted place and cry out with a highly favored disciples It is good for us to be here, but they knew not what they said It is the glory of a Christian to live by faith on Jesus to judge of his love by the word of truth more than by sense and feeling and ye under dejection and disquiet of soul to hope and trust in God. To check and rebuke oneself for doubts and diffidence is a real exercise of faith. Thy frames may vary with the changes of thy health and of thy mortal part, but the foundation of God's love stands sure. Thou mayest meet with many things from within and without to cast down and disquiet thee, but thou art called to look to Jesus and say, why art thou cast down, O my soul? And warrent thou disquieted within me, hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God.