This is a continuation of Influence of Health and Disease on Religious Experience, published in 1860 by Joseph Jones, chapter 4. Having examined the nature of physical causes, their influence upon religious experience, and the uses of knowledge, we come now to the most important department of our subject, namely, the counsels which such cases of suffering require. And here we should repeat the remark that we are not in writing for medical men, neither do we affect the medical knowledge which is required to do it justice in all its bearings. The most which has been proposed and attempted is to offer the result of some experience and observation in prosecuting a ministry rather than the fruits of scientific research. Without much of the latter, it has appeared to the writer that there is ample scope for some profitable suggestions by which the unhappy condition of many may be reached and relieved. The more conversant we become with the very cases of spiritual disquietude occurrent in our churches, the more occasion we see for all the aid which may be furnished by the counsel and experience of others. That this should have been no more frequently the subject of discussion by the pen or the pulpit, is to be ascribed not to its intrinsic barrenness, nor its lack of importance, as is evident from the prominency given to it in the older English writers. But the demand for treatises on subjects like that of our present discussion is small, and for the most part restricted to those whose cases are portrayed, and very often to a smaller number even than they. Sometimes there is such an utter prostration of all energy, intellectual and moral, any afflicted themselves, that it is extremely difficult to arrest their attention even by instructions, which if heeded would relieve their spirits and restore them to cheerfulness. In perusing the memoirs of those who have devoted themselves to God, Dr. Chain says, nothing has appeared to us more remarkable than their ignorance of or inattention to many of those things which affect their spiritual enjoyment. And especially that physical causes should be so continually overlooked by those who must be fully aware of the influence which the body exercises over the mind, and the mind over the body in all men, but particularly in Christians. They are habitually despondent and unhappy, not appearing to know how much the pleasurable emotions of the soul are dependent on the state of the hell. To those then who are perplexed about their spiritual state, and are often fearful and sad, we would say, endeavor so far as possible to ascertain the true cause of your doubts and spiritual troubles. This is Richard Baxter's prescription. If you should mistaken the cause, he says, it would much frustrate the most excellent means for cure. The very same doubts and complaints may come from several causes and several persons, and therefore admit not of the same way of cure. Sometimes the cause begins in the body, and thence proceeds to the mind. Sometimes it begins in the mind, and thence distempers the body. Again, it proceeds from worldly crosses or scruples upon points of religious doctrine, decays of inward grace, or, as it was with David, from the deep wounds of some scandalous sin. Which of these is your own case? You must be careful to find out and apply the means for cure accordingly. And if upon close and careful examination it proved, like Aitken's fraud, to be some latent sin, then relief can only come, as it infallibly will come, by putting it away. If the cause be found in the state of your health, then acquit your soul from all that part of your disquietness which proceeds from this source, remembering on all your self-examinations, self-judgings and reflections on your heart, that it is not directly to be charged with those sorrows that come from your spleen, save only remotely, as all other diseases are the fruits of sin, as a lethargic dullness is a deserved fruit of sin. But he that should charge it immediately on a soul would wrong himself, and he that would attempt the cure must do it on the body. It is admitted that such counsel as this is attended with more or less danger, that it may encourage presumption in some, and thus lead them to heal the hurt of their spirit too slightly and hastily, by resolving it into a cause over which they have no control, and for which they are not accountable. How many pains which afflict the soul, especially in later life, are only retributory? There the bitter things in which the sufferer is made to possess the iniquities of his youth, the physical results of early crime and the disease and infirmity of the body, the mental results in the weakness, disorder, and unsettledness of the intellect, and the moral results in the hardness, impenitency, and unbelief of the soul. And although the petulance and patience, repining and rest of spirit, which they often produce, are the effect of a physical cause, yet they are not blameless, and are no more to be ascribed to the mere sovereignty or providence of God than is the delirium tremens of the drunkard, or the death of the suicide. It is hoped that the subject has been sufficiently guarded against this perversion by what has been said in the preceding chapter. Unhappily, however, as has also been intimated before, many of those who need such instructions are too dejected and inert to be aroused to make any serious and persevering inquiry after the source of their despondency. To reason with a man against the views which arise from melancholy, Archibald Alexander says, is commonly as inefficacious as reasoning against bodily pain. I have long made this a criterion to ascertain whether the dejection experience was owing to a physical cause, for in that case argument, though demonstrative, had no effect. " Very many are predisposed to take it for granted that their gloom proceeds from a culpable cause, whatever it may be. That the more they should investigate the painful subject, the more they would discover to convince them that they were deceiving themselves. that they had never been spiritually changed, but let no professor of religion in a sense as ever be tempted to dispose of his own case in this precipitate and summary way. To give indulgence to such a lethargic ease while in doubt about his salvation is evidence of a sort of hallucination which instead of impairing his responsibility greatly increases both his danger and his guilt. Let the inquiry into his own personal state, then, be pursued diligently until he come to a satisfactory conclusion. Let him persevere under a persuasion of the ineffable importance of the duty as involving all that is desirable or fearful in the disclosures of eternity. His despondency may be produced by false views of religion, or these erroneous views may generate despondency. Nor is it in every case easy to determine which is cause and which is effect. the manner in which mind and body reciprocally act upon each other, being often so inscrutable as to baffle the attempt to distinguish between physical and mental causes. Where despondency puts on a religious form, its real nature may be ascertained by inquiring into the actual character and circumstances of the sufferer. Where there is palpable illusion, there is disease. False impressions may proceed from ignorance and misapprehension, and such impressions will yield to moral treatment. But if the notions are not merely inaccurate but elusive, if the mind is found to have shaped out for itself the ideal object of its desponding apprehension, there can be no ground for hesitation in pronouncing the depression to be bodily distemper. There are morbid states of mind which do not rise to that height of nervous disorder which produces hallucination, but which still indicate an unhealthy state of body. There is such a thing as religious vapors for which the pharmacopoeia prescribes suitable remedies. But no one who knows what melancholy is will confound that terrible visitation with any self-inflicted or fantastic complaints. Our second counsel to those who are thus afflicted is to avail themselves of judicious medical advice. We refer in this direction more particularly to those whose state of doubting and darkness has been long continued. As in the case of Dr. Rush, the cause may exist in a morbid condition of the body without being even suspected by themselves. To those whose trouble proceeds from this source, Richard Baxter says again, expect not that rational or spiritual remedy should suffice for your cure, any more than that a good sermon or comfortable word should cure the falling sickness or palsy or a broken head. For your melancholy fears are as really a bodily disease as the other. Only because these work on the spirits and fantasy, on which words of advice do also work to a certain extent, therefore such words and scripture and reason may somewhat resist it, and may palliate and allay some of the effects at the present. But as soon as time has worn off the force and effects of these reasons, the distemper presently returns. As a cause, therefore, is in the animal part, it must be reached, if at all, by remedies which it comes more within the province of the medical than the spiritual counselor to prescribe. The physician, it is true, cannot cure the moral cause that preys upon the mind, and through that medium injures the body, but he can, in a great measure, prevent the reaction of the body on the mind, by which reaction the moral affliction is rendered infinitely more difficult to bear. But let it not be forgotten that not every physician, how skillful soever and learned and successful in his general practice, is qualified to instruct the description of patients whom these remarks contemplate. No person has such opportunities of studying the mutual and reciprocating relationship between the mind and body, and yet it is one on which many of the faculty betray the most culpable ignorance. They lack the ability of searching out and understanding the moral causes of disease. They cannot read the book of the heart and yet is in this book that are inscribed day by day and hour by hour all the griefs and all the miseries and all the vanities and all the fears. and all the joys and all the hopes of man, and in which will be found the most active and incessant principle of that frightful series of organic changes, which constitute pathology. Many a disease is the counter-blow, so to speak, of a strong moral emotion. The mischief may not be apparent at the time, but its germ will be, nevertheless, inevitably laid. Such sentiments from an eminent lecturer in one of the best medical schools of Europe show the importance of special care and discretion in the choice of a physician for a malady which, by their own confession, so few understand or know how to treat. Mr. Rogers advises all the afflicted of the sort to apply to doctors not only learned in the profession of physic, but who have themselves felt the disease. For it is impossible fully to understand the nature of it any other way than by experience. And that person, he says, is highly to be valued, whose endeavors God will bless to the removal of a complaint so obstinate and violent. How much evil has resulted from the injudicious counsel of incompetent advisors who can compute. It is a sad condition for the sick when they are put in greater peril by their treatment. than by their disease. Such, however, has been the change of late years in the character of diseases, and especially so great has been the increase of those by which the mind and spiritual affections are disturbed. The cases of the sort are better understood, and a number of competent advisors among the faculty is much greater than it was formerly. It is an interesting fact, which is not generally known, that a large proportion of our more serious ailments fall within the category to which we now refer. Near the close of the 17th century, Sydenham estimated fevers to constitute at that time two-thirds of the diseases of mankind. About 70 years afterwards, Dr. Chain made nervous disorders about one-third of the complaints of the higher class in England. At the beginning of the 19th century, Trotter supposed them to constitute full two-thirds of all those which afflicted civilized society. And a later writer still expresses the opinion that even Trotter's estimate falls below the truth. Of the 400,000 persons who died in England during 1856, one out of every eight died of diseases of the brain and nerves, and one out of every 16 died of diseases of the digestive organs. We do not pretend to decide as to the comparative accuracy of these computations. It is enough to say that the lowest is sufficiently great to appall, and also to show that no department of the healing art claims more earnestly the attention of physicians than this. If the connection between the mind and body be so intimate as has been shown, the reasonableness of this resort for medical advice would be obvious even if its practical value had not been tested by common experience. How often have we known a morbid condition of the mind or spirits to be as speedily and as effectually removed by the operation of a drug as a pain in the head. The peevishness, impatience, and irritability which make one intolerable to himself as well as to others, we see daily relieved by the same simple agency as by the power of magic. And hence our domestic happiness often depends on the state of the biliary and digestive organs, and the little disturbances of conjugal life may sometimes be more efficaciously cured by the physician than by the moralist. For a sermon or homily misapplied will never act so directly as a sharp medicine. A physician in the city of Philadelphia was recently invited to visit a lady enjoying apparent health, living in affluence and surrounded with everything which wealth and elevated condition and affectionate friends could confer to render her happy. Yet in the midst of it all, she felt indescribably wretched and sent for her medical advisor to explain the cause. It was a case of plethoric tendency which called for depletion. A moderate bleeding afforded relief, and in a few days she was restored to her former cheerfulness. The Reverend M.B. Hope, medical doctor, in a well-written essay on religious melancholy, mentions the case of a young lady who had been long and intimately known to the writer, who was of a temperament highly nervous and sanguine, and embarked very young with all her ardor and gave pleasures a fashionable life. A single season convinced her fully of their emptiness and folly. She was soon after brought under the influence of pungent preaching and conviction of sin. The struggle was sharp and long, but the result was that she gave herself with all her heart to a course of rigid religious duties. Above all, she seemed to live in an atmosphere of prayer. Her faith in the truth and promises of God was without the shadow of a cloud. And yet she had not the pure enjoyment which she supposed to be the necessary fruit of real piety. She did not therefore look upon herself as a child of God, and her consequent anxiety wore upon her spirit and secretly undermined her health. At length one day, as she rose from prayer, the thought struck her like a thunderbolt. What if there is no God after all? She repelled the thought with horror and went her way. But the shock had struck from her hand the shield of faith, and all her efforts were unable to grasp it again. From henceforth she found herself exposed to a constant shower of darts, fiery and poisoned, and she could not resist them. They stuck fast in her vitals and drank up her spirits. The poison thus injected into the heart of her religious experience soon spread and blighted the whole. She never knew a moment's peace when her thoughts were upon her once favorite and still engrossing subject. She called herself an infidel and applied to herself the dreadful threatenings and doom of the unbeliever. And yet it was evident she was not in any sense an unbeliever. She was one of the most devout and consistent persons we ever knew. She was conscientious even to scrupulosity. She was the most devoted and faithful Sunday school teacher and God blessed her labors to the conversion of nearly all her scholars. She rejoiced to hear a person's becoming Christians and would often say with despair in her tones how she envied them. When any of her acquaintances died without giving good evidence of piety, she became excited, and as she expressed it, was ready to scream aloud. She gave every possible evidence that she had not in reality a shadow of doubt about the truth of revelation. And yet no one ever dreamed that her difficulties were connected with disease of any sort, for her mind was remarkably clear and active. The advice of pious friends and ministers, therefore, based upon the supposition that her case was one of spiritual darkness, Her satanic temptation was to persevere in prayer, to struggle on more earnestly, and God would give her light after he had tried her faith and patience and love. But the more she prayed and struggled, the worse she grew. She would come from her closet exhausted with the fearful conflict. and looking ready to sink into utter despair. The Sabbath was always the worst day of the week, and the labor and exhaustion of teaching aggravated her symptoms. The only treatment which was successful in this case would by many have been rejected with horror. She was advised to give up the struggle which she had maintained so unequally, and which would only have resulted in disastrous consequences to think as little as possible on the subject, to spend less time in devotional exercises, and allow her mind to gather its scattered strength by relaxation. The form of prayer advised was short and audible, and such as took for granted what she had been struggling to convince herself of. Incessant pains were taken to present the character of God in a simple affectionate parental light when anything led to the subject. The simplicity of faith and the certainty of salvation were occasionally flashed across her mind when it was in a suitable frame. The only two evidences of piety which her state of mind rendered available were kept prominent as a basis of new feelings and hopes, namely her love to the people of God and the pain she felt in the absence of divine favor and a longing for its return. These were untouched by the dismal monster that had preyed upon her hopes. By a judicious perseverance in a course like this, accompanied with well-directed hygienic measures, suitable recreation, exercise, and diet for improving her general health and especially the tone of her nervous system, the mental energies began to react and new views of truth and new hope sprung up in her mind. Another case furnished by the same and a deuce for the sake of showing the efficacy of judicious medical treatment. is that of a lady whose state of mind had baffled every attempt made by her judicious husband to bring her relief. She was a woman of great refinement and strength of mind, eminently pious, and devoted to her interest a young family, whose education she conducted herself. While conferring every accomplishment upon her children, she was mainly anxious for their spiritual welfare. When we saw her, she was intensely excited, and has slept little for several nights. She said she had lost all interest, appearance, and her own. Her whole thoughts and feelings were engrossed about their salvation, her anxiety for which had become insupportably agonizing. When instructing, or dressing, or leading them out for their accustomed exercise, she was incessantly distracted with the thought, what good will all this do while they are still impenitent? Though her flushed face and flashing restless eye indicated strong physical excitement, yet her mind was so clear on every subject and all her views so rational that we attributed the whole difficulty to excessive and protracted anxiety. For an object of peculiar interest to a pious mother, the salvation of her children, we made repeated attempts to reason with her on the air and evils of her present state of mind. She admitted fully the justice of our reasoning and concurred in the truth of all our positions, but we found that this was of no avail. Her excitement continued and with it her distress and all her difficulties. It appeared like a case of pure religious excitement and was so looked upon by all her family. They did not deem her deranged, but it was evident she soon would be, unless relieved. Finding reasoning of no avail, and the excitement still increasing, we became convinced, on minute examination, that the whole difficulty originated not in religious views or feelings at all, but in a morbid increase of arterial action arising from some physical cause. One twelfth of a grain of tartar emitted. Five or six times a day gave perfect relief and restored both her views and feelings to the healthy standard. Dryden, whose mind, notwithstanding his capacity for elevated and brilliant conceptions, was sometimes turbid and dull, well knew the utility of medical expedience as auxiliary to thought. When I have a grand design before me, he says, I ever take medicine and let blood, and when you would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part, and for this get help from the apothecary. Descartes, a philosopher, went further still, and asserted that if any means can be found to render men wiser and more ingenuous than they have been, hitherto such a method must be sought from the assistance of medicine. And Plutarch, speaking of the reaction of the mind upon the body as the cause of those injuries which it requires medicine to repair, very playfully observed that should the body sue the mind before a court of judicature for damages, it would be found that the mind had proved to be a ruinous tenant to its landlord. None we trust will infer from what has thus been said of medical assistants that we approve of that habitual tampering with drugs, or the injudicious perusal of medical books, which is so common with the nervous valetudinarian by which he only makes his malady the worse. Rousseau admitted that this was a powerful cause of hypochondria in respect to himself. Having read, he says, a little on physiology, I set about studying anatomy, and passing in review the number and varied actions of the parts which composed my frame. I expected twenty times a day to feel them going wrong. Far from being astonished at finding myself dying, my wonder was that I could live at all. I did not read the description of any disease which I did not imagine myself to be affected with, and I am sure that if I had not been ill, I must have become so from this fatal study. Finding in every complaint the symptoms of my own, I believed, I had gotten them all, and thereby added another, still more intolerable, the fantasy of curing myself. All this private empiricism we should discourage by directing the sufferer away from these experiments upon himself, to the well-taught physician, the more competent counselor who has been designated by Providence. Another important auxiliary to the despondent Christian is suitable society. habitual intercourse with others and especially the devout who possess a happy temperament. The influence of sympathy, its operation for both evil and good, is familiarly known. We are all, says John Locke, a kind of chameleon who take a moral tinge from the objects which surround us. The manifestation of fear or of confidence and self-possession in a time of danger inspires a corresponding emotion in those who behold it. Hence a salutary effect of a cheerful sanguine Christian upon those who are prone to melancholy. His iron sharpens iron so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. His society is exhilarating like the wine prescribed by Solomon to those that be of a heavy heart. An interview with those of their own morbid tendencies may be advantageous sometimes by correcting the usual mistake of such believers, that their case is peculiar or has certain unfavorable characteristics by which it is placed without the reach of the ordinary means of relief. A comparison of exercises and sentiments is often productive of good, and showing that their condition is not so singular as they had imagined. It is very hard indeed to persuade a person, under great pain and anguish, The sense of the wrath of God and a fear of hell that ever any has hereafore been so perplexed as he Such generally think themselves worse than Cain or Judas or Simon Magus and that their sense of greater aggravation Timothy Rogers says I have known several that were long afflicted with trouble of mind and melancholy as mr. Roswell and mr. Porter both ministers a ladder whereof was six years oppressed with this distemper and yet afterwards both rejoiced in the light of God's countenance. I myself was near two years in great pain of body and greater pain of soul and without any prospect of peace or help, and yet God has revived me in a sovereign grace and mercy, and there have been several heretofore sorely perplexed with great inward and outward trouble, whom God after that wonderfully refreshed. Mr. Robert Bruce, some time ago Minister at Edinburgh, was 20 years in tears of conscience and yet delivered afterwards. From the prevailing lack of sympathy with which such sufferers meet, many prefer to hide their sorrows in their own bosom to the risk of opening their heart to those who could poorly appreciate an experience so foreign to their own. Thus the late Captain Benjamin Wicks of Philadelphia concealed his long and oppressive melancholy for nearly twenty years, until it was discovered by that devouted servant of Christ, Mr. Joseph Eastburn, whose affectionate conversation and judicious counsels were the means of affording immediate relief. How far the distressing symptoms of William Cooper's malady were mitigated by the delightful society of the unwinds is easily inferred from his memoirs. Nor are any of us so imperturbable in our spiritual temperament as not to be more or less lifted up or depressed by the joy or sadness of those Christian friends with whom we mingle. And hence one of four cardinal rules which the eminent Kazooist already quoted has given to melancholy Christians. Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the godly. Converse with men of the strongest faith and of much of the heavenly mirth of believers. which faith doth fetch from the blood of Christ and from the promises of his word, and who can speak experimentally of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and these will be a great help to the reviving of your spirit and changing your melancholy habit, so far as without a physician it may be expected. On the other hand, decline so far as practicable, the society of the gloomy and disconsolate. Their sorrowful spirit, like an evil distemper, is contagious, and your influence upon each other will be reciprocally prejudicial. Some physiologists contend that laughter is one of the greatest aids to digestion, is highly conducive to health, and therefore, Huffalon, physician to the king of Prussia, commends the wisdom of the ancients who maintained a jester that was always present at their meals, whose quips and cranks would keep the table in a roar. Dr. Everard Maine, warning in his Tutela Sanitatis, published in 1663, tells his melancholy patients to walk in the green fields, orchards, parks, and gardens to avoid solitariness and keep merry company. In a chapter entitled, Hygiastic Precautions and Rules Appropriate to the Various Passions of Mind, he says, mirth subtiliates, purifies, and cures the spirits, puts them upon activity that before were torpid, dull, and heavy, and excites them to operation and duty in the several faculties, volatizes, rarifies, and attenuates gross, feculent, obstructing humors, preserves youth, vigor and beauty, makes a body plump and fat by expanding the spirits into the external parts and conveying nutriment, whose wholesome effects are much the same with those of exercise, and may well supply when that is wanting. Such counsel quoted from the old Roman philosopher, on whom Father Jerome bestows such extravagant praise, is much better than some of his instructions for carrying it into effect. But how much wiser the teaching of Paul who would provide against a large proportion of our disquietudes in life by a removal of the cause. We are prone to look no further than to our own case as if it were peculiar and nobody ever suffered in the same way or to the same extent with ourselves. But this the Apostle teaches is as impolitic as it is selfish. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Do not dwell in perpetual meditation on the ills that afflict yourselves, but turn your thoughts sometimes to the incomparably greater trials of others. Your mind may be depressed and sad under the influence of some imagined or real malady, but is it not because you forget how much better is your condition than that of many whose days are blackness, whose every breath is in suffering, and who feed on tears? You may not possess your wanted ease of locomotion, and perhaps spend many long days and nights in great pain. But what is all that you endure, a hundredfold increase, compared with the bitter cup of such a poor suffering cripple? as is mentioned by Dr. Hall, who he says is still living, 1859, at the age of 45, with every joint in his body as immovable as a solid bone, except those of two toes and two fingers. His jaws have been set and motionless for 30 years, the only aperture through which he receives food being that made by the falling out of his front teeth. In a journal of health for 1859 is a sprightly letter to the editor from a correspondent in Virginia who describes himself as rigid and helpless as a mass of stone, his eyes and tongue being the only members over which he has the least control. My digestive organs, he writes, have lost their activity and I have a distressing asthmatic affection. The inability to open my jaws forces me to subsist upon such food as I can compress. through a cavity made by the loss of two of my teeth. But the aspect of his letter is bright and genial, indicating a livelier sense of the divine beneficence than thousands show, who have health and everything around them to make life happy. Examples of such utter physical disability in the organs of the body and derangement of their functions are comparatively rare. But what a rebuke do they minister to the thousands of murmurers who habitually undervalue the blessings of Providence, because their abundance and commonness make them so familiar. One of the happiest persons we ever heard of was a lady who was so prostrated by palsy that she had no power over a limb or muscle from her neck downwards and could move no part of her whole person but her head. William Paley says that one great cause of our insensibility to the goodness of the Creator is a very extensiveness of His bounty. We prize but little what we share only in common with the rest or with the generality of our species. When we hear of blessings, we think forthwith of successes, of prosperous fortunes, of honors, riches, preferments, i.e., of those advantages and superiorities over others which we happen either to possess or to be in pursuit of or to covet. The common benefits of our nature entirely escape us, yet these are the great things. These constitute what most properly ought to be accounted blessings of Providence, what alone, if we might so speak, are worthy of its care. Nightly rest and daily bread, the ordinary use of our limbs and senses and understandings are gifts which admit of no comparison with any other. Yet because almost every man we meet with possesses these, we leave them out of our enumeration. They raise no sentiment, they move no gratitude. Now herein is our judgment perverted by our selfishness. A blessing odd and truth to be the more satisfactory. The bounty at least of the donor is rendered more conspicuous by its very diffusion, its commonness, its cheapness, by its falling to the lot and forming the happiness of the great bulk and body of our species as well as ourselves. Even when we do not possess it, it ought to be a manner of thankfulness that others do. But we have a different way of thinking. We court distinction that I do not quarrel with, but we can see nothing but what has distinction to recommend it. This necessarily contracts our view of the Creator's beneficence within a narrow compass. And most unjustly, it is in those things which are so common as to be no distinction that the amplitude of the divine benignity is perceived. The 36th chapter of his work on natural theology, entitled The Goodness of the Deity, from which we have taken the preceding paragraphs, his biographer says, was written under the pangs of the stone, or as it is better rendered, perhaps in the old translation, a joyful heart causes good health, but a sorrowful mind dries the bones. A fourth counsel of incalculable value to those who would enjoy spiritual comfort is to be temperate. We refer not merely to the total disuse of alcoholic drinks and intoxicating drugs, which will be presumed of course, but to that habitual control over every appetite which will keep us within the limits that are prescribed by both reason and hell. In respect to drink, Dr. Johnson says, water is the only fluid which does not possess irritating or at least stimulating qualities, and in proportion as we rise on the scale of potation. From table beer to ardent spirits, in the same ratio we educate the stomach and bowels for that state of morbid sensibility which in civilized life will sooner or later supervene. It does not properly fall within the scope of the writer to furnish such details as would be expected in a diatechical treatise, and which would come with more authority from an experienced physician. Burton, in his most extraordinary work called The Anatomy of Melancholy, has given a curious disquisition on the intrinsic qualities of different kinds of food, and of their comparative tendency to nurture certain pleasant or painful affections of the mind. as well as animal propensities, but like many of the opinions of this eccentric writer, it is to be received with some material abatements. Dr. Rush, however, asserts that the effects of diet upon the moral faculty are more certain, though less attended to, than the effects of climate. that the quality as well as the quantity of the element has its influence, and that pride, cruelty, and sensuality are as much the natural consequences of luxurious living as are apoplexies and palsies. Fullness of bread, we are told, was one of the predisposing causes of the vices of the cities of the plain. He concurs, too, with Dr. Paris and other eminent medical writers, both foreign and domestic. and were uprobating the too free use of animal food by persons of sedentary habits, which not only predisposes to inflammatory diseases, but has a sensible influence on the morals. Dr. McNish of Glasgow quotes with approbation another opinion of Huffalin, that infants who are accustomed to eat much animal food become robust, but at the same time passionate, violent, and brutal. It is said that a man living solely on beef, as the Indians generally do, and full of freedom and fresh air, has blood very nearly approaching a chemical character to that of a lion, the fibrin and red globules being more abundant in proportion to the liquor sanguinous, and the temper of his mind approximates to the indomitable savage. When the Honorable C.A. Murray had been living for some time entirely on buffalo beef among the Pawnee Indians, his body got into the true savage training, and in the excitement and liberty of the wilds, he enjoyed the perfection of his animal nature. In describing the kind of intoxication arising from overstimulating blood, he says, I have never known such excitement in any exercise as I have experienced from a solitary walk among the mountains. Thoughts crowd upon thoughts which I can neither control nor breathe in words. The efficacy of a vegetable diet upon the passions was verified in the practice of Dr. Arbuthnot, who assures us that he cured several patients of irascible tempers by nothing but the prescription of a simple vegetable regimen. Some devout persons like Edward Payson have erred on the side of excessive abstinence, which his biographer pronounces to have been the great mistake of his life. To what extremes others have been carried under the influence of superstition to mortify the body for the sins of the soul is familiar to all who are conversant with the history of asceticism. But the more common and dangerous error by far is the opposite, or that of indulging the appetite too freely. When we contemplate each varying tribe of mankind, from the turtle-eating alderman to the earth-devouring autumnuck, and see them subsist exclusively or collectively on everything which air, earth, or ocean can produce, with satyrus, paribus, and equal degree of longevity, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that it is principally by excess that we convert food into poison and become liable to the attack of that protein host of human miseries called nervous diseases. Thus Dr. Comrie asserts, with special approbation, the published opinion of a distinguished American physician, that intemperate eating is almost a universal fault, that it is begun in the cradle and continued till we go down to the grave, that it is far more common than intemperance and drinking, and the aggregate of mischief that it does is greater. For every reeling drunkard that disgraces our country, it contains 100 persons who eat to excess and suffer by the practice. Baglavi, a celebrated Roman physician, mentions that in Italy an unusually large proportion of the sick recovered during Lent, in consequence of the lower diet which is then observed as a part of the religious duties of the season. An eminent physician of London, writing on the influence of the luxurious habits of the great metropolis on the health of the higher classes, asserts that there is not one in ten whose digestive organs are in a healthy condition. This is proved, he says, incontestably by the tint of the eye and countenance, the feel of the skin, the state of the tongue, the stomach and the bile. Let the whole subject of dietetic economy then be carefully regarded by those who are subject to spiritual and nervous depression. And while the conflicting opinions of the faculty on the subject of diet or regimen will abundantly show how doctors disagree, yet they are nevertheless replete with suggestions of the highest practical value. It need hardly be remarked that independent of the influence on the animal spirits and health, Yet, as prescribed by Christian morality, the appetite should be kept under habitual control. The spiritual man should learn, with the Apostle Paul, to keep his body under. He should live in that elevated state of communion with God that he will not be tempted to descend from the higher and purer enjoyments of his religion, to seek happiness and the gratification of the Epicurean essentialist. But how far it is lawful to indulge a healthful appetite and a stable from day to day is a question of morals which cannot be settled for a Christian by any of the rules of medical science or physiology. Put a knife to thy throat, Solomon says, if thou be a man given to appetite. Restrain thyself if excess or repletion were death. But what may be received as at once a fruit of experience in the dictative science has been expressed in the measures of a writer not less gifted with poetic genius than with medical knowledge. Dr. Holland's three rules are 1. Not to eat so much nor so long as to cause a sense of uneasy repletion. 2. The rate of eating always to be so slow as to allow thorough mastication. Number three, use no urgent exercise, either of body or mind, immediately after a full meal. Rules, he remarks, whose simplicity and familiarity may lessen their seeming value, yet in practice they will be found to include, directly or indirectly, a great proportion of the cases that come before the faculty for treatment. To these, however, he virtually adds a fourth and a subsequent paragraph, in which he earnestly dehorts from the pernicious habit of directing the attention after eating to the region of the stomach, is tending greatly to disturb the process of digestion. To the question how much I ought to eat, Dr. Hall says it ought to be a sufficient rule for all men of common sense to reply, eat what you want, and as much as you want, and at regular times. But in the imperfect subjection to reason, instinct, and appetite, in which we find ourselves, a more definite guide is needed. The amount of food required differs with the different seasons. We need more in winter than in summer. It differs with the weather. More food is needed in a cold, damp, raw day than in a cheerful, dry, warm one. Men require more food than women. Those who labor more than those who rest. Those who are growing more than those who have reached maturity. To lay down rules for all these would require a better memory than would be exercise, and to weigh out the food to each particular case would be attended with a very great deal of trouble. His opinion is that in most cases sedentary men in health eat too much, and that the necessity for so many hours of bodily exercise, which many undergo, is a penalty for excessive indulgence of appetite. Doubtless a certain quantity of food is necessary to sustain the physical man in the vigorous use of his bodily functions. So is exercise not less needful for the two-fold object? First, to work off and push out from the body all that is foreign, old, and useless. Second, to replace these with strong, well-made particles, thus keeping the system clear of all rubbish and replenishing it with what is new and perfect. And yet it may be incidentally remarked here, and it contains a great practical truth, the less a man eats to a certain limit, the less he has to work off. Hence those who eat little and work little can study quite as much and as advantageously as those who eat a great deal. And in order to get rid of their surplusage, have neither to spend a large share of their time in working, or in washing, or in scrubbing it off with hard, flushed brushes, that is to say, for the few minutes' pleasure of the passage of food down the throat, hours of otherwise unrequited exercise have to be gone through, or dancing under cool shower baths, or the purgatorial application of hair-gloves or bristle-brushes. If literary men would drink only water and eat one half less, they could well afford to dispense with the fruitless exercises and penances just referred to. Few persons afflicted with despondency are aware how their malady is often aggravated by the occasional irritation of food or drink reacting on their mind by reason of the morbid sensibility of the stomach. Dr. Johnson says, I have known many persons that found themselves so irritable after eating certain articles of difficult digestion that they avoided society till the fit went off. Hence the rule that he gives to enable each person to decide his own case is any discomfort of body, any irritability or dysfunctancy of mind, succeeding food or drink at the distance of an hour, a day, or even two or three days may be regarded. other evident causes being absent as a presumptive proof that the quantity has been too much or the quality injurious. It is said in the life of President Edwards that although of an infirm constitution and indifferent health, yet he was able to spend 13 hours daily in a study. The surprising power of endurance is explained in the succeeding paragraph in which we read that he carefully observed the effects of different sorts of food and selected those which best fitted him for mental labor. Having also ascertained the quantity of food which, while it sustained his bodily strength, left his mind most brightly inactive, he scrupulously confined himself within the prescribed limits. But not to dwell in details that are so accessible in elaborate treatises on this very subject, and that are deservedly held in the highest repute. We will only add that the substance of what we have designed to say in the preceding remarks is comprehended in an old Latin distict, by whom compose we do not recollect, which one is paraphrased in the following clumsy couplet. Employ three physicians, first doctor, diet, then doctor, merry man, with doctor, quiet.