like. We maintain that there is no act of nobler virtue, than to be calm, self-sustained and devout amidst tribulation and anguish. You may rise above the hero or the philosopher; in your chamber you may accomplish within yourselves a work which will outlive oceans and stars. *

In now bidding our friend farewell, we will only add that this our pastoral visit will have been to us as well as to you a profitable one indeed, if we have undertaken the office of Comforter to some purpose. We have spoken to you from our hearts; and we trust that what we have said will find a

"If we cannot pursue a trade or a science, or keep house, or help the state, or write books, or earn our own bread or that of others, we can do the work to which all this is only subsidiary, · we can cherish a sweet and holy temper, - we can vindicate the supremacy of mind over body, we can, in defiance of our liabilities, minister pleasure and hope to the gayest who come prepared to receive pain from the spectacle of our pain; we can, here as well as in heaven's courts hereafter, reveal the angel growing into its immortal aspect, which is the highest achievement we could propose to ourselves, or that grace from above could propose to us, if we had a free choice of all possible conditions of human life."— Life in the Sick Room.

We have de

in so short a

whole counsel

And now we

ready access to your hearts. clared, as well as we could space, what we deemed the of God respecting sickness. commend you to Him, even our Father, who hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through Jesus Christ. May He comfort you, and stablish you in every good word and work.

4*

COMPENSATIONS OF THE SICK ROOM.

They can hardly

Ir would be worth our while to trace, amidst the desolations which disease creates, the footsteps of that mercy which descends to repair them. We do not admit to our minds freely enough the lights which might gild, if they could not dissipate, the clouds which brood over them. God forbid that we should represent as less than they are the the sorrows of the sick. be spoken of unreservedly to the healthy and happy, without the semblance of exaggeration. But they who will enter the dark retreats which cover them, may know for themselves what those sorrows are. Others cannot know by being told. Yet sternly, terribly, as the evils in the prison-house of the victim to disease may frown upon us, there are good angels among them, whom having seen we remember forever with inexpressible tenderness and joy.

One element among those most obvious in this sad condition, is the deep, entire, often dreary seclusion it implies. In health we range far and wide, unrestrained. Our track is on the morning dews "o'er every pleasant hill and dale; " we linger at nightfall by the murmuring brook, or the shore which echoes the moan of the sea. Nature opens

for us all her springs of delight. Society awaits our coming, with other pleasures and gifts of instruction to bestow. And there are yet other resources for mind and for body, wholesome and not without their charms, in the scenes where business traffics. This free contact with a thousand varieties of outward objects and interests is replete with spiritual uses. We lose and forget ourselves in the open world. Collision brings out thoughts and feelings which had else slept within us, and the soul may be thus enriched, and is always quickened and animated. The intellectual activity receives here direction as well as impulse, and when tending to excess is conducted off through many safe channels. But with health this

liberty passes away. The invalid must dwell apart where the world will not follow him. He has few severer pangs than the one which accompanies the conviction, that he is henceforth cut off from free intercourse with nature and society, and has no longer a part in the common business and amusements of life. Long will images of objects once cherished, but abandoned now, continue to haunt his waking and his sleeping hours. In his feverish dreams he resumes suspended tasks, stands at the wonted desk and writes, makes sales, calculates accounts; or he revisits favorite places, sits beneath the tree on the rock which he rested by when a child, joins the merry ring on the green sward, kneels on the hassock with his parents to pray. But he wakes to find it only a dream. He is alone in a retirement from which he can seldom, perhaps never, be withdrawn. Not his, the solitude which the scholar knows well to enliven. Happy were it so. With his aching frame and unstrung nerves few studies could be made compatible, supposing he had the disposition