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Compensations of the Sick Room.

It 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 sorrows of the sick. They can hardly 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 and the means to pursue them. Not his, the solitude of the artist; those are brighter and happier hours than his, which are spent with pallet, pen, or chisel in hand, however spent alone. Intelligence with him has put off its dignities, and genius has done with her creations. The hands which hang down and the feeble knees, are no more unsuitable to their wonted uses, than the higher faculties to their former employments, in their present drooping and spiritless condition. He sits, alike in pain or quietness, idle, or with varied expedients, all poor enough, to keep from seeming idle. What exertions of mind or body he puts forth are so different from those he once made, that he can find nothing in them to raise self-esteem, though they help to beguile the sorrows he must still endure. Other and yet darker incidents overshadow the picture, but we will not name them. Enough, if we have indicated what is implied in sequestration from the common paths and interests of men.

And have we any offset to all this? There is one, arising from the very circumstances that pro

duce the evils we have adverted to. In exclusion and banishment, amidst dreariness and despondence, when heart and flesh are failing, the soul obtains a new, and a more profound conviction than it ever had before, of the highest truths. How does it then begin to apprehend as a reality the great presence of God! He was near in happier scenes and hours, as He is in these. But many other objects were interposed, which turned the thoughts from Him, or attracted to themselves what should have been His alone. In the captivity which has torn it away from them, it is restored to Him. God becomes to the soul then a refuge and solace, when the idols it had suffered to supplant Him have been all destroyed.

There are few situations in which man feels his relation to God, and his dependence on the Divine mercy more sensibly, than in the solitude created by a hopeless disease. The stillness necessary to the shattered frame is propitious to the holiest thoughts and emotions. The humiliations which are attendant upon infirmity and pain bring low, even into the dust before him, whatever exalteth itself against God. The helplessness, that knows not what to do nor where to look for relief, carries us to Him who is able to supply all our need. Ah! with what emphasis might a sick and dying man reiterate the exclamation, “I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee!"

With its new sense of God, the afflicted and humbled spirit attains also a better knowledge of itself. The essential worth of a human soul is effectually taught by the process which takes all its dross away. Life in the sick room is existence stripped of its factitious adornments, from which all pomp and pride and festal shows, the glory of man, have departed. Whatever had been fuel to vanity, is consumed in that furnace; all that was beautiful to the eye of a fond self-esteem is marred there; but beneath these, is disclosed what outvies them by an infinite value. It is when man has seen all distinctions but moral ones reduced to nothing, and has learned how unavailing are riches and titles and pleasures to meet life's sorest exigence, and prepare for death's severing blow, that he begins to know in what his own worth consists. And in the penitent endeavor to repair what by the frailty of his nature and his own sinfulness has been lost of that true worth, he has a consolation which beguiles him of all that is bitter in the thought of other losses, which he wants power to make good again.

To the better knowledge of himself, and more intimate communion with God, the discipline of his peculiar lot will add, for the invalid's solace, a more adequate appreciation of his fellow-beings. They who minister to his wants, give him the daily blessing of their sympathy, and lavish their affection upon him, are understood now and valued as they deserve.