moved, is discovered to be worthy of our admiration and esteem! How much of human love, where we most calculated upon finding it, has escaped from our hold! but then, how much is left to succour and console us, from those upon whose kindness we feel to have but little claim!
Experience is often said to be the only true teacher; but illness often crowds an age of experience into the compass of a few short days. Often while engaged in the active avocations of life, involved in its contending interests, and led captive by its allurements, we wish in vain that a just balance could be maintained between the value of the things of time and of eternity. It is the greatest privilege of illness, that, if rightly regarded, it adjusts this balance, and keeps it true. From the bed of sickness, we look back upon the business, which, a short time ago, absorbed our very being. What is it then? A mere struggle for the food and clothing of a body about to mingle with the dust. We look back at the pleasures we have left. What are they? The sport of truant children, when they should have been learning to be wise and good, We look back upon the objects which engaged our affections. How is it? Have the stars all vanished from our heaven? Have the flowers all faded from our earth? How can it be? Alas! our affections have been misplaced. We have not loved supremely only what was lovely in the sight of God: and merciful, most merciful is the warning voice, not yet too late, to tell us that He who formed the human heart, has an unquestionable right to claim his own.
I am not one of those who would speak of religion as especially calculated for the chamber of sickness, and the bed of death; because I believe it is equally important to choose religion as our portion in illness, as in health—in the bloom of youth, as on the border of the grave. I believe also, that in reality, that being is in as awful a condi-
