the difficulty is vastly greater; because he has lost in a measure the control over his attention. How far it may be sinful in him, we pretend not to decide: but it is obvious, that it must not only destroy all enjoyment in prayer, but likewise lead him to doubt his sincerity. For he finds that he can fix his attention, most deeply upon his own maladies and sorrows; and he will hence be likely to infer, that were the love of God supreme in his heart, he should find as deep an interest exerted by communion with his Heavenly Father.

The advanced stages of these complaints are characterised also, by an extreme irregularity in the operation of the mental faculties. At one time their sluggishness is equalled only by the torpor of the bodily functions. To this there is often joined a remarkable obtuseness and confusion of intellect. Hence it happens, that the nervous man becomes negligent and superficial. So great is often his indisposition to mental, as well as bodily exertion, that pressing necessity alone will rouse him to action; and he is the more averse to this, from perceiving that efforts made under such circumstances almost always increase his complaints. Hence too, he contents himself with partial glimpses of a subject. And he often finds, when he tasks himself to the utmost to obtain a thorough knowledge, his impaired senses convey to the soul only distorted or coloured images.

How painful must be the influence of such torpor and deception upon the religious experience. Suppose the season of devotion finds the man in this state-shall he impute it to his disorder, or to his want of interest in the subject, that the season passes away in so profitless a manner? Suppose in this state he hears an interesting discourse, or rather finds himself overcome with sleep in such circumstances: with

his dejected feelings he will very likely impute it all to his criminal stupidity and impenitence. Or suppose in such a state, he witnesses some awful providence of God, or awakened sinners seeking salvation. While his brethren around him are agitated with intense interest, he remains unmoved, and almost unaffected. Can it be any thing, but hardened impenitence, he and his brethren will ask, on which such scenes make no impression !

to

But in nervous complaints there is always an excess, corresponding a deficiency, of excitement. There are seasons when the mind of the nervous invalid is brought into the most powerful action. And yet it is not a healthy and well regulated action. We have often compared a person in such circumstances to a watch that has lost its balance-wheel. Though its parts are whirling and buzzing most furiously, yet neither the time of the day is given, nor any good purpose accomplished. So the nervous man, in his moments of inspiration, may seem to be accomplishing wonders, and to possess remarkable activity and clearness of intellect; and he may, indeed, strike out some original tracks; yet will his course be too devious to be useful; and its few green prospects but a poor compensation for the dreariness and darkness that will succeed. His religious views, in such seasons of excitement, may also be clear, and his exercises ardent. But when he has learnt the nature of his complaints, he cannot but inquire, with anxious solicitude, whether all was not the result of animal excitement, instead of religious principle, or divine influence.

It is, however, upon the imagination that the most obvious effects of nervous complaints are exhibited: not so obvious perhaps to the invalid himself, as to others. For to him, the distorted and magnified images of fancy are undoubted re

alities; and it is but rarely that he discovers their extravagance : whereas others easily perceive many of them to be but "the baseless fabric of a vision." And it is these strange workings of fancy, that have made hypochondriacs, by common consent, the butt of ridicule. Indeed, many of their imaginations are so extravagant, none but their own risibility can remain unmoved. When we see a man firmly believing himself to be made of wax, and dreading on that account to approach a fire;-another, fancying

that his bones have become soft like tallow, and dare not therefore trust his weight upon them;-another, wallowing in opulence, yet pining away through fear of want; and above all, when we see such a man as Simon Browne, writing an able defence of revelation, and yet in the dedication of his book to queen Elizabeth, declaring, with the utmost sincerity and distressing anguish, that "by the immediate hand of an avenging God, his very thinking substance has for more than seven years been continually wasting away, till it is wholly perished out of him ;" we cannot but smile at the strange delusion:-rather, we might have said, we cannot but weep over a soul in ruins. For cases of this kind, the very extravagance of hypochrondraicism, must be regarded as decided mental derangement, to be pitied, not ridiculed. But in the great majority of instances, nothing approaching these cases, exists in the experience of the nervous invalid. Still, however, in almost every instance, the imagination partakes of the morbid influence; and turning away from the lovely landscape hope would paint on the future, she fixes her eye alone upon the scenes which timidity, despondency, and despair

have drawn with their sombre hues : Or as the poet says,

Fear shakes the pencil;---fancy loves excess,

And these the formidable picture draws. It is impossible that an imagination which is thus disordered in respect to the affairs of this life, should not impart a like morbid tinge to spiritual objects. We should expect that such a man as we have described, would be looking continually upon the dark side of every object, and prophesying bitter things concerning himself. If he dare not hope for any thing, but sickness, poverty, and suffering, on earth, it will not be probable he will look for any thing better beyond the grave. His fancy will most likely array against him all the sterner features of the divine character, in so dark a cloud, that the rays of mercy, as they shine from the cross of Christ, will shoot only a dim and doubtful twilight across the gloom.

It has been said by some Christian writers, that a man can learn something of his character from his dreams. But what if the nervous invalid were to make these a rule

of judgment. It is in his sleep that fancy riots in her wildest extravagance. And her images, almost without exception, are disgusting or terrific. She opens the grave and digs up the mouldering and festering dead; she descends into the world of despair and plunges her victim into the burning lake; she hurries him over the tumultuous waters, or sinks him beneath the

waves; she drags him to the brink of the dizzy precipice, and casts him over; she leads him to the field of battle and transfixes him with the sword, or to an unequal conflict with the murderer; she even drags him to the prison or the scaffold, with the full consciousness of guilt for crimes from which when awake, his soul shrinks with horror :*

*"Some nervous people, in this state of derangement, have so magnified their own guilt, as to make formal confessions of crimes they never had the most distant idea of committing." Trotter on Nervous Temperament. p. 292.

"In broken dreams the image rose "Of varied perils, pains and woes; "His steed now flounders in the brake, "Now sinks his barge upon the lake; "Now leader of a broken host, "His standards fall---his honor's lost."

These are no uncommon scenes in the dreams of the dyspeptic; and many of this description can say with Cowper: "To whatever cause it is owing (whether to constitution or God's express appointment,) I am hunted by spiritual hounds in the night season." Shall these strange and unholy wanderings of the imagination be imputed wholly to disease, or in part to a wicked heart, which acts out itself, when restraints are taken off, will be the serious inquiry of the nervous man. If I had a supreme love for God and holy objects, why should not my fancy as often turn upon these in my dreaming moments, as it does upon all that is ugly, disgusting, and abominable..

. After what has been said, it is hardly necessary to describe the effect of nervous complaints in swaying the judgment. If sensation convey erroneous impressions to the understanding; if memory retain only a partial and indistinct view of facts; if the power of attention be partially wrested from the hands of reason, and a peculiar obtuseness of intellect be manifest towards some objects, and a morbid acuteness towards others; and if the reins be given up to a disordered imagination; what is the judgment, that it should form correct conclusions, when the guides to its decisions are all thus gone out of the way? It alters not the case, though the nervous man's impressions be many of them mere spectres of the brain. They make as deep an impression upon his mind as realities; and, therefore, they are such to him, so far as their influence upon his faculties is concerned. His judgment will therefore be warped by them, not only in relation to his

temporal affairs, but also in the affairs of his soul.

We shall speak, secondly, of the effects of nervous complaints upon the passions, affections, and conduct.

Among the first and most characteristic of these, may be mentioned melancholy. This accompanies them from their commencement; and seems, in a great measure, to result from the stagnation of the animal spirits. For a state of depression often comes on without the most trivial circumstance in the external condition to produce it. A man may be surrounded and caressed by all the kindness and sympathy of friendship; he may be in the midst of prosperity; nay, the most cheering intelligence may just have reached him, yet all will not avail to raise his spirits above the pressure of despondency and gloom, that hang heavy on his soul, until time shall have given relief. cannot tell why his feelings are so sunk, any more than he can avoid the depression. Religion, it is true, by elevating his views, and making him feel the vanity of the world, will often raise him to a state of sober serenity; and the endearments of friendship, and the liveliness of the social circle, may keep the spirits from the lowest depths of despondency: but often the re-appearance of the sun after a storm, or a mere change in the direction of the wind, or gentle and diverting exercise, will accomplish more than all these causes put together. And this because the morbid source of the depression lies in the nervous system, not in the mind itself.

He

When these paroxysms of melancholy come on and as the disease advances they come on often, and continue long-the man no longer looks upon objects around him with the same eyes. He shrinks from the inspection and intercourse of his fellows, and broods over his trials with a strange sort of relish. Or if

forced abroad by business, or duty, every slight instance of unkindness, perverseness, or harshness, he meets, goes like a dagger to his heart and if, as is too frequently the case, ridicule is cast upon his false imaginations, in order to remove them, it only plunges him deeper in the mire and leads him to say within himself,

"There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart;

"It does not feel for man."

All his jealousy is roused by every apparent neglect, and even his best friends he judges to be enemies, or cruel, if they do not listen with patience and sympathy to his tale of sorrow. His bodily ailments, often looked upon as dangerous in the extreme, and gloomy anticipations about his property or reputation, constitute a part of his sufferings. But if he be a man of religion, it is his prospects beyond the grave that stir up within him a deeper interest and a more distressing anxiety. Once he may have seen some evidence of personal piety; but now he finds nothing but unbelief, murmuring and impatience. Once he thought that he was at least sincere; but now he discovers that his religious acts were performed to be seen of men; and the charge of hypocrisy lies fairly against him. Justly, therefore, does he feel himself given over to a reprobate mind; and as he looks over the sacred record, his eye fastens with greediness and with terrible self-application, upon all those passages that describe the awful doom of one who has resisted the Spirit of God, and is living only to fill up the measure of his iniquity. When his gloom begins to depart, these painful forebodings will in a measure subside: yet rarely does a settled and cheerful hope of heaven succeed; and sometimes the melancholy, as in the case of Cowper, becomes settled, VOL. I.-No. IV.

25

and plunges the unhappy man into partial or total insanity.

An unusual timidity is another of the almost certain attendants upon nervous complaints. The mere throbbing of the temples, a shooting pain which the healthy man would not feel, will sometimes produce a trembling anxiety in the mind of the nervous invalid, and make him feel as if his last sickness had seized him: and then his imagination will paint before him all the terrors of the final strugglethe agonized parting of friendshipthe failing of sensation-the attack of delirium-the shroud, the funeral, and the cold grave. And still worse, his hopeless prospects in futurity will be arrayed in all their blackness before him, awakening the most terrific apprehensions, and realizing to him all the horrors of a hardened sinner's dying hour.

This is the most natural and usual channel into which the fears of But they are excited also in relation to almost every object of pursuit. He dares confide in nothing that has not the His certainty of demonstration. property, his friends, his good name, all the blessings of life, serve only as so many objects of anxiety and apprehension. True, he possesses them now; but he expects every moment the blow will fall that severs them from him.

the nervous run.

If

This leads us to remark that there are one or two peculiarities in relation to these apprehensions. One is, that the most trivial circumstances excite the fears of the nervous man, more than those of importance. there are real grounds of alarm in his case, you will find his eye directed, not so intently upon these, as upon the motes that are floating in the field of fancy's telescope.

Another peculiarity is, that future anticipated dangers, and not those which are real and present, make the deepest impressions on his sensibilities. The same man