ON BRAIN-FORCING. 225 



dies, leaving his son, aged twenty or less, to carry on a large business, 

 to pay his mother and sisters out of the concern, and to educate his 

 younger brothers. Stanch to the backbone, the lad throws himself 

 ardently into life, carries at twenty years the burdens of forty, pushes 

 onward upon excitement and in ignorance of the mischief doing, labors 

 for a few years or more according to his stores, and falls to pieces ere 

 middle life is reached, and when his powers should be at their best. We 

 label their cases "dyspepsia," "nervous debility," "mental disease," 

 and the like. I refrain from giving scores of them. 



But most disastrous, perhaps, of all means of dissipating the stores 

 of the unformed brain are the preaching-tasks of the theological colleges, 

 and especially of the nonconformist colleges. These colleges are filled 

 with young men ambitious, of generous impulses, and fervent temper 

 and their teachers, as seems curiously true of schoolmasters as a 

 class, are utterly unconscious of the existence of the science of physi- 

 ology. These hapless lads are not only spurred on to intense and pro- 

 longed study during the week, but are called upon to preach. I do not 

 mean that they are merely taught to use the voice and gesture, which 

 are the instruments of oratory, but they are actually set up to address 

 congregations of people. I will say nothing of those hearers who find 

 edification in the raw dogmatism of an undergraduate, or spiritual in- 

 crease in the forced and jejune exhortations of striplings to whom spir- 

 itual experience is yet unknown ; but I will say of the 'prentice preach- 

 ers themselves that the system is immeasurably cruel. A luckless 

 youth is forced to heat the yet empty chambers of his brain, and to 

 forge false thunder therein at an age when he needs rather to sit at the 

 feet of wisdom. Space forbids me to give instances from my books, 

 but the facts are open to others as to myself. Men whose steps are 

 faltering upon the very threshold of the ministry come to me lamenting 

 that the hope and the fervor, the peace and the joy of their initiation 

 have fled, and in their place are listlessness, weariness, confusion of 

 mind nay, even satiety and disgust. Their teachers urge them to drown 

 their reaction in more work, and in unhealthy self-examinations. Pal- 

 lid, dyspeptic, peevish, sleepless, disheartened, many of them creep into 

 orders to come in later years to the physicians, almost cursing them- 

 selves because their labors are unfruitful, because they cannot sit down 

 to think nor stand up to pray. The explanation is too clear. The 

 brain has been forced, and has borne insipid fruit out of due season. It 

 may never recover its tone, or recover it only after a long season of rest. 

 It is sad to think how many young ministers have come to me alone 

 with such a history men otherwise of promise, but whose best efforts 

 have been but as the crackling of thorns under the pot. 



We do not realize how long a time the exhausted brain takes to re- 

 cover itself ! A young physician may boldly tell the overtaxed mer- 

 chant or student to take three months' rest ; but probably three months 

 must be added to that, and even six months again to the sum, before 



VOL. XIII. 15 



