I844-54- COUNSELS OF AN INVALID. 247 



the intellect, and clogged or maddened every emotion. 

 Consecutive thought is impossible ; meditation, reflection, 

 or even distinct apprehension, greatly weakened, often out 

 of the question. Who dare expect in such circumstances 

 that the long-despised mercy of God shall be experienced, 

 when the very power to listen to a verse of the Bible, or to 

 understand it, is gone, and memory is palsied ; or, worst of 

 all, has no promise to remember, or one stay or rock of 

 strength to fall back upon 1 God's mercy is infinite, and 

 reacheth to the eleventh hour, and is often glorified and 

 manifested at it. Yet, beseech your young people to com- 

 mit, commit, commit to memory the Bible. They'll find 

 the precious comfort of it when sickness comes. And the 

 elders will see that the ' hope set before them' is so realized 

 in health that it shall only require to be ' laid hold of when 

 sickness comes. To attain unto this is to be, with the Holy 

 Spirit's help, far more the great object of my life than it has 

 hitherto been. The review of the last three weeks shows 

 such abounding mercies, favours, love my cup literally 

 running over with them that the pain, disappointment, 

 fear, and discomfort, have passed into the background al- 

 ready, desponder though I am." A year later he tells the 

 same friend : " I am leading the very quietest of lives, and 

 yet it is as happy as when I was busier. I am broken in to 

 an indoor existence, and do not feel that trouble in getting 

 through the day that active men must feel when first re- 

 duced to draw coal-waggons at a mile an hour, instead of 

 being special engines at a mile a minute. And though I 

 have no progress to report in the way of bettered health, 

 but the opposite, and begin seriously to contemplate the 

 great possibility of having to submit to an ugly operation, 

 yet the pain I suffer is quite bearable, my intellect is clear, 

 and there are many more mercies than miseries in my cup. 



