^ISCULAPIUS. 515 



Diseases of all orders not being material, (cancer pumpkins, 

 hypertrophied livers large as a mule's head to the contrary 

 notwithstanding,) but spiritual and dynamic existences, it 

 appears among the things seen and heard in the seventh 

 heaven, as revelations of supernatural wisdom, that the only 

 means even the Lord himself has to remove the evils of the 

 external man, is the instrumentality of man himself. Pro- 

 gressive, and slightly ahead of the Lord, then, ye wise, ye 

 learned, "like superstitious thieves YOU think the light of 

 DEAD MEN'S marrow guides YOU best at night." If it is true 

 that the Lord cannot remove the evils of man except by 

 means of man, then why would ye summon the souls of the 

 dead, why trouble the departed who sleep well after " life's 

 fitful fever," to return and vex themselves again with the in- 

 firmities of those frail and weary weeds, the bodies of other 

 men ? Surely they had trouble enough with their own colic 

 spasms, toothaches, itches, scald-heads, and diarrhoeas during 

 their stay upon earth, and should not to all eternity be open 

 to intrusion upon the sweet rest of the grave, and dragged, it 

 may be, from heaven and the raptures of singing the 119th 

 Psalm, long meter, to rectify the intestinal obstructions of 

 brutal sinners, still imprisoned in bodies stuffed with mackerel 

 and whisky. This seems an offense to the sentiment and 

 law of justice which pervades the universe. That a soul, 

 after being tortured through the hell of the finite with 

 a cancerous stomach, should be liable to be summoned from 

 the everlasting silences to dose through all eternity can- 

 cerous stomachs, is a revelation of the infinite torments of 

 perdition, compared with which, the bigot's common hell 

 would be heaven, and the old-fashioned brimstone lake as 

 sweet as a bed of roses. Oh, lugubrious rappers ! let them 

 sleep ; ye are investing the grave and eternity with horrors 

 yet undreamed of in the armory of God's eternal wrath. 



In remote spaces of hopeless inanity and stupidity there 

 loom still others of the flock of ill-starred birds of prey, 

 or quackeries of the times. Many of them are so phan- 

 tasmal, shadowy, and unreal, so clearly fictions of the 



