50 A HANDBOOK FOR SOUTHPORT. 



pelled to keep his intellectual powers on full stretch to meet 

 the requirements of his position, while his life is passed 

 in a succession of nervous excitements, exposed to alter- 

 nations of heated rooms and cold night air, is undoubtedly 

 doing a great work, but he does it at a great cost. He 

 will hardly live to build up the Church by his matured 

 wisdom, or exhibit the passive virtues of the aged Christian. 

 The list of highly gifted ministers of various Churches 

 who have been lost to mankind when in the full vigour 

 of their intellectual and moral strength, by a systematic 

 neglect of the most ordinary sanitary rules, is sad to con- 

 template. The subject is one of great delicacy, and it is only 

 necessary to suggest that the moral government of God being 

 perfectly harmonious in all its parts, the fulfilment of a duty 

 in one direction never necessitates opposition to the Divine 

 intention in another. 



Intellectual labour, pursued in the quiet of the study, if 

 too long continued, and not sufficiently alternated with out- 

 door exercise, is fertile of ill effects. The maladies thus 

 induced are extremely varied, and not seldom are attributed 

 to any cause but the right one. They may take the form of 

 a direct injury to the over-worked organ, the brain, and may- 

 proceed onward along the parallel lines which lead respectively 

 to insanity or paralysis. But more generally they will assume 

 one of the protean forms of dyspepsia, and lead to impaired 

 nutrition or structural change. Sydenham considered that 

 one of the most severe fits of gout he ever experienced, arose 

 from great mental labour in composing his treatise on that 

 disease ; and the student of literary history will call to mind 

 many instances where the completion of some intellectual 



