tinctl knowledges a corrective or preventive use, when he writes, "Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,"* he at other times intimates a strict communion of suffering with their sinless Lord. "The sufferings of Christ" (he had declared in the same epistle) " abound in us;"† and elsewhere he announces it as part of his supreme desire that he might know the " fellowship of his" Lord's "sufferings, being made conformable unto his death."+ To another society he declares, "I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and in my turn fill up the remainder of the afflictions of Christ, for his body's sake which is the church."§ Though he chiefly rejoiced that these things were endured in the service and for the benefit of the church, and in that respect also resembled his Lord's, there is no reason to doubt that he rejoiced likewise in their perfective or completory, and, if I may use the term, in their honorary character, as means and marks of communion and coheirship with Him, "who for the suffering of death was crowned with glory." Peter holds a similar language: "Rajoice, inasmuch as ye participate (or communicati *2 Cor. xii. 7. + 2 Cor. i. 5. Philip slation. Christ's sufferings: that, in the revelation of his glory, ye may exult for joy."* I know not indeed how we, who possess a nature susceptible of pain and "compassed with infirmity," can conceive of obedience thoroughly or extremely tried, except through this ordeal of suffering. There may be, and we doubt not there are, other modes of adequate trial for spirits unfallen,—whether they be incapable of pain or otherwise;―modes which, though having no pain in them, are yet some way as effectual and conclusive (perhaps even extreme) in attesting their obedience. Yet there is something strangely illustrious in the fact, that lapsed and renovated creatures thus acquire a sort of conformity and communion with the Son of God, which beings that have never suffered cannot be imagined to possess. If there be first a something surpassingly glorious in the peculiarity and condescension of his suffering "for us," there is next a something reciprocally glorious in the peculiarity and honour of our suffering" with Him.” May we not reverently conceive it one purpose of Eternal Wisdom in permitting man's apostasy, to illustrate, as it had not been and could not perhaps otherwise have been illustrated, that mode of ual discipline and elevation which consists in The in thei * 1 Pet. iv. 13. the endurance of pain-thus introducing an unprecedented kind of victory, a novel sort of triumph and of victors, into the "general assembly" of the blest?-the "Lord of glory" and " Image of the invisible God" Himself assuming a crown which celestials never won, and bringing " with Him, out of great tribulation," a new array of 66 more than conquerors," from whom new glory should redound to "Him that loved them," and at whom the heavens should wonder? XII. ON MENTAL ILLNESS OR DEBILITY. OUR fallen nature owns three sources of infirmity and suffering,—the corporal, the intellectual, and the spiritual*; which, though we can often experimentally distinguish, we sometimes imagine more distinct than in reality they are. Instances, no doubt, are found, of a wonderful distinctness, and almost a seeming independency, of those several states. Thus the intellectual strength of some men has been evinced in arduous public effort, while enduring acute bodily pain. Thus again, while torture by disease or martyrdom by violence has been inflicted, there has been a high degree of spiritual joy. Some also, under the lash of guilty passions, and amidst the smartings of remorse, have yet * The term spiritual is, of course, used in the moral and religious sense; to which, by Christians, it has been almost exclusively ap propriated. seemed to possess their bodily vigour and mental promptitude unbroken. It is, however, quite rare, for the intellectual health to be even transiently shaken, without some corporal sympathy; and even without some moral or spiritual pain being thus induced or heightened. Usually, when the mind, the medium both of sensations and emotions, is weakened or perturbed, all that are painful become the more so, and all that are pleasurable, the less. We somewhat illustrate, though without really explaining, this law, when it is said, in familiar metaphors, that the mental medium, like a stained or clouded glass, now mars the hue of what is bright, and deepens what is sombrous. There are exceptions, indeed, to this; for the intellect, in later life, may be consciously impaired and circumscribed, yet the bodily powers and perceptions not sensibly abated, and the moral and spiritual comforts happily enhanced. But while there are thus examples of distinctness, and in all its forms, the contrary cases, of complication, are abundantly more frequent. It is matter of trite remark, how the mind and body act upon each other. Such indeed is their hidden reciprocity of influence, that it often passes the most self-analysing consciousness, and the most observant skill, to pronounce where such affections originate; whether some insensible bodily disarrange |