DESULTORY THOUGHTS.
As every kind of domestic concern and family business is properly a woman’s province, to enable her to discharge her duty she should study the different branches of it. Nothing is more useful in a family than a little knowledge of physic, sufficient to make the mistress of it a judicious nurse. Many a person, who has had a sensible physician to attend them, have been lost for want of the other; for tenderness, without judgment, sometimes does more harm than good.
The ignorant imagine there is something very mysterious in the practiceof physic. They expect a medicine to work like a charm, and know nothing of the progress and crisis of disorders. The keeping of the patient low appears cruel, all kind of regimen is disregarded, and though the fever rages, they cannot be persuaded not to give them inflammatory food. “How (say they) can a person get well without nourishment?”
The mind, too, should be soothed at the same time; and indeed, whenever it sinks, soothing is, at first, better than reasoning. The slackened nerves are not to be braced by words. When a mind is worried by care, or oppressedby sorrow, it cannot in a moment grow tranquil, and attend to the voice of reason.
St. Paul says, “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous; but grievous: nevertheless, afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” It is plain, from these words of the Apostle, and from many other parts of Scripture, that afflictions are necessary to teach us true wisdom, and that in spite of this conviction, men would fain avoid the bitter draught, though certain that the drinking of it would be conducive tothe purifying of their hearts. He who made us must know what will tend to our ultimate good; yet still all this is grievous, and the heart will throb with anguish when deprived of what it loves, and the tongue can scarcely faulter out an acquiescence to the Divine Will, when it is so contrary to our own. Due allowance ought then to be made for human infirmities, and the unhappy should be considered as objects of compassion, rather than blame. But in a very different stile does consolatory advice generally run; for instead of pouring oil or wine into the wound, it tends to convince the unfortunate persons that they are weak as well as unhappy.I am apt to imagine, that sorrow and resignation are not incompatible; and that though religion cannot make some disappointments pleasant, it prevents our repining, even while we smart under them. Did our feelings and reason always coincide, our passage through this world could not justly be termed a warfare, and faith would no longer be a virtue. It is our preferring the things that are not seen, to those which are, that proves us to be the heirs of promise.
On the sacred word of the Most High, we rely with firm assurance, that the sufferings of the present lifewill work out a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; yet still they are allowed to be afflictions, which, though temporary, must still be grievous.
The difference between those who sorrow without hope, and those who look up to Heaven, is not that the one feel more than the other, for they may be both equally depressed; but the latter think of the peaceable fruits which are to result from the discipline, and therefore patiently submit.
I have almost run into a sermon,—and I shall not make an apology for it.
Whatever contributes to make us compassionate and resolute, is of the utmost consequence; both these qualities are necessary, if we are confined to a sick chamber. Various are the misfortunes of life, and it may be the lot of most of us to see death in all its terrors, when it attacks a friend; yet even then we must exert our friendship, and try to chear the departing spirit.