CHAPTER XIV.

HEALTH AND SICKNESS-(continued.)

Sickness-Religious Duties of the Sick-Room-Hymns for the Sick-Room-Cheerful Nursing.

TILL sickness will come, as you know, Mary, with

STILL

all that duty, watchfulness, love, can do to avert it; disease will usurp the place of soundness, and weakness supersede strength, pain hold "high revel;" natural, refreshing, restoring sleep will not be bought at any price-not by the physician's skill, or the patient's weary longing and vain efforts. Then morning will succeed to evening, and evening to morning, without sign or token, except that of the dim nightlight or the shrouded sunshine, and all the day will be the same, save for the sad changes rung by the advancing stages of the malady.

You will want me then, my love, as you have wanted me before. You will know that mamma, devoted as she is with the marvellous power and devotion of a mother's love, must have some relief, and cannot nurse you night and day for a continuance, without

sooner or later taking your place. And you have a notion that you could say some things, and hear some things, to and from auntie, which it seems as if it would break two hearts to say to, and hear from

mamma.

So I am here, my child, beside the pillow on which the little face looks so thin and small-and as white, and do not fear to try, or overtax me, for I have not lived so long without watching by many a sick-bednot mamma, with her matronly experience, has watched by more, and I should be utterly ashamed of myself if I were incapable of nursing you.

You don't ask me what I think of your state, and I don't think that many invalids in the classes trained instinctively to restrain and conceal their emotions, put such a question unless it is suggested to them. And why should you ask me? The issues of this illness, as of all life and death, are in God's hands, and we will try to leave them meekly there, while we go about our present business of suffering and nursing. Only be sure of this, that if you are meek and reverent, at peace with man, and reconciled to our Father, through the blood of His Son, no real evil can befall you. He will not suffer you to be really hurt or overwhelmed. He will lend you strength for your need, your extremity, if that be His will. He will lead you. He will uphold you by the right hand of His righteous

ness.

Above you shall be the Almighty wings, beneath. you shall be the everlasting arms. At your side shall be the Brother-man, who is your judge and your God. The preciousness and the tenderness of that One will surely come home to you, bowed and broken with sickness, as they never could come home before.

Professor George Wilson, who was more tried by sickness than almost any man, has left a few hymns for the sick-room, very touching and very consoling. In one of these he writes

"Yet, thou dimly lighted chamber,
From thy depths I ween,

Things on earth and things in heaven

Better far are seen,

Than in brightest, broad daylight

They have ever been.

"Thou art like a mine deep sunken

Far beneath the earth and sky,
From the shaft of which upgazing,
Weary workers can descry,

Even when those on earth see nothing,
Great stars shining bright and high.

"So within thy dark recesses,

Clothed in His robes of white,
To the sufferer Christ appeareth,
In a new and blessed light,
Which the glare of day outshining,
Hid from his unshaded sight.

"Silent, dimly lighted chamber,
Like the living eye,

If thou wert not dark no vision
Could be had of things on high;
By the untempered daylight blinded,
With closed eyelids we should lie.

"Oh! my God! light up each chamber
Where a sufferer lies,

By Thine own eternal glory,
Tempered for those tearful eyes,
As it comes from Him reflected

Who was once the sacrifice."

And in another, of which I give the whole

"Sufferer, lift thy weary eye,

Help is with thee, Christ is nigh,
God regards thee from on high.

"All thy groans go up as prayers

Through the Spirit's interceding,
Each unworded murmur wears

At God's throne the air of pleading;
And in all thy woes He shares,

Who was once the Victim bleeding.

"Though He is and was all sinless,
He remembers mortal pain,
Holy though He is and stainless,
On His form the scars remain ;
And He looketh now, though painless,
Like a Lamb that hath been slain.

"He is not a great High Priest
In all sympathy deficient,
From all human things released,
For Himself in all sufficient,
To be man He hath not ceased,

Though He is as God omniscient.

"All thy bed in all thy sickness

He will make with His kind hands,
All thy fainting, fears, and weakness,
Anxious thoughts and fond demands,
All thy patience, faith, and meekness,

Reach Him where on high He stands.
"Faint not then! God ever listeneth,
Answereth ere the cry is sent;
Whom He loveth, those He chasteneth-
Taketh what He only lent;
For Himself our ripening hasteneth
By His sorest punishment.

"Need of patience have we all,

Only through much tribulation

Shall the holiest, God doth call,

Pass through their ordained probation,
And no longer dread to fall,

Certain of their soul's salvation."

But after all, your religious duty in your sickness is

health-praise

very much the same as what it is in your
and submission. Praise for the loving-kindness which
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, which sends you
and the greatest sufferer who ever groaned, comforts and
alleviations, if he or she can take them; and submission
to the sentence, hard, hard for flesh and blood to
acquiesce in, to put off the armour which others are
buckling on, to draw aside from the mêlée-from the
household or the public place, from the light and the
movement of life, like a hurt animal, and lie down and
be dumb, while-

"Death and life are keenly fighting
For the doubtful prize."