off, to enjoy the repose which we are seeking in vain. The company all gone, a solemn stillness prevails within doors and without. All in the house are asleep but the person whose turn it is to watch, that we do not slip out of the world no person knows how; and to bring us, at the appointed hour, the nauseous, but perhaps necessary, medicines. Then, having nothing to look at, nothing to listen to, we lie poring on our misery we think on what we do suffer, and then on what we may; what part of our body is now in pain, and what may next be affected; and so we double our distress which needed no aggravation. We are impatient to hear the clock; and when it has struck, we are distressed to think how long we must lie, and how much we must suffer, before we hear it again. We eagerly wish for morning, to have our friends about us; though all we can reply to their kind inquiries, is, to go over the dismal occurrences to every new visitor.

The confinement of the night too renders it more tedious. In the day, should the disorder not have come to the last stage, if we have strength to get up, and especially, if, with the help of a crutch and a friend, we can walk about the room, though the motion be painful, yet the change of place and posture is a little temporary relief. If we be tired of one chair, we try another: if the light be too strong for us on this side, we remove to that: if weary of sit ting, we stand; and if too weak for that, we throw ourselves on a couch, and doze away an hour or two of the day and so by a variety of changes, and frequently shifting the scene, we make the time pass tolerably away. But at night, we are shut up, as it

were,

in a prison. We get to bed with the curtains close drawn; and there we must remain till the morning come, and relieve us. If we have strength enough to move ourselves, when tired on one side, we turn on the other: but if too weak for that exertion, we beg the person that watches by us, to assist us to take off some of the clothes, or to put on more, according as we feel or fancy. Our thoughts are continually upon the stretch, to find some new posture to employ and divert us; though it may give no substantial relief. But, alas! all the changes of which our narrow limits will admit, are soon gone through, and then we are impatient to get up; though perhaps, before night, we are as eager to go to bed again.

I might add, the wakefulness of the night as increasing our uneasiness. If we could get a little sleep, though it were only artificial, or what is procured by opiates, we should welcome it is a very desirable blessing. It would render us, for a time, insensible of pain; and help us to slumber away the gloomy and lingering hours of darkness. But sometimes this friendly aid fails; or it may not be thought advisable to have recourse to it; and then it is dismal indeed. We go to bed without the least expectation of rest. If our friends request us to try to sleep, "I cannot sleep," we cry; perhaps with a kind of desperate uneasiness. "I do not expect to close my eyes all the night;" and perhaps we do not. We are again, as we often have been, full of tossings to and fro, to the dawning of the day.

But as you are tired of hearing so much of the tediousness of the night, I might suggest some useful

reflections which offer themselves; but I shall only mention two,und on dobd

el

In the first place, then, be thankful for former mercies. Those who are in perfect health, and enjoy re freshing sleep, are scarcely sensible of the value of the blessing. It may be, some of us have lived, twenty, thirty, forty years or more, and yet have hardly passed one restless night, during the whole of that period. We are, perhaps, come to look upon it as a thing of course; and our hearts are but little affected with gratitude to God, or compassion to those who pass so many of their hours in weariness and sot row. But if we sit up a night or two with a sick friend, it might make us thankful for God's distinguish ing goodness. When we see him full of tossings to and fro, and in the morning quite exhausted with pain and fatigue, it ought to send us home, blessing God for the ease and sleep with which we have been favoured. But seeing it in others is not sufficient; it is necessary that we feel it ourselves. When we are chastened with pain upon our bed, and the multitude of our bones with strong pain, what would we give for one good night's refreshment? Then, if we can but get a little interval of ease, so as to forget ourselves for a few minutes, how thankful are we when we awake! We speak of it again and again, to every one that comes near us: how good the Lord has been to us, that we have had some rest, though but broken and short. We wonder how we could be so stupid as to overlook the many comfortable nights which we formerly enjoyed; and hope that if God restore us to health, we shall be as thankful for sleep by night, as ever we have been for provision by day,

Humiliation for former sins is another duty suggested by the subject to which we have attended. If it had not been for sin, we had never known any of those disorders of body or mind, which are the causes of so much unhappiness. But while we were in health, we perhaps troubled not ourselves about the sinfulness of our condition. We derived no immediate ill consequences from it, and hardly believed what the scripture says, of its being so evil and bitter. Or rather, we were so busy all day, and slept so soundly all night, that we scarcely thought at all upon the matter. If our course had gone on thus smoothly, we might have slept the sleep of death, and our souls have been eternally lost, before we were apprised of our unspeakable danger. God, therefore, mercifully altered the scene: He took one of his sharpest arrows out of his quiver, and aimed it at that part where he intended that our illness should begin. We feel ourselves indisposed, and at first do not regard it. It grows, however, upon us; and we think, by keeping within doors for two or three days, to shake it off easily. That not succeeding, we take to our chamber, and then we are confined to our beds: and there, at first, we are perhaps, fretful and sullen. We toss like bullocks unaccustomed to the yoke; and can hardly refrain from charging God foolishly, for sending such a heavy disorder to us, who deserved, at least who needed, not any affliction. But by degrees, God tames our spirits, and turns our repining and rebellious hearts. By lying much awake, the stillness of the night, and the anguish of our disorder, put us upon serious reflection. We begin to think, that this affliction came not upon us by accident, but that

.

it is a messenger commissioned by God; and then we are led to inquire, "Why did God send it?" This brings on a prayer: "Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me. Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." The Lord hears our request, and sets our sins in order before us. Then, instead of murmuring at the acuteness of our pain, we rather wonder that it is not worse; and acknowledge, with grateful admiration, that it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. Then, like Ephraim, we say, "Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God. Surely, after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth." Then we discover the root of all this bitterness; and in the midst of our pains cry out, with sorrow and shame, "This is, indeed, the sad fruit of sin. body, is nothing to what I should have felt in my soul, if the Lord had not plucked me as a brand out of the burning." Thus affliction often proves one of the greatest of our mercies.

But what I feel in my

We now proceed to the latter part of the text. "My flesh is clothed with worms, and clods of dust. My skin is broken and become loathsome." Our disorders may be of such a nature, as to be not only painful to ourselves, but offensive to those who are near us; and if duty or affection did not bind them, we should perish for want of necessary attendance.