is health also was impaired, so that his friend found him in
a pitiable state, neither able to receive pleasure from the world,
which he so dearly loved, nor from religion, which he so greatly
feared. He expected to have been much commended by Mr. Worthy for
the change in his way of life; but Worthy, who saw that the
alteration was only owing to the loss of animal spirits, and to the
casual absence of temptation, was cautious of flattering him too
much. "I thought, Mr. Worthy," said he, "to have received some
comfort from you. I was told, too, that religion was full of
comfort, but I do not much find it." "You were told the truth,"
replied Worthy; "religion is full of comfort, but you must first be
brought into a state fit to receive it before it can become so; you
must be brought to a deep and humbling sense of sin. To give you
comfort while you are puffed up with high thoughts of yourself,
would be to give you a strong cordial in a high fever. Religion
keeps back her cordials till the patient is lowered and
emptied--emptied of self, Mr. Bragwell. If you had a wound, it must
be examined and cleansed, ay, and probed too, before it would be
safe to put on a healing plaster. Curing it to the outward eye,
while it was corrupt at bottom, would only bring on a mortification,
and you would be a dead man, while you trusted that the plaster was
curing you. You must be, indeed, a Christian before you can be
entitled to the comforts of Christianity."

"I am a Christian," said Mr. Bragwell; "many of my friends are
Christians, but I do not see as it has done us much good."
"Christianity itself," answered Worthy, "can not make us good,
unless it be applied to our hearts. Christian privileges will not
make us Christians, unless we make use of them. On that shelf I see
stands your medicine. The doctor orders you to take it. _Have_ you
taken it?" "Yes," replied Bragwell. "Are you the better for it?"
said Worthy. "I think I am," he replied. "But," added Mr. Worthy,
"are you the better because the doctor has ordered it merely, or
because you have also taken it?" "What a foolish question," cried
Bragwell; "why to be sure the doctor might be the best doctor, and
his physic the best physic in the world; but if it stood forever on
the shelf, I could not expect to be cured by it. My doctor is not a
mountebank. He does not pretend to cure by a charm. The physic is
good, and as it suits my case, though it is bitter, I take it."

"You have no