it is indispensable the vigor of the body
should correspond to the vigor of the intellect, so far as to constitute
the one the most efficient agent of the other. It has rarely been taken
into view, that, aside from the personal benefits of health in the
greater power of present action, the intense intellects and feeble
frames of one generation are a ruinous draft upon both the physical and
mental powers of that which succeeds. A race of overwrought brains in
enfeebled bodies must be recruited from a more healthful stock, or their
posterity will, in time, decline into idiocy or cease from the earth.
The process of degeneracy, by an infallible law, will pass from the body
to the intellect; and the descendant of a Luther or a Bacon go down to
the level of the most stupid boor that drives his oxen over the sands of
southern Africa.
* * * * *
Original.
INORDINATE GRIEF THE EFFECT OF AN UNSUBDUED WILL.
I called on a friend a few months since, who for a full year had been
watching with maternal solicitude over an invalid daughter still in the
morning of life, upon whom had been lavished all the fond caresses of
parental love and tenderness. Every advantage which wealth, and the
means of education could impart to qualify her for happiness in this
life had been hers--nor had her religious culture been entirely
overlooked.
In her father's family there had been little effort made to instill into
the minds of their children the principles of holy living, and it was
felt that there was but little necessity to give them habits of
self-denial or self-reliance.
This daughter, notwithstanding her happy childhood in having all her
wants anticipated, and upon whose pathway the sun had shone most
brightly, was now, like an unsubdued child, under a most painful
infliction of the rod of God.
Two years previous to this time, during a revival of religion, she
publicly covenanted to walk in all the statutes and ordinances of God's
Word and house, blamelessly. Thus was she married to Christ, and she
then felt, and her friends felt, that she had chosen Christ to be the
guide of her youth.
But how could she be expected, never having had her will thoroughly
subdued, or been called to bear any yoke or burden, fully to understand,
or to realize what was implied, or required in becoming a disciple of
Christ, so that she could at once fully adopt the language,
"Jesus, I my cross have taken,
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