us emotions, as recorded in his journal and
letters. Nor is it to be denied that they are often marred by a very
morbid element. Like David Brainerd, the missionary saint of New
England, to whom in certain features of his character he bore no little
resemblance, Edward Payson was of a melancholy temperament and subject,
therefore, to sudden and sharp alternations of feeling. While he had
great capacity for enjoyment, his capacity for suffering was equally
great. Nor were these native traits suppressed, or always overruled, by
his religious faith; on the contrary, they affected and modified his
whole Christian life. In its earlier stages, he was apt to lay too much
stress by far upon fugitive "frames," and to mistake mere weariness,
torpor, and even diseased action of body or mind, for coldness toward
his Saviour. And almost to the end of his days he was, occasionally,
visited by seasons of spiritual gloom and depression, which, no doubt,
were chiefly, if not solely, the result of physical causes. It was
an error that grew readily out of the brooding introspection and
self-anatomy which marked the religious habit of the times. The close
connection between physical causes and morbid or abnormal conditions of
the spiritual life, was not as well understood then as it is now.
Many things were ascribed to Satanic influence which should have been
ascribed rather to unstrung nerves and loss of sleep, or to a violation
of the laws of health. [4] The disturbing influence of nervous and other
bodily or mental disorders upon religious experience deserves a fuller
discussion than it has yet received. It is a subject which both modern
science and modern thought, if guided by Christian wisdom, might help
greatly to elucidate.

The morbid and melancholy element, however, was only a painful incident
of his character. It tinged his life with a vein of deep sadness and led
to undue severity of self-discipline; but it did not seriously impair
the strength and beauty of his Christian manhood. It rather served to
bring them into fuller relief, and even to render more striking those
bright natural traits--the sportive humor, the ready mother wit, the
facetious pleasantry, the keen sense of the ridiculous, and the wondrous
story-telling gift--which made him a most delightful companion to young
and old, to the wise and the unlettered alike. It served, moreover, to
impart peculiar tenderness to his pastoral intercourse, especially with
members o