in any proper sense has no existence whatever.

An essay follows, "On the Moral Constitution of Man." We find a difficulty in fixing Dr. Cheyne's meaning in this essay. "Man's body," he tells us, "was originally formed of the dust of the ground: 'into his nostrils God breathed the breath of life, and man became a living soul.' As the man consists of body and soul, so again, the soul itself contains two principles recognized in Scripture as carnal and spiritual. The one principle connecting it as it were, with earth, the other, with heaven." Dr. Cheyne thus seems to state, that in the soul itself, as distinct from the body, is what he tells us Scripture calls a carnal principle. When Adam fell, his physical constitution was injured by eating the slow poison of the forbidden fruit: he transmitted to us a body unfit "to be a fit recipient for a soul created to reflect the image of God." "Through the injury sustained in the first instance by the physical constitution of man, we," says Dr. Cheyne, may "conceive that his mental constitution was injured, and his judgment and affections became depraved. Every fresh inroad which is made in the mind-every instance of amentia, delirium, or insanity-is connected with superadded disorder of body." "We never saw a case of mental derangement, even when it was traceable to a moral cause, in which there was not reason to believe that bodily disease could have been detected before the earliest aberration, had an opportunity of examination offered. Not only does every deranged state of the intellectual faculties and the natural affections depend upon bodily disease, but derangements of the religious and moral sentiments also originate in diseases of the body." We confess that we feel it much easier to reconcile with Scripture the fact of physical evil following moral guilt, than the contrary hypothesis; and we think it pretty plain, even on Dr. Cheyne's own showing, that in most cases it is the grievous misuse of mental faculties evil originating in man's own perversion of will, and the misdirection of his affections-that disorders the bodily organization. The passage in Genesis, as far as we can regard it as bearing on the subject, surely supports this view.

The essays that follow are, "on Conscience," "on Faith," "on Love to God and Charity," "on Hope," and "on the Presence and Absence of Devotional Feeling."

The cases of monomania, which have been termed "religious madness," "are generally to be referred," says Cheyne, "to the disordered condition of the conscience, or of one or more of the sentiments' or 'endowments' of faith, charity, and hope."

The standard of right and wrong within us, the existence of which none deny, is called by our author the natural conscience. "It, like every other mental endowment, is improved by being properly exercised." "If exercised at the same time that the intellectual faculties are weak, or easily perverted, scrupulosity and inconsistency will be the consequence." From violation of its dictates, it becomes insensible. Similar results follow from diseases of the brain, or nervous system. A patient of Cheyne's, after palsy, lost all regard for truth. Several instances are given of hysterics attended with similar consequences. When the body is exhausted with fatigue, the conscience becomes less sensitive, and Cheyne quotes a celebrated humorist, who used to say that "man was not an accountable being during the prevalence of the east wind."

"Before man is born again," says our author, "his conscience may be awakened." A friend of Cheyne's was actually driven mad by the convictions of the natural conscience. He recovered, but Cheyne thinks he would never have been insane had he been earlier aware of that Scripture, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation.' "Instead of having to contend with the dark surges of despair, he might have gently floated into a haven of rest. What his case required was a spiritual physician, skilled in the administration of the elixir prepared on Calvary."

Such a case Cheyne would not call religious insanity; but by whatever name it is to be called, he tells us that an experience of forty years warrants him in saying, that "such cases are not in the proportion of one in a thousand to the instances of derangement which arise from wounded pride or disappointed ambition."

Remorse in our author's view is compatible with a sound and active condition of conscience. "Extreme scrupulosity shows it to be either unsound or in disorder, and it is of importance to distinguish between its sound and unsound state."

An unsound state of the enlightened conscience is, we are told, to be distinguished chiefly by the circumstance, that a belief in the atonement imparts no comfort. In such case, the conscience is unsound and unable to perform its functions, and such unsoundness is probably connected with bodily disease.

An unsound state of the natural conscience is distinguished chiefly from attending to the cause of compunction and next to the state of bodily health. If the distress of mind seem wholly inadequate to the apparent cause, or if it be intermitting greater at one time than another then it probably arises from bodily ailment. Epilepsy is often accompanied with symptoms of great mental distress, assuming the character of remorse for crimes wholly imaginary. The first stage of delirium in fever is often attended with great horror. The crime, perhaps of another, is dwelt upon by the disturbed conscience as if it were its own act; remorse and insanity follow. The life of Scott (the commentator on the Bible,) and of Cowper, supply Dr. Cheyne with instances to illustrate these propositions. In such circumstances it is Dr. Cheyne's opinion that moral or religious statements or arguments tend to promote the illusion rather than to allay it, so long as disease is unmitigated.

"Indeed," he adds, "the observation may be extended to every disordered state of the mind, which is supported either by disease of the brain or of a distinct organ acting on the brain. An enthusiastic person, who, as it afterwards appeared, was himself not sane, obtained permission to read and expound the Scriptures to lunatics who were under the care of a medical friend of ours. Our friend soon perceiving that none of his patients improved under the experiment, and that some of them became more disturbed, induced the governors of the asylum in which it was

tried, to withdraw their consent, and to exclude the enthusiast from the unpromising field of his labour."-7th Essay, p. 185.

Insanity has been produced by the strange fancy of some that their sorrow is inadequate to their guilt, a notion which seems so inconsistent with any just notions of Christianity that we are not surprised Dr. Cheyne refuses to class such diseased scrupulosity with religious lunacy. Christian faith

as

a principle, means nothing else, says Dr. Cheyne, than "a reverential trust in the Son of God alone for protection and salvation here and hereafter." Fanatical excitement, which leaves the patient to look to any other source of religious support, is by the terms of this definition to be distinguished from insanity from religion. The

Ge

cure of nervous diseases by Prince Hohenlohe, which satisfied the patients and their friends that miracles were performed, confirmed the spurious faith, as Cheyne calls it, in which these miracles had their origin. nuine faith is often inactive, owing to bodily disease. The sufferer, however, should remember, that while it may be weak as a sentiment, it is often strong as a principle. A man unable to join in prayer may yield his life rather than violate what he regards as the will of God. Seeming unbelief, which enthusiasts refer to Satanic agency, is often but bodily disease. It should, however, be remembered, both for the comfort of those who are disposed to bewail the deadness of their hearts on religious subjects, and for the warning of those who are too fond of preaching to their neighbours, that the only true test of genuine faith is practical obedience.

In actual derangement the sentiment of love to God is sometimes wholly obliterated, and even hatred or defiance to him is expressed. Haslam is quoted by Dr. Cheyne, for the case of a bedlamite who cursed the Almighty for creating him, and wished to go to hell that he might not be disgraced by an association with God.

Hope, the sunshine of the mind, is yet more dependant on the state of the bodily frame than even the sentiments

of faith and love to God. A case is mentioned of a state of mind that seemed to be connected with some disease of the organs of assimilation, in which uniformly on alternate days, for many years, a gentleman whom Cheyne often met in society, exhibited depression and elevation of spirits, each equally remote from the golden

mean.

"Those who dined with him on his low day and on his high day, might have supposed that he was acting a part on one of these. He reminded one of the pasteboard toy, such a favourite with children, which represents a weeping and a laughing countenance, as it is upright or reversed. Before he became thus afflicted there was a sudden and remarkable change, arising from entire loss of corpulency."- 10th Essay, p. 144.

We

Hope at times utterly dies. can make no impression on the melancholy man, because our representations are addressed to a part of the mind wholly inactive. In Melancholy, Cheyne tells us, medical, rather than moral treatment, should be adopted, and "all such cases ought, in the first instance, to pass through the hands of a physician.'

The nature of our publication as well as the length to which this article has already extended, render it impossible for us to give extracts from the concluding essay-that on devotional feeling; but it affords us delight to give it unqualified praise. We never read any thing much more beautiful. Though it does not deal with actual disease of the mind, it is connected with the subject of the volume, even more intimately than some of the chapters that describe unequivocal manifestations of insanity. The reader who has an opportunity of looking at a passage quoted by Dr. Cheyne from Flavel's Pneumatology, will probably

envy Flavel the delight of a day in which his spirit was so elevated above itself, that it seemed to have been passed in heaven. But the condition, on which such highly excited feeling seems to be possible, is, that the animal part of our nature suffers proportionate injury. In Flavel's case, profuse bleeding from the nose came to the relief of the excited brain, or it is probable, Cheyne tells us, that apoplexy would have ensued, or may we add-insanity.

"We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness."

Exhaustion-in cases where less grievous evils ensue exhaustion and languor are sure to follow these rapturous emotions, and both are fatal to that peace of heart, without which happiness or health cannot exist. Dr. Cheyne quotes from the diary of a religious man, one of the entries so frequent in such memorials :-" Much sweetness of prayer this morning; in the afternoon was sunk and depressed; seemed a poor, miserable, useless wretch." Such instances might be multiplied to any extent; and it is discreditable to the surviving friends that such entries, private-if any thing can be said to be private-should ever be published.

But we must conclude, and cannot do better than quote the closing words of our author :

"In concluding, we would remark, that while of most men neither the soul nor the body could bear a very long continuance of a highly devotional frame of mind, yet, when the affection of the Christian to his God is benumbed, his language ought to be, I will wait upon the Lord' at every appointed season, mindful of that promise, They that

wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.""

A.