Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/214

194 which is the prolific source of all disorder and misery? What enlightened eye therefore cannot discern, yet further, that bodily health was designed by the to call man to the investigation and consideration of its primary and supreme cause, and thus to the humble and grateful acknowledgment of the astonishing favours continually dispensed to him from above, by the operation of that cause? On the other hand, what intelligent eye cannot also perceive, that bodily sickness is an equally instructive monitor, by reminding man of its infernal cause, and by thus placing him on his guard against those disorderly affections of the mind and appetites of the body which have a tendency to connect him with that cause, and by such connection “to destroy (as the expresseth it) both soul and body in hell?” [ Matt. x. 28.]

Do we complain then of our bodily sicknesses, pains, and infirmities?—We complain unjustly and without reason, because we forget that they speak a language, which language is, of all others, the most intelligible, the most forcible, the most instructive, and the most consolatory. We forget, too, the blessed purport of this language, and that it is neither more nor less than the expression of the sentiment which once fell from the lips of an Infinite mercy, inviting to its bosom all