of the wonderful dependence of the soul on the body. The feeling,
springing from a thousand painful sensations, of the utter ruin of the
organism, brings about a frightful mental confusion. The most horrible
ideas and fancies rise from their graves. The villain whom nothing could
move yields under the dominant power of mere animal terror. Winchester,
in dying, yells in the anguish of despair. The soul is under a terrible
necessity, it would seem, of snatching at whatever will drag it deeper
into darkness, and rejects with obstinate madness every ray of comfort.
The string, the tone of pain is in the ascendant, and just as the
spiritual misery rose in the bodily disorder, so now it turns and renders
the disorder more universal and more intense.



S 20.--Limitations of the foregoing.


But there are daily examples of sufferers who courageously lift
themselves above bodily ills: of dying men who, amidst the distressful
struggles of the frame, ask, "Where is thy sting, O death?" Should not
wisdom, one might urge, avail to combat the blind terrors of the organic
nature? Nay, much more than wisdom, should religion have so little power
to protect her friends against the assaults springing from the dust? Or,
what is the same thing, does it not depend upon the preceding condition
of the soul, as to how she accepts the alterations of the processes of
life?

Now, this is an irrefragable truth. Philosophy, and still more a mind
courageous and elevated by religion, are capable of completely weakening
the influence of the animal sensations which assault the soul of one in