that the ceremonial law of Moses should not be broken; and yet, in direct violation of a far more solemn and important command of the moral law of Moses, could go about to kill Him, because by the exertion of a miraculous power, at which they themselves marvelled, He had made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day." It is here worthy of remark, as affording a strong negative proof of the peculiar sanctity of the Sabbath, and of its divinely sanctioned claim upon our observance under the Gospel dispensation, that in the numberless and daily recurring controversies respecting it, in which our Lord was engaged with the Jews, while He distinctly asserts that "the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath," yet never in any instance does He confine His defence to the assertion of this right, which undoubtedly He would have done, had it been His design to abolish the Sabbath, and to blot out of the moral law, previous to its introduction into His new dispensation, this apparently isolated ceremonial. It should ever be remembered that our Lord stood in the attitude of one whose grand aim and object it was to elevate Himself and His dispensation upon the tottering ruins of the ceremonial fabric, of what the Apostle styles "the weak and beggarly elements" of the law, which had now outlived their usefulness, had decayed and waxed old, and were ready to vanish away. But while He asserts His right as Lord of the Sabbath, against the cavils and opposition of the Jews who denied his Messiahship, and therefore objected to this exercise of the Divine prerogative; yet, as man's Great Exemplar, He uniformly appears, after He has asserted, to waive this right, and to rest His defence upon the principle that "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day," -" to save life rather than to destroy it." He not only defends Himself, but convicts His adversaries, by shewing that there are three classes of works which, under the sanction of this principle, it is lawful to do on the Sabbath day, works of piety, as when "the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless :" works of mercy, as healing the sick; works of necessity, as ministering to or rescuing their cattle: and that while they themselves unhesitatingly practised the last of these, though evidently the least suited to the sanctity of the Sabbath, all the acts objected against Him were of the two former classes, and the performance of which a spiritually enlightened mind would have at once seen, entered into the very essence of the Sabbath's holiness. I said all the acts objected against our Lord; for it is remarkable, that in the only instance in which a cavil had been raised respecting a work of necessity, namely, the plucking and rubbing in their hands the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, the charge was made, not upon our Lord himself, but upon his disciples. "Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day." While they, without any hesitation, loosed their ox or their ass from the stall, and led them away to watering, He loosed from her bonds a "daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years:" while they sought after a lost sheep which had wandered into the wilderness, or delivered from the pit one which had fallen into it, on the Sabbath day, He sought after the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and cast out devils: while they circumcised a man upon the Sabbath day, that the law of Moses should not be broken, He made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day. Thus does our Lord illustrate, by the example of their own present conduct, the two great truths which He had just asserted, "my doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." Thus does He convict them of deep delusion and heinous sin in this, that whereas Moses gave them these three commandments, to circumcise on the eighth day: to keep the Sabbath: and not to kill: all undoubtedly to be strictly observed, as the commands of God, but whose comparative importance, if they conflicted, no spiritually enlightened mind could for a moment hesitate at deciding in favour of the last; they, from carnal and prejudiced motives, from a spirit of partial and compromising obedience, disturbed from their due order and distorted them; and while, in a conflict of these precepts, they themselves infringed upon the letter of the command, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," in order that they might preserve inviolate the mere typical and ceremonial precept of circumcision; while they "circumcised a man on the Sabbath day, that the law of Moses should not be broken," they felt no scruple nor apprehension at violating a prime command of that law, and unquestionably the most important of the three precepts, "Thou shalt not kill;" and this, because our Lord, in evidently fulfilling the spirit of the law, which would "have mercy and not sacrifice," had appeared to them to infringe upon its letter; because, in the exercise of that love which the Apostle, and which truth itself tells " is the fulfilling of the law," He had "made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day." The abrupt and seemingly irrelevant remark concerning circumcision, parenthetically introduced at the twenty-second verse, ("not because it is of Moses, but of the Fathers") must have some object and meaning: and it appears to me that, viewed in connection with the occasion of our Lord's discourse, and the charge made against Him, it may be designed to guard and enhance the sanctity of the Sabbath. It may perhaps imply, that had Moses instituted circumcision, he would have so regulated the time and order of its administration, as to reserve the Sabbath from the performance of a bloody, and therefore, but for the precept, a defiling work, which no necessity absolutely demanded. But finding it as a precept to the Fathers, and its administration on the eighth day, without any reserve of the Sabbath, sanctioned by their uniform practice; and merely adopting it into the law, he was not instructed to make a change which, without adequate cause, would disturb the habits and shock the feelings of centuries. Hence a man might receive circumcision on the Sabbath day,-not perhaps, as the text of the twenty-third verse reads it, "that the law of Moses," meaning thereby circumcision, "should not be broken," for the preceding verse distinctly asserts that circumcision is not, strictly speaking-in fact except by adoption-the law of Moses; but, as our margin reads it, "without breaking the law of Moses," without breaking that which is in a peculiar and emphaticosense "the law of Moses," namely, the Sabbath; which, though in some degree recognized by the Fathers, yet, as to its strict restand high sanctification, looked back to the law of Moses for its origin and rule. "If then," our Lord argues, " a man on the Sabbath day receive circumcision, without breaking the law of Moses," that is, the Sabbath, "are ye angry at me because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day ?" There is evidently here a striking and pointed contrast, and I cannot but think that it was so designed by our blessed Lord, between the nature and character of the work which they without hesitation performed on the Sabbath day, and that for the performance of which they were keenly incensed against him: for so not only their conduct in going about to kill Him, but the very term which we translate "angry," and which is the same with that applied by Peter to Simon Magus, "the gall of bitterness," implies. But the contrast is important, not merely as between the severe and gracious character of the works themselves, but also as between the dispensations which these works typified, and which it was our Lord's object, respectively, to supersede, and to establish. The one harsh, painful, bloody, inflicting a wound which its subject must seek elsewhere to heal, for the law provided no miraculous cure for the wound and suffering which it inflicted on its subject in this its initiatory and characteristic rite: -the other mild and gracious; preferring "mercy to sacrifice," the weightier inatters of the law to mere ritual observances; admi. nistering the healing balm; not killing but giving life; not mutilating, maiming, and slaying, by harsh prohibitions, awful denunciations, and tremendous sanctions, addressed to the carnal man, but by the powerful energy of a divinely imparted and quickening Spirit regenerating the nature, and making “ όλον ανθρωπον ὑγιη," the whole man sound, through its ministrations on the Sabbath day. Such is the Gospel in its object, and, when received by a quickening and realizing faith, in its effects: -it makes the whole man sound. It fulfils, as far as is compatible with the circumstances of fallen man, the ardent aspiration of philosophy after the mens sana in corpore sano. The temperate and unsensual habits which it teaches, and the placid tempers which it creates, powerfully tend to promote a healthful physical constitution; and when I contemplate Moses and Elias, those colossal types of temperance, appearing in glory on the mount of tranfiguration with their glorified Lord, I cannot but add, to prepare the body for a glorious resurrection to a new and better mode of being. But it is in healing the diseases, otherwise incurable, of a sin sick soul, and restoring it to perfect soundness, that the Gospel puts forth the excellency of its power. It quickens into spiritual life the soul dead in trespasses and sins, and gives to it a healthful action, when paralysed through want of the energy of that faith which "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," and which ever "worketh by love." It opens the blind eyes of the inner man distorted by prejudice, beclouded by the fumes of sensuality, to see the true character and infallible tendency of the objects with which it is conversant, so that it is no longer deluded by superficial character, and can" judge, not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." It purifies man's affections, so that he is no longer the impotent slave of headstrong and impious passion, but has will and power to follow the dictates of conscience, and the sober judgments of unwarped and unprejudiced reason. His understanding appreciates all his interests by their intrinsic and real value, and, conscious of immortality, graduates those interests upon a scale which stretches into eternity. His heart responds to every legitimate appeal to the affections, which the judgment of truth does not refuse to sanction, and quickened into spiritual life hears, and knows, and answers, the still small voice of that invisible Guide ' whom having not seen he loves." And whatever at the bid ding of heart and head the hand findeth to do, it doeth it with all its might. The voice of his experience is no longer that of merely speculative philosophy "Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor : Nor even that of the impotent bondsman under the law, vainly struggling against the hateful and hated tyranny of corrupt nature, " the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." “ Ο wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" No. The grateful voice of his happier experience is, “ I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord;" for "when I am weak " in a deeply felt sense of my own utter impotency to good, and am compelled to fly for help and strength to One that is mightier than I, "then am I strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might :" and "can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." There is not only this healthful and duly proportioned action of all the faculties of the soul on their proper objects to indicate the soundness of the whole man, but there is an harmonious concord, a fine sympathy, between head, and heart, and hands,-between the thinking, feeling, and acting faculties, which indicates that the subtle link which once connected them, but was ruptured by the Fall, has been re-knit; and that the etherial fire of heaven, the quickening and sanctifying Spirit of the living God, can again freely pervade, impregnate, and vivify, the whole man. J. M. H. PRACTICAL THOUGHTS ON INSANITY. For the Christian Observer. THE derangement of that noble fabric, which we denominate the mind of man, is a subject so unspeakably important, and, by the very force of association, so powerfully affecting, and, at the same time, one that requires so consummate a delicacy of touch in those who handle it, that I cannot, without some reluctance, enter on the consideration of it. Yet I do honestly believe that the sober and Christian development of the painful topic may serve to promote the interests of true religion, and the happiness of the human race. Thus we may be led to feel our immense obligation to that Being who continues to us the gift of reason; to meditate on those causes of its disturbance which are subject to the control of man; to perceive the fatuity of those theorists, who would trace a close if not a necessary connection between religion and insanity; and thus we eventually see that a true faith in the Son of God is a special preservative of the understanding, amid all the trying vicissitudes of this mortal life. First, then, the reflecting Christian will learn from every instance of mental disorder in his fellow-creatures, to bless God that he himself retains the precious attribute of reason. Instead of merely pitying those who are afflicted with the loss of it, and I need not say, without daring to seek his amusement in the contemplation of their errors and extravagances, he will feel unfeignedly thankful that he is able still to exercise the faculties of his own mind for rational and religious purposes. Such a man will not be unmindful of the beautiful association of St. Paul, where he says, "The spirit of power, and love, and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. i. 7). In how many ways "a sound mind" may be exhibited, for the benefit of mankind, will be no unmeaning question with those who are sensible of its value, of the ends for which it was bestowed, and who look up to its Almighty Author for grace rightly to employ it. Here the pious reader may take occasion to adore Him, in proportion to the severity of those trials to which his reason has been subjected, and which it has happily withstood. That "the Gospel of Christ" has been a means of upholding the mental structure, when buffeted by temporal afflictions, is a fact to which I may advert before I conclude my paper. Next, it is of prime importance to the interests of humanity, as well as truth, to trace, with all possible exactness, the prevailing causes of that malady to which the intellect is liable. Not that I can fully execute so hard a task, especially within the limited compass of the present remarks. For in Dr. Halloran's (the Physician to the Cork Lunatic Asylum) account of those "causes in his pamphlet on Insanity, he states not fewer than seventeen; nor is it a little remarkable that, in giving to his reader the proportion in which each operates, he makes that of religion to be very considerably the least. (This work comprehends the period from January 1798 to June 1818.) The most prolific causes of derangement in males, according to his report, are Excess in drinking, namely, 103; Terror of the Rebellion, 61; Loss of Property, 51; Hereditary, 41; Religious Zeal, 11. Cases of insanity appear to have been less numerous with regard to females. Of the above sources of insanity "excess in drinking" is set forth as decidedly the chief. What a warning to the young to shun that degrading, that destructive habit, and indeed every approximation to it. Would that certain moralists, and religious teachers too, were as anxious to shew the real tendencies of intoxication to impair and finally to subvert the human understanding, as they too often are to represent the supposed tendency of religion to produce an effect so terrible. How much even a single act of over-indulgence, in the use of "strong drink," may impair, first the stomach (an organ most delicate in its structure) and ultimately the nerves, is, I believe, beyond the reach of the ablest and nicest calculation. The fact, however, is so clear, that no man of middle age, of moderate observation, and correct feeling, can have failed to notice and lament it. Drunkenness, when it assumes the shape of an established habit, is in truth so formidable a monster, that neither mind, nor character, nor property, generally speaking, can either escape or survive its grasp. It is that boa constrictor of the moral world, which fascinates and winds around its unnumbered victims, to their speedy and (unless the grace of God most marvellously effect their rescue) inevitable destruction, not only temporal, but eternal. Dr. Halloran has omitted excess in eating in his catalogue of the causes of insanity; but that it is one, and is incalculably mischievous in its operations on the human mind, no medical practitioner will question. But the fact is so lamentably obvious that common sense alone is required in order to ascertain it. Who that ever marked the intellectual history of man, can be ignorant of the morbid excitement (commonly called nervousness) which results from the loaded stomach, and the consequently oppressed state of the digestive system? Epilepsy, which involves something like mental paralysis, is very commonly produced by habitual indulgence at the table. Hence it generally appears that gluttony, as well as drunkenness, in all its grades, by making an exorbitant demand on the energies of the human stomach, disorders the nerves that are connected with it, |