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eye of hope^ gardens of ever-blooming amaranth beyond the appalling chasm of the grave?
I cannot, I fear, pursue this part of my subject further, without in trenching upon the province of the Divine: but there is one point which I must briefly insist upon, and that is, the acknowledged efficacy of habitually beseeching Him who bestows all the inward and outward means of amendment, to make us good and virtuous men, rejoicing in the approbation of our consciences, and in the inestimable blessing of a mind at peace.
Such a state is not only most favourable to health, but is the best possible mental preparation for the attacks of disease.
I now come to consider the power of diversified mental occupation, in inducing a healthy and tranquil state of the mind.
We cannot look around us without perceiving that, in the arbitrary relations which it has pleased the Creator to establish between matter and mind, an inexhaustible variety appears to have been studied; and this not only in the form, colour, and size of objects, but in odour, sound, hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, &c. as likewise in a never-ceasing succession of impressions interchangeably and interminably varied.
When we say variety is pleasing, " we unconsciously express the law that the succession of changes of sensations is salutary to the mind.
I need not here insist upon the irksomeness of monotony in sound, or of perpetual sameness in objects of sight.
Who would be doomed to gaze upon A sky without a cloud or sun?
