REFLECTION ,་་་: ON DOUBLE SORROW AND SELF-COMMISERATION. To a mind labouring under the pressure of sorrow, or agitated by occurrences of vexation; to the spirit, failing under distress, or driven by distraction, the physical remedies, commonly proposed-for, of such only we shall speak on this occasion -are the presentation of new and agreeable objects, sought by change of scenery, and the exercise employed in its attainment; new faces; new companions; fresh topics of conversation; and, not unfrequently, a devotion of the mind to some entertaining study or occupation: perhaps to some attractive engagement of science; to business; to the discharge, if practicable, of some public and reputable office. All this may be imagined, and one, or more, of the proposals may be adopted; but, the adoption will frequently prove vain. Happily for the sufferer, accident, however serious shall be its character, or what is called by that name, may possibly administer more largely, in the first instance, to the mitigation of his calamity, than the wit and all the physical energies of man. What is this accident? It is accident, of some kind or other, in which is involved occasion of fresh sorrow: it is this new infliction which qualifies the severity ́of previous grief, and is itself qualified by the unhappiness which it tempers. Both occasions of calamity are moderated by their synchronous existence, and their reciprocal operations; and, however unperceived and unimagined by the sorrowing mind; however occult and slow the progress which is making, yet the mitigating process is at work; some advance towards amendment is begun; and that amelioration may happily be anticipated, which will endure an employment of additional means for the fullest restoration which circumstances can admit. Unless the mind had been, as it were, balanced between contending evils; unless this competition in distress had been produced, tedious indeed, and doubtful might have proved its recovery, even to a state of convalescence; so firm and deadly is the hold upon the heart of a single and undisputed woe. "Tis thus, also, in diseases more definitively corporeal: for, here, too, a prior case of disease is seen to be subdued by the accession of a new one, which frequently, itself, ceases with the disappearance of that which it removes. A small impostume, forming on the surface, nay, even a few pimples rising thereupon, have been observed to answer a curative indication more successfully, than the use of all the articles in the materia medica, under the best direction and skill of the physician. Many and various are the examples which might be adduced, in illustratration of supervening disease proving curative of disease already formed. But, while we are contemplating the physical and conciliating result of an accidental, an unforeseen opposition of sorrow to sorrow, I wish to instance a no less powerful and physical provision, by which, agreeably to the merciful plan and ordination of a benevolent Providence, the unfortunate and the wretched have within the structure of the mind itself, a principle, which, sooner or later, works to their deliverance. Of this invaluable, this medi cinal inheritance, they are themselves unconscious, until its voluntary force is manifested by its exertion. What is this latent and this precious inheritance?-it is the principle, or faculty, of pity, reflected inward, and now 'lighting upon the heart of the sufferer it is a feeling, a consciousness of self commiseration, for a state of sadness, long endured; of anxiety and sorrow, bitter to reflect upon; imposed partly by an uncontrollable obliquity of circumstances; partly by an unreasonable, a gloomy, and, as it should almost seem, a voluntary severity to himself. But the time is come -he begins to feel, that he has been what, probably, he could not, for a season, prevent himself from being the fabricator and dispenser of his own unhappiness: but the measure of his habitual anxiety and dejection is become, even to his own perception, unreasonable, and, too vast: a waste, a wantonness of infliction are forced upon discovery and notice. What succeeds? resentment-not a passionate -but an authorised, a conscientious, a moral exercise of resentment. And now, the never-failing balm is poured, and imbibed that relief is felt and understood which is shed upon the drooping spirit, - while it becomes the deposit of its own deep, and just, and genuine pity. Let me repeat-! He, who can bestow honest commiseration on himself; he, who, aroused from an oppressive and long undisputed submission, now feels-feels unequivocally, I mean-that untoward and unmanageable circumstance, more severely rendered by the quality of his mind, has thrown into his lot an excess of sufferingsuch an one has detected, or, rather, has been shown, the secret, and-the remedy; the appointed agent of rescue and recovery; the faculty of mind, ordained to pronounce, on suitable occasions, and which does pronounce to suffering; "hitherto-and -no further." He has discovered the impossibility of opposing a final and successful stop to the authority and blandishments of self-commiseration. |