Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1860-08-09
Refining Effects of Sickness.

Many Of our greatest geniuses have been
persons of some remarkable physical weakness
at some period of their lives. kirke White al
ways was. COleridge was nearly all his life.
Walter Scott was a cripple, and both he and
Lord Byron had one, if indeed the latter had
not two, club feet Robert Hall was a martyr
to a series of complicated disorders through
life-a diseased spine-making him suffer the
agonies of thousand deaths. 1t would seem,
then, that suffering gives a peculiar sensitive
ness to the whole nervous system, or is in some
way connected with it, and that it is in this
acute and sensitive state of mind that all the
highest works and efforts of genius are pro-
duced. In private life, as in public, the same
IS observable. Who cannot call to mind some
member of a family always siling, always sick,
and yet the most exemplary and influential
member of the family circle? In the toughest
families in the backwoods such a child will
grow UP with tastes 80 pure and simple, habits
so neat and so refined, and affections so sle-
waited, az to give all the highest results of a
most finished education without going through
any of the fashionable forms of city instruction
She may be the weakest of the whole and yet
her words of love and gentleness light up the
whole family circle, and rule and regulate and
refine the whole. Or in the humber walks of
city life one such weak and sickly child will
cOntrive to establish habits of neatness and
cleanliness and refinement in an attic or q cot
tage, such as are often vainly sought in palaces
and splendOr. If she dies, her memory is fra
grant. the whole family circle, perhaps the
neighborhood, are really elevated by the mem
Ory of the plans and habits she first established
and of the atmosphere she breathed. But if
she recover, then she carries up into life and
vigor the neatness, order and quiet elevation
first conceived through the refining processes
of suffering and Of sorrow.
Our best writer's our most ingenious invent
ors, our most acute metaphysicians, clearest
thinkers and ablest discOverers, can generally
trace some sharpening of the intellect and re-
inning OF the nervous system to sickness or
enfeeblement at some period or other Of life.
And thus 1t is that the sickness which weakens
and wearies for the time, and incapacitates for
exertiOn afterWard, capacitates for tenfold
and higher excellence and usefulness So long
as the depressing effects of sickness lasted, il
was wasting and hindering, but these soon pass
away and leave permanent elevation and
improvement on every side.
Nearly all sorrow has in it the same tend
ency. While it lasts il depresses action
crushes hope, and destroys energy, but it rem
ders the sensltiveness more acute, the sympa-
thies more genial, and the whole character less
selfish and more cOnsiderate. 1t is said that
in nature, but for the occasional seasons of
drought the best lands would soon degenerate,
but these seasons cause the lands to suck up
from the currents beneath, with the moisture,
also those mineral manures that restore and
fertilize the soil above. 1t is thus with sick
ness and with sorrow, once surmounted, they
fertiliZe the character and develop from the
deep fountains Of the human heart Joy and
fruitfulness not otherwise attsinable.
Even error, though while it lasts, sickening,
deadly and destructive to the individual, when
seen 10 be erroneous, and forsaken and reject
ed, produces moral sensitiveness against er-
ror most beneficial to society. The reaction
from tyranny begets the highest, purest and
best defended and defined forms Of liberty
and from the depths of sin and degradation
the returning prodigal rises to a higher place
in our esteem, than the elder brother who
never transgressed the commandment, and the
| recovered sheep gives morej joy than the ninety
and nine that went not estray. Thus it has
been that the greatest event in history has
been the advent of Him who came to seek and
to save that which was lost-PhiL Ledger.