I was unutterably moved, lately, by the reading of a diary, preserved in MS., of one of the most innocent, holy, and devoted of God’s human children; a creature who entered upon life endowed with good gifts, spiritual, intellectual, and external, and who wasted away in body, dwindled away in mind, and sank early to the grave, clearly through the force given by superstition to a corroding self-consciousness, to which she was by constitution liable. Her diary yields clear lessons which might profitably be made known, but that they are not apparently recognised by those who had the charge of herself in life, and hold her papers now. Among these lessons, one is to our present purpose. Her diary became more and more a register of frames and feelings, each mood of which was fearfully important to herself as a token of God’s dispositions towards her. To an eye which now reads the whole at once, side by side with the dates and incidents of her life, nothing can be clearer than that the risings and fallings of her spiritual state exactly corresponded with the condition of her health. In one portion, the record becomes almost too painful to be borne. While her days were passed in heavenly deeds, and her solitude in prayer, she sinks daily lower and lower in hope and cheer: and at last, after a record of most mournful humiliation, we find a notice which explains all--of the breaking of a blood-vessel. To us it is nothing strange to experience fluctuations of more than spirits--of heart and soul, and to ascertain, after a time, that they were owing to physical causes. We even anticipate these changes, and know that when we awake in the morning, we shall be harassed by such and such a thought; that at such an hour of the day we shall suffer under remorse for such and such an old act and word, or under fear of the consequences of conduct which, at other seasons, we know to be right. We have that to tell of ourselves, which seems as a key to the mournful diary I have mentioned. This experience, and such warnings as that which has so deeply moved me, should teach us the wisdom and duty of not cherishing--by recording--our personal cares, but rather of “casting them upon Him who careth for us.” The most fitting sick-room aspiration is to attain to a trusting carelessness as to what becomes of our poor dear selves, while we become more and more engrossed by the vast interests which our Father is conducting within our view, from the birdie which builds under our eaves, to the gradual gathering of the nations towards the fold of Christ, on the everlasting hills. SOME GAINS AND SWEETS OF INVALIDISM. “God Almighty! There is a soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out!” SHAKSPERE.