And as weakness of muscle is attended with unsteady, irregular, and sometimes even spasmodic action of its fibres, so it is with weakness of mind. Its efforts are fitful, and it is easily thrown off from its balance. A feeble man tottering along, occasionally resting upon his staff, or taking hold of a post or a fence, is thrown down by the gentlest touch, or by stumbling over even a slight obstacle, that he chances not to see so as to avoid or guard against it. And in the tedious journey of sickness, mind and body totter along in their feebleness together, and either is exceedingly liable to fall. And if the one fall, the other is pulled down with it. The guide, therefore, of these two travellers in this journey, must see to it, that all obstacles in the way of either be removed or avoided, that no rude hand be permitted to touch them, and that all those supports be supplied on the way which either can best use. The mental weakness which disease occasions, is often exhibited to the physician under affecting circumstances. Minds that have been able to grasp the most difficult and abstruse subjects return, in the debility of sickness, to the simplest ideas—those which are both common and precious to the child, the man, the angel, and to God himself. The ‘strong meat’ is turned from, for the ‘milk of babes.’ I remember one of lofty intellect, fading away with consumption, who well exemplified this remark. Her aged father was reading to her a chapter in one of the epistles of Paul. ‘It is good,’ said she, ‘but I cannot understand it now. It bewilders me. Something more simple—something from the Apostle John is better for my poor feeble mind.’ The mind, weakened by disease, is easily disturbed and agitated, except in those cases in which disease blunts the sensibilities. Derangement of mind is often the product of mere weakness, under increase of excitement, without any fresh accession of local disease. A familiar illustration of this you may see in fever. Very often there is mental derangement only during the paroxysm of fever, the mind being quite clear in the remissions. Especially is this the case with children, whose sensibilities and sympathies are in so much more lively a state than those of the adult.