The path is now an easy one for some distance, but soon they are confronted by a high crag, up which they must clamber. It looks gloomy and formidable in the dim and fitful light of the partially-obscured moon. The sick man’s heart almost dies within him, as his companion eyes narrowly the small footholds which are notched up its steep side. Some of them he sees but faintly; but soon the full light of the moon, through the breaking clouds, shows him every notch with distinctness. He calculates their distances in a moment, and as his eye runs upward to the top, he plans out the whole of his ascent. In an instant he seizes his friend; and, again bidding him be of good cheer, tells him to place his foot in the first notch, then raises him gently, but firmly, to the second, and so on to the summit. It is thus that the sick man, aided and cheered by his friend, after going through with many narrow escapes, at length reaches his home. The points of resemblance between this journey and the journey of sickness, are sufficiently obvious to suggest themselves at once to the minds of my readers. The journey of sickness has sometimes the same variety of peril, and demands of the physician the same variety of assistance, to suit its various stages and conditions. His efforts, in rendering this assistance, must sometimes be strong and sometimes gentle; sometimes bold and sometimes cautious; always careful and never precipitate. The uncertain and varying light, shining upon the path of the traveller, has its counterpart in the journey of sickness; and sometimes the darkness is so great, that the physician must stop short, and not move at a venture amid such perils. There are times, too, when the light breaks through the clouds of uncertainty that hang over his path, and his eye must be open and ready, as was the traveller’s, to discern all that the light may reveal of that which lies before him. Often, in most of the journey of sickness, a gentle, but firm support and guidance are needed, on the part of the physician, just as it was in the case of the traveller, when the path lay along the edge of a precipice; and here, in the one journey as well as in the other, an officious and hurrying assistance might prove ruinous. Then there are times (and fearful times they are) when the physician sees, as did the sick man’s companion, that while mighty efforts are required of him, even a slight error in regard to the right proportion in those efforts, may prove fatal. And, as the traveller found occasionally some broad and sure resting-place, where his friend could recruit his wasted energies after a severe effort; so in the journey of sickness there are such resting-places, and the physician must take care to give his patient the benefit of them, and not run the risk of an entire exhaustion of his powers, from too much anxiety to hasten to the journey’s end.