Referring to proverbs of this kind it is that Archbishop Trench says, that sometimes an adage, without changing its shape altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations be slightly modified—the modifications, slight as they often are, being not the less eminently characteristic. “Thus in English we say, _The river past, and God forgotten_, to express with how mournful a frequency He whose assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by His help the danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is with them: _The river past, the saint forgotten_: the saints being in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than God. And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude: _The peril passed, the saint mocked_.” Men indulge in doubts of a Supreme Being, says La Bruyère, when they are lusty and strong; but with sickness comes belief, such as it is. “L’on doute de Dieu dans une pleine santé.... Quand on devient malade, et que l’hydropisie est formée ... l’on croit en Dieu.” Believes? As to that, the devils believe, and tremble. But how when the dropsy is relieved and the trembling fit over? Dr. Johnson once adverted in conversation with Seward and Boswell to the evil life he led until sickness wrought a reformation, which, in his case, had been lasting. Mr. Seward thereupon observed: “One should think that sickness, and the view of death, would make more men religious.” But Johnson replied to this: “Sir, they do not know how to go about it; they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of calculation.”[14] It is to be observed that the doctor claimed for himself a previous regard for religion in quite early life; for some years it had, to use his own phrase, “dropped out of his mind,” but “sickness brought it back,” and he hoped he had never lost it since. It is an old, old story, that of the generation which tempted God in the desert, whose days He therefore consumed in vanity, and their years in trouble. When He slew them, then they sought Him; and they returned, and inquired early after God. But it was only to start aside again, like a broken bow. “Tamen ad mores natura recurrit Damnatos, fixa et mutari nescia.” “When men in health against physicians rail,” says Crabbe, “They should consider that their nerves may fail; Nay, when the world can nothing more produce, The priest, the insulted priest, may have his use.”