Obtuseness of feeling, or of tact, arises from various causes; the horny hand of the labourer is less discriminative than that of the man who is not called to toil in the field, or work at the anvil. As regards feeling, independent of the pure sense of touch, there is much difference even among individuals, according to the general nervous susceptibility of the frame. Among the North American Indians this susceptibility is less than among Europeans, as may be concluded from the horrid details given by Mr. Catlin, and others, who have witnessed the revolting practices of the red men of the western world. Loss of feeling, or of tact, in one or more limbs, is the result of paralysis, and other morbid conditions of the system, to which our frail tenement is subject. The same observations apply to the muscular sense, which sense is moreover deranged, or suspended, during a fit of intoxication, (_Proh pudor!_) or when placed on some dizzy height, one, unaccustomed to such a situation, is agitated by extreme terror. The sailor in the rigging of the topmast, the cragsman of the Hebrides, the hunter of the chamois, have learned to surmount such a sense of fear, and are secure in their place of peril. The loss of sensibility, and the loss of the muscular sense, can never pervade the whole frame, till that hour arrives when the soul is about to quit its mortal abode, and enter the regions of another world. To this condition all are destined--the sentence of death is gone forth! Oh that, while living, while in the enjoyment of our senses, and of the energies of our body, we may "lay hold upon eternal life," and live as "dying daily!" Let us aim at being able to appropriate to ourselves the expression of the psalmist, "My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."[35] No one can say this in verity, who is not established on the "Rock of Ages." [35] Psa. lxxiii. 26.