15. Impaired Health � Conflicting Emotions.

Impaired Health — Conflicting Emotions

Payson’s health had now become impaired by his severe regimen, and also by a fall from a horse, so that he writes at different dates : " Was excessively melancholy." " Was oppressed with pride and vanity." " Spent the day in the woods in fasting and prayer, to obtain a mortification of my abominable pride and selfishness." " More gloomy and oppressed than yesterday." "I was greatly oppressed with pride and vanity, which made their attack upon me in inexpressible shapes."

Yet interspersed with these gloomy sentences we find others, describing a deep, happy Christian experience : " God was pleased to fill me with himself, so that I was burned up with most intense love, and panting after holiness." " Never before had such faith and fervency in prayer." " I am as happy as nature could sustain."

Melancholy, at times, overwhelmed him like a thousand monsters, so that his soul was crushed under it. At other times he was " surprised with visits from his blessed Lord, full of sweetness and love." His peculiar mental constitution and physical condition had much to do with these sudden and frequent transitions of religious feeling. Besides his constitutional predisposition to melancholy, his health had been shattered by abstinence, night vigils, and extraordinary exertions. The sentiment of Bishop Home will apply here: Religion was not the cause of his gloom, but was his refuge in times of depression.