ZOO THE WORLD TO COME. masses to relieve the souls of the dead. Upon our actual re- lease from this flesh' and blood, neither the guilt nor the power of sin shall attend the saints in their flight to heaven : All the spirits that arrive there are made perfect in holiness without new scourges, and commence a state of felicity that shall never be in- terrupted. 3. God has appointed pain in this world, "to exercise and try the virtues and the graces of his people." As gold is thrown into the fire to prove and try how pure it is from any coarse alloy, so the children of God are sometimes left for a sea- son in the furnace of sufferings, partly to refine them from their dross, and partly to discover their purity and their substantial weight and worth. Sometimes " God lays smarting pain with his own hand" on the flesh of his people, on purpose to try their graces : When we endure the pain without murmuring at providence, then it is we come otfconquerors. Christian submission and silence under the hand of God is one way to victory. I was dumb, says Da- vid, and opened not my mouth, because thou didst it ; Ps. xxxix. 9. Our love to God, our resignation to his will, our holy forti- tude and our patience find a proper trial in such smarting sea- sons. Perhaps when some severe pain first seizes and surprizes us, we find ourselves like a wild bull in a net, and all the powers of nature are thrown into tumult and disquietude, so that we have no possession of our own spirits ; but when the hand of God has continued us a while under this divine discipline, we ,learn to bow down to his sovereignty, we lie at his footstool calm and. composed: He brings our haughty and reluctant spi- rits down to his foot, and makes us lie humble in the dust, and we wait with patience the hour of his release. Rom. v. 3, 4. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience under tribulation gives us experience of the dealings of God with his people, and makes our way to a confirmed hope in his love. The evidence of our various graces grows brighter and stronger under a smart- ing rod, till we are settled in a joyful confidence, and the soul rests in God himself. Sometimes he has permitted evil angels to put the flesh to pain, for the trial .of his children ; so Job was smitten with sore boils from head to foot by the malice of Satan, at the permission of God ; but he knows the way that I take, says this holy man, and when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold; for my foot kith held his steps, through all these trials, neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips: Job xxiii. 10 -12. Mother times " he suffers, wicked men to spend their own malice; and to inflict dreadful pains on his own children :" Look back to. the years of ancient persecution in the land-of Israel, under Jewish or heathen tyrants ; review the. annals of- Great
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