DISC. ix.] NO PAIN AMONG THE BLESSED. SOD the painof a little nerve seizes us, and we feel the acute twinges of it, we are made to confess that our flesh is not iron, nor our bones brass ; that we are by no means the lords of ourselves, or sovereigns over our own nature : We cannot remove the least degree of pain, till the Lord who sent it takes off his hand, and commands the smart to cease. If the torture fix itself but in a finger or a toe, or in the little nerve of a tooth, What intense agonies may it create in us, and that beyond all the relief of me- dicines, till the moment wherein God shall give us ease. This lesson of the frailty of human nature must be some time written upon our hearts in deep and smarting cha- racters, by intense pain, before we have learned it well; and this gives us, for time to come, a happy guard against our pride and vanity. Ps. xxxix. 10. When David felt the stroke of the hand of God upon him, and corrected himWith sharp rebukes for his iniquity, he makes a hum- ble address to God, and acknowledges that his " beauty, and all the boasted excellencies of flesh and blood, consume away like a moth: surely every man is va- nity !" Ps. xxxix. 10, 11. The next useful truth in which pain instructs us, is the great evil that is contained in the nature ofsin, be- cause it is the occasion ofsuch intense pain and misery to human nature." I grant, I have hinted this before, but I would have it more powerfully impressed upon our spi- rits, and therefore I introduce it here again in this part of my discourse as a spiritual lesson, which we learn un der the discipline of our heavenly, Father. It is true indeed that innocent nature was made capa- ble of pain in the first Adam, and the innocent nature of the man Jesus Christ suffered acute pain, when he came in the likeness of sinful flesh : But if Adam had conti- nued in his state of innocence, it is a great question with me, whether he or his children would have actually tasted or félt what acute pain is; I mean such pain as we now suffer, such as makes us so far unhappy, and such as we cannot immediately relieve. It r.y be granted; that natural hunger, and thirst, and weariness after labour, would have carried in them seine degrees of pain or uneasiness, even in the state of innocence ; but these are necessary to awaken nature to seek 'food and rest, and to put the man in mind to sup- 1
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