312 NO PAIN AMONG THE SLUM:). [Ease. ix. the great God can punish sin and sinners when he pleases, in this world, or in the other." It is written in the song of Moses, the man of God ; Ps. xe. 11. " According to thy fear, so is thy wrath," that is, the displeasure and anger of the blessed God is as terrible as we can fear it to be ; and he can inflict on us such intense pains and agonies, whose distressing smart we may learn by feeling a little of them. Unknown multiplications of racking pain, lengthened out beyond years and ages, is part of the description ofhellish torments, and the other part lies in the bitter twinges of conscience, and keen remorse of soul for our past iniquities, but without all hope. Behold a man under a sharp fit of the gout or stone, which wrings the groans from his heart, and tears from his eye- lids ; this is the hand of God in the present world, where there are many mixtures of divine goodness ; but if ever we should be so wilfully unhappy as to be plunged into those regions where the almighty vengeance of God reigns, without one beam of divine light or love, this must he dreadful indeed. " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ; IIeb. X. 31. to be ba- nished far off from all that is holy and happy, and to be confined to that dark dungeon, that place of torture, where the gnawing worm of conscience never dies, end where the fire of divine anger is never quenched ;" Mark ix. 43. We who are made up of flesh and blood, and inter- woven with many nerves and muscles, and membranes, may learn a little of the terrors of the Lord, if we reflect that every nerve, muscle, and membrane of the body i5 capable of giving us most sharp and painful sensations. We may be wounded in every sensible part of nature ; smart and anguish may enter in at every pore, and make almost every atom of our constitution an instrument of our anguish. " Fearfully and wonderfully are we formed ;" Ps. exxxix. 14. indeed, capable of pain all over us and if God should see fit to punish sin to its full desert, and penetrate every atom of our nature with pain, what surprizing and intolerable misery must that be ? And if God should raise the wicked out of their graves to dwell in such sort of bodies again, on purpose to shew his just anger against sin in their punishment, how dreadful, beyond expression; must their anguish be
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