DÍSe. NO PAIN AMONG THE BLESSED. 513 through the long ages of eternity ? God can form even such bodies for immortality, and can sustain them to endure everlasting agonies. Let us think again, that when the hand of our Creator sends pain into our flesh, we cannot avoid it, we cannot fly from it, we carry it with us Wheresoever we go : His arrows stick fast in us, and we cannot shake them off; oftentimes it appears that we can find no relief from creatures : And if by the destruction of ourselves, that is, of.these bodies, we plunge ourselves into the world of spirits at once, the shall find the same God of holiness and vengeance there, who can pierce our souls with un- known sorrows, equal, if not superior, to all that we felt in the flesh. " If I make my bed in the grave, Lord thou art there ;" Ps. cxxxix. 8. thy hand of justice and punishment would find me out. What a formidable thing it is to such creatures as we are, to have God, our maker for our enemy ! That God, who has all the tribes of pain and disease, and the innumerable host of maladies at his command ! He fills the air in which we breathe with fevers and pesti- lences as often as he will : The gout and the stone arrest and seize us by his order, and stretch us upon a bed of pain : Rheumatisms and cholics come and go whereso- ever he sends them, and execute his anger against crimi- nals. He keeps in his hand all the various springs of pain, and every invisible raçk that can torment the head or members, the bowels or the joints of man; He set them at their dreadful work when and where he pleases. Let the sinner tremble at the name of his power and ter- ror, who can fill both flesh and spirit with thrilling ago- nies; and yet he never punishes beyond what our iniqui- ties deserve. How necessary is it for such sinful and guilty beings as we are, whose natures are capable of such constant and acute sensations of pain, to have the God ofnature our friend and our reconciled God ? 4. When we feel the acute pains of nature, we may learn something of the exceeding greatness of the love of Christ, even the Son of God, that glorious Spirit, whe, took upon him flesh and blood for our sakes, that he might be capable ofpain and death, though he had never sinned. He endured intense anguish, to make atone- I.nent for our crimes. " Because the children whom he VOL. II. 2 I,
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