Pft %t'. NO PATE AMOWG THE InESSFD. tal thank God feelingly, for an easy hour after long-repeated twinges of pain We bless that goodness which gives us an easy night after aday of .distressing anguish. Blessed be the God of nature andgrace, that has not made- the goút or the stone immortal, nor subjected our sensible powers to an everlastingcholic or tooth-ache. 2. Pain in the flesh more effectually teaches us to sympathize with those who suffer. We learn a tender- ness of soul experimentally by our-own sufferings. We generally love self so -well, that we forget our neighbours under special tribulationand distress, unless we are made to feel them too. In a particular manner, when our na- ture is pinched and pierced through with some .smarting malady, we learn to pity those who lie groaning under the same disease. A kindred of sorrows and sufferings works up our natures into compassion, and we lind our own hearts more sensibly affected with the groans ofour friends under a sharp fit of the gout or rheumatism, when we ourselves have felt the stings of the same dis- temper. Our blessed Saviour himself, though he wanted not compassion and love to the children of men, since he came down from heaven on purpose to die for them,. yet be is represented to us as our merciful High- priest, who had learned sympathy and compassion to our sorrows in the same way of experience as we learn it. He was en- compassed about with infirmities, when he'took the sin- less frailties of our nature upon him, that he might learn to pity us under those frailties. " In that he himself bath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted : For wehave not a High-priest-which cane not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, though he was always without sin ; and by the things which be suffered, he may be said, after the manner of amen, to learn sym- pathy and pain to miserable creatures, as well as obedi- ence to God, who is. blessed for ever;''' lieb, ii. 18. and chapter iv. 15. and chapter v. k, 8. -2. Since our natures are subject to pain, it should teach us " watchfulness against every sin, lest we dou- ble our own distresses by the mixture of guilt with them." Hew careful should we he to ]keep - always a clear conscis ence, that we may be able at all times to look up with ._,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=