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DISC.
ix.]
NO
PAIN
AMONG
THE BLESSED.
SOD
the pain
of
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
him
With
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
of
sin,
be-
cause
it
is
the
occasion
of
such 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
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