lid THE WORLD TO COME. awakens our best powers to attend to those truths and duties which we took less notice of before : In the time of perfect ease' we are ready to let them lie neglected or forgotten, till God our great master takes his rod in hand for our instruction. SECT. IV. And this leads me to the fourth general head of my discourse, and that is, to enquire what are those spiritual lessons which may be learned on earth, from the pains we have suffered, or May suffer in the flesh. I shall divide them into two sorts, viz. Lessons of instruction ins useful truths, and lessons of duty, or practical ehristianity; and there are many of each kind with which the disciples of Christ in this world may be better acquainted, by the actual sensations of pain, than any other way, In this world, I say, and in this only ; for in heaven most of these lessons of doctrine and practice are utterly needless to be taught, either because they have been so perfectly well known to all its inhabitants before, and their present situation makes it impossible to forget them i or they shall be let into the fuller' knowledge of them in heaven in a far superior way 'of instruc- tion, and without any such uneasy discipline. And this I shall evidently make appear, when I have first enumerated all these general lessons both of truth and duty, and shewn how wisely the great God has appointed them to be taught here on earth; tinder the scourge and the wholesome discipline of pain in the flesh. I. " The lessons of instruction here on earth, or the useful truths," are such as these: I. Pain teaches sis feelingly " what feeble creatures we are, and' how entirely dependent on God our Maker for every hour and moment of ease." We are naturally wild and wanton crea- tures, and especially in the season of youth, our gayer powers are gadding, abroad at the call of every temptation ; but when Grod sends his arrows into our flesh, he artests us on a sudden, and teaches us that we are but men, poor feeble dying creatures, soon crushed, and sinking under his hand, We are ready to exult in the vigour of youth, when animal nature, in its prime Of strength and glory, raises our pride, and supports us in a sort of self-sufficiency ; we are so vain and foolish as to imagine no- thing can hurt us : But when the pain of á 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 thu 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 be. yond all the relief' of medicines, till the moment wherein God shall give us ease. This lesson of the frailty of human nature'
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