DISCOURSE IL 103 must be some time written upon our hearts in deep and smarting characters,- 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 bumble address to God, and acknow- ledges that his as beauty, and all the boasted excellencies of flesh anti- blood, consume away like a moth : surely every man is vanity! Ps. xxxix. 10, 11. 2. The next useful truth in which pain instructs us, is, " the great evil that is contained in the nature of silt, because 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 pow': erfully impressed upon our spiaits, and therefore I introduce it here again in this part of my discourse as a spiritual lesson, which we learn under the discipline of our heavenly Father. It is true indeed that innocent nature was made capable 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 sin- ful flesh : But if Adam had continued in his state of innocence, it is a great question with me, whether he or his children would have actually tasted or felt what acute pain is; I mean such pain as we now suffer, such at makes us so far unhappy, and such as we cannot immediately relieve. It may be granted, that natural 'hùnger, and thirst, and weariness after labour, would have car - mied in them sortie decrees 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 supply his na- tural wants ; and man might have immediately relieved them himself, for the supplies of ease were at hand, and these sort of fin easinesses were abundantly compensated by the pleasure of rest and food, and perhaps they were in some measure necessary to make food and rest pleasant. But surely if sin had never been known in our world, all the pain that arises from inward diseases of nature, or from outward violence, had been a stranger to the human race, an unknown evil among the sons of men, as it is among the holy angels, the sons of God. There had been no distempers or acute pains to meet young babes at their entrance into this world ; no maladies to attend the sons and daughters of Adam through the journey of life ; and they should have been translated to some higher and happier region, without death, and without pain. It was the eating of tire tree of knowledge of good and evil, that acquainted Adam and his offspring with the evil of pain. Or if pain could have attacked innocence in any form or degree, it would have been but in a way of trial, to exercise and illustrate his virtues ; and if he had endured the test, and continued Mao- Von. vu. N
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