DISCOURSE IX. 195 months and years of, ease and pleasure ; but when the soul is melted in this furnace of painful sufferings, it more easily receives some divine stamp, some lasting impression of truth, which the words of the preacher and the book of God had before inculcat- ed without success, and repeated almost in vain. Happy is the soul that learns this lesson thoroughly, and gains a more lasting acquaintance with the evil of sin, and abhorrence of it, under the smarting stroke of the hand of God. Blessed is the man whom thou correctest, O Lord, and teachest him the truths that are written in thy law; Pa. xeiv. 12. 3. Pain in the flesh teaches us also " how dreadfully the great God can punish sin and sinners when he pleases, in this world, or in the other." It is written in the song of Moses, the man of God ; Ps. xc. 11. According to thy fear, so is thy wrath, that is, the displeasure and anger of the blessed God is as terrible as we can fear it to be ; and he can inflict on us such intense pains and agonies, whose distressing smart we may learn by feeling a little of them. Unknown multiplications of racking pain, lengthened out beyond years and ages, is part of the de- scription of hellish torments, and the other part lies in the bitter twinges of conscience, and keen remorse of soul for our past ini- (pities, but without all hope. Behold a man under a sharp fit of thegout -or stone, which wrings the groans from his, heart, and tears from his eye -lids ; this is the hand of God in the present world, where there are many mixtures of divine goodness ; but if ever we should be so wilfully unhappy as to be plunged into those regions where the almighty - vengeance of God reigns, with- out one beam of divine light or love, this must be dreadful in- deed. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ; Heb. x. 31. to be banished far off from all that is holy and happy, and to be confined to that dark dungeon, that place of torture, were the gnawing worm of conscience never dies, and where the fire of divine anger is never quenched ; Mark ix. 43. We who who are made up of flesh and blood, and inter- woven with many nerves and muscles, and . membranes, may learn a little of the terrors of the Lord, if we reflect that every nerve, muscle, and membrane of the body is capable of giving us most sharp and painful sensations. We may be wounded in every sensible part of nature ; smart and anguish may enter in at every pore, and make almost every atom of our constitution - an instrument of our anguish. Fearfully and wonderfully we are formed ; Ps. cxxxix. 14. indeed, capable of pain all over us ; and if a God should see fit to punish sin to its full desert, and penetrate every atom ofotmr nature with pain, what surprising and intolerable misery must that be And if God should raise the wicked out of their graves to dwell in such sort of bodies again, un purpose to hew his just anger against sin in their pun- N- 2
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