196 TUE. WORLD TO COME. ishment, bow dreadful, beyond expression, must their anguish be through the long ages of eternity ? God can form even such bodies for immortality, and can sustain them to endure everlasting agonies. Let us think again, that when the hand of our Creator sends pain into our flesh we cannot avoid it,' we cannot fly from it, we carry it -with us wheresoever we go : His arrows stick fast in us, and we cannot shake them off ; oftentimes it appears that we can find floe relief from creatures : And if by the destruction of our- selves, that is, of these bodies, we plunge ourselves into the world of spirits at once, we shall find the same God of holiness and vengeance there, 'who can pierce our souls with unknown sorrows, equal, if not superior, to all that we felt in the flesh, If I make my, bed in the grave, Lord thou art there ; Ps. cxxxix. 6. thy hand of justice and punishment would find me out. What a formidable thing it is to such creatures as we are, to have God, our maker for our enemy ? That God, who has all the tribes of pain and disease, and the innumerable host of ma- ladies at his command ! He fills the air in which we breathe with fevers and pestilences as often as he will : The gout and the stone arrest and seize us by his order, and stretch us upon a bed of pain : Rheumatisms and cholics come and go wheresoever he sends them, and execute his anger against criminals. He keeps in his hand all the various springs of pain, and every invisible rack that can torment the head or members, the bowels or the joints of man;- He sets them at their dreadful work when and where he pleases. Let the sinner tremble at the name of his power and terror, who can fill both flesh and spirit with thrilling agonies ; and yet lie never - punishes beyond what our iniquities deserve. How necessary is it for such sinful and guilty beings as we are, whose natures are capable of such constant and acute sensations of pain, to have the God of nature our friend and our reconciled God ? 4. When we feel the acute pains of nature, we may learn something,of the exceeding greatness of the love of Christ, even the Son of God, that glorious Spirit, who took upon him flesh and blood for our sakes, that he might be capable of pain and death, though he had never sinned. He endured intense anguish, so make atonement for our crimes. Because the children whom he came to save from misery were par - takers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same, that he might suffer in the flesh, and by his sufferings put away our sins ; Heb. ii. 14. Happy was he in his )Fa- ther's bosom, and the delight of his soul through many ling ages before his incarnation : But:he condescended to be born in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he might feel such smart and sorrows as our sins- had exposed us to His innocent and
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