they shall be let into the fuller knowledge of them in heaven in a far superior way of instruction, 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, under the scourge and the wholsome discipline of pain in the flesh.

I. The lessons of instruction here on earth, or the useful truths,' are such as these:

1. Pain teaches us 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 creatures, and especially in the season of youth, our gayer powers are gadding abroad at the call of temptation; but when God sends his arrows into our flesh, he arrests us on a sudden, 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 selfsufficiency; we are so vain and foolish, as to imagine nothing can hurt us: But when 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 medicines, 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 characters, by intense pain, before we have learnt it well; and this gives us, for some time to come, a happy guard against our pride and vanity. Psal. xxxix. 10. When David felt the stroke of the hand of God upon him, which corrected him with sharp rebukes for his iniquity, he makes an humble 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 vanity!" Psal. xxxix. 10, 11.

2. The next useful truth in which pain instructs us, is the great evil that is contained in the nature of sin, 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 powerfully impressed upon our spirits, 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 sinful 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 as makes us so far unhappy, and such as we cannot immediately relieve.

It may be granted, that natural hunger, and thirst, and weariness after labour, would have carried in them some 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 supply his natural wants; and man might have immediately relieved them himself, for the supplies of ease were at hand; and these sort of unea sinesses 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 the 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 innocent, I am satisfied he should never have felt any pain which was not overbalanced with superior pleasure, or abundantly recompensed by succeeding rewards and satisfactions.

Some persons indeed, have supposed it within the reach of the sovereignty of God to afflict and torment a sinless creature: Yet I think it is hardly consistent with his goodness, or his equity, to constrain an innocent being, which has no sin, to suffer pain without his own consent, and without giving that creature equal or superior pleasure as a recompence. Both those were the case in the sufferings of our blessed Lord in his human nature, who was perfectly innocent: It was with his own consent that he gave himself up to be a sacrifice, when "it pleased the Father to bruise him and put him to grief:" And God rewarded him with transcendent honours and joys after his passion, he exalted him to his own right hand and his throne, and gave him authority over all things.

In general therefore we have sufficient reason to say, that as sin brought in death into human nature, so it was sin that brought in pain also; and wheresoever there is any pain suffered among the sons and daughters of men, I am sure we may venture to assert boldly, that the sufferer may learn the evil of sin. Even the Son of God himself, when he suffered pain in his body, as well as anguish in his spirit, has told us by his Apostles, that our sins were the causes of it; he bore our sins on his own body on the tree,

and for our iniquities he was bruised,' so says Isaiah the prophet, and so speaks Peter the Apostle.

And sometimes the Providence of God is pleased to point out to us the particular sin we are guilty of by the special punishment which he inflicts. In Psal. cvii. 17, 18. "Fools are said to be afflicted," i. e. with pain and sickness, "because of their transgressions" of riot and intemperance; " their soul abhors all manner of meat, and they draw near to the gates of death." Sickness and pain over-balance all the plea. sures of luxury in meats and drinks, and make the epicure pay dear for the elegance of his palate, and the sweet relish of his morsels or his cups. The drunkard in his debauches, is preparing some smarting pain for his own punishment. And let us all be so wise as to learn this lesson by the pains we feel, that sin which introduced them into the world is an abominable thing in the sight of God, because it provokes him to use such smarting strokes of discipline in order to recover us from our folly, and to reduce us back again to the paths of righteousness.

O blessed smart! O happy pain, that helps to soften the heart of a sinner, and melts it to receive divine instruction, which before was hard as iron, and attended to no divine counsel! we are ready to wan der from God, and forget him amongst the months and the 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 inculcated