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without success, and repeated almost in vain. Happy is the soul that learns this lesson thoroughly, and gains à more lasting acquaintance with the evil of sin, and abhorrence of it, under the smarting strokė 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," Psal. xciv. 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 write ten in the song of Moses, the man of God, Psal. xc. 11. "According to thy fear, so is thy wrath," i. e. 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 description of hellish torments, and the other part lies in the bitter twinges of conscience and keen remorse of soul for our past iniquities, but without all hope. Behold a man under a sharp fit of the gout 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, without one beam of divine light or love, this must be dreadful indeed. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," Heb. x. 31: to be banish

ed far off from all that is holy and happy, and to be confined to that dark dungeon, that place of torture, "where the gnawing worm of conscience never dies," and "where the fire of divine anger is never quenched."

We who are made up of flesh and blood, which is interwoven 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 are we formed" indeed, capable of pain all over us; and if a God shall see fit to punish sin to its full desert, and penetrate every atom of our 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, on purpose to shew his just anger against sin in their punishment, how 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 no relief from creatures: And if by the destruction of ourselves, i. e. 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," 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 maladies at his command? He fills the air in which we breathe with fevers and pestilences as often as he wills: The gout and the stone arrest and seize us by his order, and stretch us upon a bed of pain: Rheumatisms and cholicks 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 he 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?

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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, to make atonement for our crimes. cause the children" whom he came to save from misery "were partakers 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.

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Happy was he in his Father's bosom, and the delight of his soul through many long 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 holy soul was uncapable of such sort of sufferings till he put on this clothing of human nature, and became a Surety for sinful perishing creatures.

Let us survey his sufferings a little. He was born to sorrow, and trained up through the common uneasy circumstances of the infant and childish state, till he grew up to man: What pains did attend him in hunger and thirst, and weariness, while he travelled on foot from city to city, through wilds and deserts, where there was no food nor rest? The Son of man sometimes wanted the common bread of nature, nor had he where to lay his head. What uneasy sensations was he exposed to, when he was buffeted, when he was smitten on the cheek, when his

tender flesh was scourged with whips, and his temples were crowned with thorns, when his hands and his feet were barbarously torn with rude nails, and fastened to the cross, where the whole weight of his body hung on those wounds? And what man or angel can tell the inward anguish, when "his soul was exceeding sorrowful unto death," and the conflicts and agonies of his spirit forced out the drops of bloody sweat through every pore. It was by the extreme torture of his nature that he was supposed to expire on the cross; these were the pangs of his atonement and agonies that expiated the sins of

men.

O blessed Jesus! What manner of sufferings were these? And what manner of love was it that willingly gave up thy sacred nature to sustain them? And what was the design of them, but to deliver us from the wrath of God in hell, to save our flesh and spirit from eternal anguish and distress there? Why was he "made such a curse for us," but "that Ire might redeem us from the curse of the law," and the just punishment of our own iniquities.

Let us carry our thoughts of his love, and our be nefit by it, yet one step further: Was it not by these sorrows, and this painful passion, that he provided for us this very heaven of happiness, where we shall be for ever freed from all pain? Were they not all endured by him to procure a paradise of pleasure, a mansion of everlasting peace and joy for guilty creatures, who had merited everlasting pain? Was it not by these his agonies in the mortal body, which he

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