No Pain Among the Blessed

Rev. xxi. 4. Neither shall there be any more pain.

There have been some divines in ancient times as well as in our present age, who suppose this prophecy relates to some glorious and happy event here on earth, wherein the saints and faithful followers of Christ shall be delivered from the bondage and miseries to which they have been exposed in all former ages, and shall enjoy the blessing which these words promise. Among these writers some have placed this happy state before the resurrection of the body; others make it to belong to that ’ first resurrection’ which is spoken of in Rev. xx. 6. But let this prophecy have a particular aspect upon what earthly period soever, yet all must grant it is certainly true concerning the ‘heavenly state;’ from whose felicities, taken in the literal sense, these figurative expressions are derived to foretel the happiness of any period of the church in this world; and in this sense, as ‘part of our happiness in heaven,’ I shall understand the words here, and propose them as the foundation for my present discourse.

Among the many things that make this life uncomfortable, and render mankind unhappy here below, this is one that has a large influence, viz. that ‘in this mortal state we are all liable to pain,’ from which we shall be perfectly delivered in the life to come. The Greek word which is here translated pain, signifies also toil andjutigue and excessive labour of the body, as well as anguish and vexation of the spirit. But since in the two other places of the New Testament where it is used, the word most properly signifies the ‘pain of the body,’ I presume to understand it chiefly in this sense also in my text.

I need not spend time in explaining ‘what pain is’ to persons who dwell in flesh and blood. There is not one of you in this assembly but is better acquainted with the nature of it by the sense of feeling, than it is possible for the wisest philosopher to inform you by all his learned language. Yet that I may proceed regularly, I would just give you this short description of it. ‘Pain is an uneasy perception of the soul, occasioned by some indisposition of the body to which it is united;’ whether this arise from some disorder or malady in the flesh itself, or from some injury received from without by wounds, bruises, or any thing of the like kind. Now this sort of uneasy sensations is not to be found or feared in heaven.

In order to make our present meditations on this part of the ‘blessedness of heaven’ useful and joyful to us while we are here on earth, let us enquire,

I. What are the evils or grand inconveniences that generally flow from the pains we suffer here; and as we go we shall survey the satisfactions which arise by our freedom from them all in heaven.

II. What just and convincing proofs may be given that there are no such uneasy sensations to be felt in heaven, or to be feared after this life.

III. What are the chief reasons or designs of the blessed God in sending pain on his creatures in this world; and at the same time I shall shew that pain is banished from the heavenly state, because God has no such designs remaining to be accomplished in that world.

IV. What lessons we may learn from the painful discipline which we feel while we are here, in order to shew there is no need of such discipline to teach us those lessons in heaven. Let us address ourselves to make these four enquiries in their order.

§ I. First. ‘What are the evils which flow from pain, and usually attend it in this life;’ and all along as we go we shall take a short view of the heavenly state, wrhere we shall be released from all these evils and inconveniencies.

1. ‘Pain has a natural tendency to make the mind sorrowful as well as the body uneasy.’ Our souls are so nearly united to flesh and blood, that it is not possible for the mind to possess perfect happiness and ease, while the body is exposed to so many occasions of pain. It is granted, that natural courage and strength of heart may prevail in some persons to bear up their spirits under long and intense pains of the flesh, yet they really take away so much of the ease and pleasure of life, while any of us lie under the acute sensations of them. Pain will make us confess that we are flesh and blood, and force us sometimes to cry out and groan. Even a stoick in spite of all the pride of his philosophy, will sometimes be forced, by a sigh or a groan to confess himself a man. What are the greatest part of the groans and outcries that are heard all round this our globe of earth but the effects of pain, either felt or feared?

But in heaven, where there is no pain, there shall be no sighing or groaning, nor any more crying, as my text expresses. There shall be nothing to make the flesh or the spirit uneasy, and to break the eternal thread of peace and pleasure that runs through the whole duration of the saints: not one painful moment to interrupt the everlasting felicity of that state. When we have done with earth and mortality, we have done also with sickness and anguish of nature, and with all sorrow and vexation for ever. There are no groans in the heavenly world to break in upon the harmony of the harps and the songs of the blessed; no sighs, no outcries, no anguish there to disturb the music and the joy of the inhabitants. And though the soul shall be united to the body, new-raised from the dead, to dwell for ever in union, yet that new-raised body shall have neither any springs of pain in it, nor be capable of giving anguish or uneasiness to the indwelling spirit for ever.

2. Another evil which attends on pain is this, that ‘it so indisposes our nature as often to unfit us for the businesses and duties of the present state. ‘With how much coldness and indifferency do we go about our daily work, and perform it too with many interruptions, when nature is burdened with continual pain, and the vital springs of action are overborne with perpetual uneasiness? What a listlessness do we find to many of the duties of religion at such a season, unless it be to run more frequently to the throne of God, and pour out our groanings and our complaints there? Groanings and cries are the language of nature, and the children of God address themselves in this language to their heavenly Father. Blessed be the name of our gracious God, who hears every secret sigh, who is acquainted with the sense of every groan, while we mourn before him, and make our complaints to him, that we cannot worship him, nor work for him as we would do, because of the anguish and maladies of nature.

And what an indisposition and backwardness do we feel in ourselves to fulfil many of the duties towards our fellow creatures while we ourselves are under present smart and anguish? Pain will so sensibly affect self as to draw off all our thoughts thither, and centre them there, that we cannot so much employ our cares and our active powers for the benefit of our neighbours. It abates our concern for our friends, and while it awakens the spirit within us into keen sensations, it takes away the activity of the man that feels it from almost all the services of human life. When human nature bears so much it can act but little.

But what a blessed state will that be when we shall never feel this indisposition to duties, either human or divine, through any uneasiness of the body? When we shall never more be subject to any of these painful impediments, but for ever cast off” all those clogs and burdens which fetter the active powers of the soul? Then we shall be joyfully employed in such unknown and glorious services to God our Father, and to the blessed Jesus, as require much superior capacities to what we here possess, and shall find no weakness, no weariness, no pain throughout all the years of our immortality, Rev. vii. 15. None of the blessed above are at rest or idle, either “day or night, but they serve him in his temple,” and never cease, and iv. 8. No faintness, no languors are known there. The “inhabitants of that land shall not say, I am sick.” Everlasting vigour, cheerfulness and ease shall render every blessed soul for ever zealous and active in obedience, as the angels are in heaven.

3. ‘Pain unfits us for the enjoyments of life, as well as for the labours and duties of it.’ It takes away all the pleasing satisfactions which might attend our circumstances, and renders the objects of them insipid and unrelishing. What pleasure can a rich man take in all the affluence of earthly blessings around him, while some painful distemper holds him upon the rack, and distresses him with the torture? How little delight can he find in meats or in drinks which are prepared for luxury when sharp pain calls all his attention to the diseased part? What joy can he find jn magnificent buildings, in gay and shining furniture, in elegant gardens, or in all the glittering treasures of the Indies, when the gout torments his hands and his feet, or the rheumatism afflicts his limbs with intense anguish? If pain attacks any part of the body and rises to a high degree, the luxuries of life grow tasteless, and life itself is embittered to us. Or when pains less acute are prolonged through weeks and months, and perhaps stick in our flesh all the night as well as in the day; how vain and feeble are all the efforts of the bright and gay things around us to raise the soul into cheerfulness? Therefore Solomon calls old age the “years wherein there is no pleasure,” Eccles. xii. 1. Because so many aches and ails in that season pursue us in a continual succession; so many infirmities and painful hours attend us usually in that stage of life, even in the best situation that mortality can boast of, as cuts off” and destroys all our pleasures.

But 0 what a wondrous, what a joyful change shall that be, when the soul is commanded to forsake this flesh and blood, when it rises as on the wings of angels to the heavenly world, and leaves every pain behind it, together with the body in the arms of death? And what a more illustrious and delightful change shall we meet in the great rising day, when our bodies shall start up out of the dust with vigorous immortality, and without any spring or seat of pain? All the unknown enjoyments with which heaven is furnished, shall be taken in by the enlarged powers of the soul with intense pleasure, and not a moment’s pain shall ever interrupt them.

4. Another inconvenience and evil which belongs to pain is, that ‘it makes time and life itself appear tedious and tiresome, and adds a new burden to all other grievances.’ Many evidences of this truth are scattered throughout all nature, and on all sides of this globe. There is not one age of mankind but can furnish us with millions of instances. In what melancholy language does Job discover his sensations of the tiresome nature of pain? “I am made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down I say, when shall I rise and the night be gone? And I am full of tossing to and fro unto the dawning of the day,” Job vii. 3, 4. When pain takes hold of our flesh, it seems to stretch the measures of time to a tedious length. We cry out as Mose3 expresses it, Deut. xxviii. 67, “In the morning we say, would to God it were evening; and at the return of the evening we say again, would to God it were morning.”

Long are those hours indeed, whether of day-light or darkness, wherein there is no relief or intermission of acute pain. How tiresome a thing is it to count the clock at midnight in long successions, and to wait every hour for the distant approach of morning, while our eyes are unable to close themselves in slumber, and our anguish admits not the common refuge of sleep. There are multitudes among the race of mortals who have known these truths by sore experience. Blessed be God that we do not always feel them.

But when we turn our thoughts to the heavenly world, where there is no pain, there we shall find no weary hours, no tedious days, though eternity with all its unmeasurable lengths of duration lies before us. What a dismal thought is eternal pain? The very mention of it makes nature shudder and stand aghast; but futurity with all its endless years, in a land of peace and pleasure gives the soul the most delightful prospect, for there is no shadow of uneasiness in that state to render our abode there tiresome, or to think the ages of it long.

5. Another evil that belongs to pain is, that ‘it has an unhappy tendency to ruffle the passions, and to render us fretful and peevish within ourselves, as well as towards those who are round about us.’ Even the kindest and tenderest hand that ministers to our relief, can hardly secure itself from the peevish quarrels of a man in extreme pain.

Not that we are to suppose that this peevish humour, this fretfulness of spirit are thereby made innocent and perfectly excused. No, by no means; but it must be acknowledged still, that continuance in pain is too ready to work up the spirit into frequent disquietude and eagerness. We are tempted to fret at every thing, we quarrel with every thing, we grow impatient under every delay, angry with our best friends, sharp and sudden in our resentments, with wrathful speeches breaking out of our lips.

This peevish humour in a day of pain is so common a fault, that I fear it is too much excused and indulged. Let me rather say with myself, ‘My God is now putting me to the trial what sort of Christian I am, and how much I have learnt of self-government, and through his grace I will subdue my uneasy passions, though I cannot relieve my pain.’ 0 it is a noble point of honour gained in a sick chamber, or on a bed of anguish, to lie pressed with extreme pain, and yet maintain a serenity and calmness of soul; to be all meekness and gentleness and patience among our friends or attendants, under the sharp twinges of it; to utter no rude or angry language, and to take every thing kindly that they say or do, and “become like a weaned child,” But such a character is not found in every house.

A holy soul, through the severity of pain, may sometimes in such an hour be too much ruffled by violent and sudden fits of impatience. This proceeded to such a degree even in that good man Job, under his various calamities and the sore boils upon his flesh, that it made him i{ curse the day wherein he was born,” and cry out in the anguish of his spirit, “my soul chooseth strangling and death rather than life,” Job iii. and vii. 15; and there have been several instances of those who, having not the fear of God before their eyes, with hasty violence and murderous hands have put an end to their own lives, through their wild and sinful impatience of constant pain.

But these trials are for ever finished when this life expires: then all our pains are ended for ever if we are found among the children of God. There is not, nor can be any temptation in heaven, to fretfulness or disquietude of mind. All the peevish passions are dropped into the grave, together with the body of flesh; and those evil humours which were the sources of smart and anguish here on earth have no place in the new-raised body. Those irregular juices of animal nature which tormented the nerves, and excited pain in the flesh, and which at the same time provoked eholer and irritated the spirit, are never found in the heavenly mansions. There is nothing but peace and pleasure, joy and love, goodness and benevolence, ease and satisfaction diffused through all the regions on high. There are no inward springs of uneasiness to ruffle the mind, none of those fretful ferments which were wont to kindle in the mortal body, and explode themselves, with fire and thunder upon every supposed offence, or even sometimes without provocation. 0 happy state

O and blessed mansions of the saints, when this body of sin shall be destroyed, and all the restless atoms that disquieted the flesh and provoked the spirit to impatience, shall be buried in the dust of death, and never, never rise again!

6. ‘Pain carries a temptation with it, sometimes to repine and murmur at the providence of God.’ Not fellow-creatures alone, but even our sovereign Creator comes within the reach of the peevish humours, which are alarmed and roused by sharp or continual pain. Jonah the prophet, when he felt the sultry heat of the sun smite fiercely upon him, and that the gourd which gave him a friendly shadow was withered away, told God himself in a passion, that “he did well to be angry, even unto death,” Jonah iv. 9. And even the man of Uz, the pattern of patience, was sometimes transported with the smart and maladies that were upon him, so that he complained against God as well as complained to him, and used some very unbecoming expressions towards his Maker. When we are under the smarting rebukes of Providence, we are ready to compare ourselves with others who are in peace, and then the envious and the murmuring humour breaks out into rebellious language, “Why am I thus afflicted more than others? Why hast thou set me as a mark for thine arrows? Why dost thou not let loose thy hand and cume off from the earth?”

But in heaven there is a glorious reverse of all such unhappy scenes. There is no pain nor any temptation to murmur at the dealings of the Almighty. There is nothing that can incline us to think hardly of God: the days of chastisement are for ever ended, and painful discipline shall be used no more. We shall live for ever in the embraces of the love of God, and he shall be the object of our everlasting praise. Perfect felicity without the interruption of one uneasy thought, for ever forbids the inhabitants of that world to repine at their situation under the eternal smiles of that blessed Being that made them.

7. To add no more, ‘pain and anguish of the flesh have sometimes prevailed so far as to distract the mind as well as destroy the body.’ It has overpowered all the reasoning faculties of man, it has destroyed natural life, and brought it down to the grave. The senses have been confounded, and the understanding overwhelmed with severe and racking pain, especially where there hath been an impatient temper to contest with them. Extreme smart of the flesh distresses - feeble nature, and turns the whole frame of it upside down in wild confusion: it has actually worn out this animal frame, and stopped all the springs of vital motion. The gout and the stone have brought death upon the patient in this manner; and a dreadful manner of dying it is, to have breath and life and nature quite oppressed and destroyed with intense and painful sensations.

But when we survey the mansions of the heavenly world, we shall find none of these evils there. No danger of any such events as these; for there is no pain, no sorrow, no crying, no death nor destruction there. The mind shall be for ever clear and serene in the ease and happiness of the separate state: and when the body shall be raised again, that glorified body, as was intimated a little before, shall have none of the seeds of distemper in it, no ferments that can rack the nerves, or create anguish; no fever, or gout, or stone, was ever known in that country, no headache or heart-ache have ascended thither.

That body also shall be capable of no outward wounds nor bruises, for it is raised only for happiness, and leaves all the causes of pain behind it. It is a body made for immortality and pleasure; there the sickly Christian is delivered from all the maladies of the flesh, and the twinges of acute pain which made him groan here on earth night and day. There the martyrs of the religion of Jesus, and all the holy confessors are free from their cruel tormentors, those surly executioners of heathen fury, or anti-christian wrath: They are for ever released from racks, and wheels, and fires, and every engine of torture and smart. Immortal ease and unfading health and cheerfulness run through their eternal state, and all the powers of the man are composed for the most regular exercises of devotion and divine joy.

Thus I have endeavoured briefly to set the different states of heaven and earth before you under this distinguishing character, that ‘all the tempting, the distressing and mischievous attendants and consequences of pain’ to which we are exposed in our mortal life, are for ever banished from the heavenly world.

§ II. The ‘second general enquiry’ was this, ‘What just and convincing arguments or proofs can be given, that there are no pains or uneasy sensations to be felt by the saints in a future state, nor to be feared after this life?’

My answers to this question shall be very few; because I think the thing must be sufficiently evident to those who believe the New Testament, and have liberty to read it.

First argument. ‘God has assured us so in his word, that there is no pain for holy souls to endure in the world to come:’ My text may be esteemed a sufficient proof of it; for whatsoever particular event or period of the church on earth this prophecy may refer to, yet the description is borrowed from the blessedness of heaven; and if there shall be any such state on earth, much more will it be so in the heavenly world, whereof that period on earth is but a shadow and emblem. We are expressly told, Rev. xiv. S, in order to encourage the persecuted saints and martyrs, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth, for they rest from their labours, (or pains) and their works follow them;” i. e. in a way of gracious recompence.

It is granted indeed by the Papists themselves, that in heaven there is no pain; yet they suppose there are many and grievous pains for the soul to undergo in a place called purgatory ‘, after the death of the body, before it arrives at heaven.

But give me leave to ask, does not St. Paul express himself with confidence concerning himself and his fellow Christians — “that they shall be present with the Lord when they are absent from the body?” 2 Cor. v. 8. Surely the state wherein Christ our Lord dwells after all his sufferings and agonies, is a state of everlasting ease without suffering; and shall not his followers dwell with him? Do we not read in the parable of our Saviour, Luke xvi. 22, that Lazarus was no sooner dead, than “his soul was carried by angels into the bosom of Abraham,” or paradise? Every holy soul wherein the work of grace is begun, and sin hath received its mortal wound, is perfectly sanctified when it is released from this body; and it puts off the body of sin and the body of flesh together, for “nothing that defileth must enter into” paradise or the heavenly state.

The word of God has appointed but two states, viz. heaven and hell, for the reception of all mankind when they depart from this world: and how vain a thing must it he for men to invent a third state, and make a purgatory of it? This is a building erected by the church of Rome between heaven and hell, and prepared by their wild imagination for souls of imperfect virtue, to be tormented there with pains equal to those of hell, but of shorter duration. This state of fiery purgation, and extreme anguish, is devised by that mother of lies, partly under a pretence of completing the penances and satisfactions for the sins of men committed in this life, and partly also to purify and refine their souls from all the remaining dregs of sin, and to fill up their virtues to perfection, that they may be fit for the immediate presence of God. But does not the Scripture sufficiently inform us, that the atonement or satisfaction of Christ for sin is full and complete in itself, and needs none of our additions in this world or another? Does not the Apostle John tell us, 1st epist. chap, i. ver. 7, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin?” Nor shall the saints after this life sin any more, to require any new atonement; nor do they carry the seeds of sin to heaven with them, but drop them together with the flesh, and all the sources of pain together. Now since neither Christ nor his apostles give us any intimation of such a place as purgatory for the refinement or purification of souls after this life, we have no ground to hearken to such a fable.

The second argument is this; ‘God has not provided any medium to convey pain to holy souls after they have dropped this body of flesh.’ They are pardoned, they are sanctified, they are accepted of God for ever; and since they are in no danger of sinning lfresh by the influences of corrupt flesh and blood, therefore they are in no fear of suffering any thing thereby. And if, as some divines have supposed, there should be any pure etherial bodies or vehicles provided for holy separate spirits, when departed from this grosser tabernacle of flesh and blood, yet it cannot be supposed that the God of all grace would mix up any seeds of pain with that etherial matter, which is to be the occasional habitation of sanctified spirits in that state, nor that he would make any avenues or doors of entrance for pain into these refined vehicles, when the state of their sinning and their trial is for ever finished.

Nor will the body at the final resurrection of the saints 24 q2 be made for a medium of any painful sensations. All the pains of nature are ended, when the first union between flesh and spirit is dissolved. When this body lies down to sleep in the dust, it shall never awake again with any of the principles of sin or pain in it. Though “it be sown in weakness, it is raised in power; though it be sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory;” and we shall be made like the Son of God without sorrow and withoutsin forever.

3d. Argument. ‘There are no moral causes or reasons why there should be any thing of pain provided for the heavenly state. ‘And if there be no moral reasons for it, surely God will not provide pains for his creatures without reason! But this thought leads me to the next general head of my discourse.

§ III. The third general enquiry which I proposed to make was this, ‘What may be the chief moral reasons, motives, or designs of the blessed God in sending pain on his creatures here below; and at the same time I shall shew that these designs and purposes of God are finished, and they have no place in heaven.’

1st. Then, ‘pain is sometimes sent into our natures to awaken slothful and drowsy Christians out of their spiritual slumbers, or to rouse stupid sinners from a state of spiritual death.’ Intense and sharp pain of the flesh has oftentimes been the appointed and effectual means of providence to attain these desirable ends.

Pain is like a rod in the hand of God, wherewith he smites sinners that are dead in their trespasses, and his Spirit joins with it to awaken them into spiritual life. This rod is sometimes so smarting and severe, that it will make a senseless and ungodly wretch look upwards to the hand that smites it, and take notice of the rebuke of heaven, though all the thundering and lightning of the word, and all the terrors of hell denounced there, could not awaken him.

Acute pain is also a common instrument in our heavenly Father’s hand, to recover backsliding saints from their secure and drowsy frames of spirit. David often found it so, and speaks it plainly in the 38th and 39th Psalms; and in Psalm cxix. 67, he confesses, “before I was afflicted I went astray;” but when he had felt the scourge, he learnt to obey, and to ’ keep the word of his God.’

But there is ‘no need of this discipline in heaven:’ no need of this smarting scourge to make dead sinners feel their Maker’s hand, in order to rouse them into life, for there are no such inhabitants in that world. Nor is there any need of such divine and paternal discipline of God in tnose holy mansions, where there is no drowsy Christian to be awakened, no wandering spirit that wants to be reduced to duty. And where the designs of such smarting strokes have no place, pain itself must be for ever banished; for ‘God does not willingly afflict, nor take delight in grieving the children of men,’ without substantial reasons for it.

2. Another use of bodily pain and anguish in this world is, l. to punish men for their faults and follies, to make them know what anjevil and bitter thing it is to sin against God, and thereby to guard them against new temptations.’ Jer. ii. 19, “Thy own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backsliding shall reprove thee;” i. e. by means of the smarting chastisements they bring upon men. When God makes the sinner taste of the fruit of his own ways, he makes others also observe how hateful a thing every sin is in the sight of God, which he thinks fit so terribly to punish.

This is one general reason why special diseases, maladies, and plagues are spread over a whole nation, viz. to punish the sins of the inhabitants, when they have provoked God by public and spreading iniquities. War and famine with all their terrible train of anguish and agony, and the dying pains which they diffuse over a kingdom, are rods of punishment in the hand of God, the Governor of the world, to declare from heaven and earth his indignation against an ungodly and an unrighteous age.

This indeed is one design of the pains and torments of hell, where God inflicts pain without intermission; and this is sometimes the purpose of God in his painful providences here on earth. Shall I rise yet higher and say, that this was one great design in the eye of God, “when it pleased the Father to bruise” his best beloved Son, and put him under the impressions of extreme pain, viz. to discover to the world the abominable evil that was in sin? While Jesus stood in the stead of sinners, then “his soul was exceeding sorrowful even to death, and he sweat drops of blood” under the pressure of his agonies, to let the world see what the sin of man had deserved. And sometimes

God smites his own children in this world with smarting strokes of correction, when they have indulged any- iniquity, to shew the world that God hates sin in his own people wheresoever he finds it, and to bring his children back again to the paths of righteousness.

But ‘in the heavenly state, there are no faults to punish, no follies to chastise.’ Jesus, our Surety in the days of his flesh, has suffered those sorrows which made atonement for sin, and that anguish of his holy soul, and the blood of his cross, have satisfied the demands of God; so that with honour he can pardon ten thousand penitent criminals, and provide an inheritance of ease and blessedness for them for ever. When once we are dismissed from this body, the spirit is thoroughly sanctified, and there is no fire of purgatory needful to burn out the remains of sin. Those foolish invented flames are but false fire, kindled by the priests of Rome to fright the souls of the dying, and to squeeze money out of them to purchase so many vain and idle masses to relieve the souls of the dead. Upon our actual release from this flesh and blood, neither the guilt nor the power of sin shall attend the saints in their flight to heaven: all the spirits thatarrivc there are made perfect in holiness without new scourges, and commence a state of felicity that shall never be interrupted.

3. God has appointed pain in this world, ‘to exercise and try the virtues and the graces of his people.’ As gold is thrown into the fire to prove and try how pure it is from any coarse alloy, so the children of God are sometimes left for a season in the furnace of sufferings, partly to refine them from their dross, and partly to discover their purity and their substantial weight and worth.

Sometimes ‘God lays smarting pain wTith his own hand’ on the flesh of his people, on purpose to try their graces.. When we endure the pain without murmuring at Providence, then it is we come off conquerors. Christian submission and silence under the hand of God, is one way to victory. “I was dumb,” says David, “and opened not my mouth, because thou didst it,” Psal. xxxix. Our love to God, our resignation to his will, our holy fortitude and our patience find a proper trial in such smarting seasons. Perhaps when some severe pain first seizes and surprises us, we find ourselves ‘like a wild bull in a net,’ and all the powers of nature are thrown into tumult and disquietude, so that we have no possession of our own spirits; but when the hand of God has continued us awhile under this divine discipline, we learn to bow down to his sovereignty, we lie at his footstool calm and composed: he brings our haughty” and reluctant spirits down to his foot, and makes us lie humble in the dust, and we wait with, patience the hour of his release. Rom. v. 3, 4, ‘Tribulation worketh patience, and patience’ under tribulation ‘gives us experience’ of the dealings of God with his people, and makes our way to a confirmed hope in his love. The evidence of our various graces grows brighter and stronger under a smarting rod, till we are settled in a joyful confidence, and the soul rests in God himself.

Sometimes he has ‘permitted evil angels to put the flesh to pain,’ for the trial of his children; so “Job was smitten with sore boils from head to foot” by the malice of Satan, at the permission of God; but “he knows the way that I take,” says this holy man, “and when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold; for my foot hath held his steps” through all these trials, “neither have I gone back from the commandments of his lips,” Job. xxii. 10, 12.

At other times ‘he suffers wicked men to spend their own malice, and to inflict dreadful pains on his own children.’ Look back to the years of ancient persecution in the land of Israel, under Jewish or heathen tyrants; review the annals of Great Britain; look over the seas into popish kingdoms; take a view of the cursed courts of inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and Italy; behold the weapons, the scourges, the racks, the machines of torture and engines of cruelty, devised by the barbarous and inhuman wit of men, to constrain the saints to renounce their faith, and dishonor their Saviour. See the slow fires where the martyrs have been roasted to death with lingering torment. These are seasons of terrible trial indeed, whereby the malice of Satan and Antichrist would force the servants of God, and the followers of the Lamb, into sinful compliances with their idolatry, or a desertion of their post of duty. But the spirit of God has supported his children to bear a glorious testimony to pure and undefiled religion; and they have seemed to mock the rage of their tormentors, to defy all the stings of pain, and triumphed over their vain attempts to compel them to sin against their God.

One would sometimes be ready to wonder, that a God of infinite mercy and compassion should suffer his own dear children to be tried in so terrible a manner as this; but unsearchable wisdom is with him, and he does not give an account to men of all the reasons and the rules ol his conduct. This has been his method of providence with his saints at especial seasons, under the Jewish and the Christian dispensations, and perhaps under all the dispensations of God to men, from the days of Cain and Abel to the present hour. Our blessed Lord has given us many warnings of it in his word by his own mouth, and by all his three Apostles, Paul, Peter and John. “They that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Think it not strange therefore concerning the fiery trial. The devil, by his wicked agents, shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days, but fear none of the things which thou shaft suffer. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”

But blessed be God that this world is the only stage of such trials. As soon as the state of probation is finished, the state of recompence begins. Such hard and painful exercises to try the virtues of the saints, have no place in that world, which was not made for a stage of trial and conflict, but a palace of glorious reward. ‘Heaven is a place where crowns and prizes are distributed’ to all those blessed ones ‘who have endured temptation,’ and who have been found faithful to the death. These sharp and dreadful combats with pain, have no place among conquerors, who have finished their warfare, and have begun their triumph.

4. ‘Pain is sent us by the hand of Providence to teach us many a lesson both of truth and duty, which perhaps we should never have learnt so well without it.’ This sharp sensation awakens our best powers to attend to those truths and duties which we took less notice of before. In the time of perfect ease we are ready to let them lie neglected or forgotten, till God our great Master takes his rod in hand for our instruction.

§ IV. And this leads me to the ‘fourth general head’ of my discourse, and that is to ‘enquire what are those spiritual lessons which may be learnt on earth from the pains we have suffered, or may suffer in the flesh.’ I shall divide them into two sorts, viz. ‘Lessons of instruction’ in useful truth, and ‘lessons of duty,’ or practical Christianity; and there are many of each kind with which the disciples of ‘Christ in this world’ may be better acquainted, by the actual sensations of pain, than any other way: ‘in this world’ I say, and ‘in this only;’ for in heaven most of these ‘lessons of doctrine and practice’ are utterly needless to be taught, either because they have been so perfectly well known to all its inhabitants before, and their present situation makes it impossible to forget them; or 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 wholesome 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 self-sufficiency; 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. 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 uneasinesses 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,

25 R “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 pleasures 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.

0 blessed smart! 0 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 wander from God, and forget him among 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 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, 0 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 written 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 banished 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 j 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 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 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?

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 erimes. * “Because 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.

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. t

* This language is loose and inaccurate. It seems to intimate that the Divine Nahire of the Mediator suffered; which was impossible. The Son assumed not merely “flesh and blood,” he assumed a perfect human nature; a body and a soul, which were susceptible of pain. — Ed.

j- His “innocent and holy soul” did not exist before “he put on this clothing of human nature,” as it was a constituent part of that nature. It could be “capable” of nothing before it received a being. The language, if not intended to convey a very erroneous idea, is very unguarded. — Ed,

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.

0 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 he 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 benefit 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 assumed, that he purchased for each of us a glorified body, strong and immortal as his own when he rose from the dead, a body which has no seeds of disease or pain in it, no springs of mortality or death? May glory, honour and praise, with supreme pleasure, ever attend the sacred person of our Redeemer, whose sorrows an«l

k2 anguish of flesh and spirit were equal to our misery, and to his own compassion.

5. Another lesson, which we are taught by the long and tiresome pains of nature, ’ is the value and worth of the word of God, and the sweetness of a promise, which can give the kindest relief to a painful hour, and sooth the anguish of nature.’ They teach us the excellency of the covenant of grace, which has sometimes strengthened the feeblest pieces of human nature to bear intense sufferings in the body, and which sanctifies them all to our advantage. Painful and tiresome maladies teach us to improve the promises to valuable purposes, and the promises take away half the smart of our pains by the sensations of divine love let into the soul.

We read of philosophers and heroes in some ancient histories, who could endure pain by dint of reasoning, by a pride of their science, by an obstinacy of heart, or by natural courage; but a Christian takes the word of a promise, and lies down upon it in the midst of intense pains of nature; and the pleasure of devotion supplies him with such ease, that all the reasonings of philosophy, all the courage of nature, all the anodynes of medicine, and soothing plaisters have attempted without success. When a child of God can read his Father’s love in a promise, and by searching into the qualifications of his own soul, can lay faster hold of it by a living faith, the rage of his pain is much allayed, and made half easy. A promise is a sweet couch to rest a languishing body in the midst of pains, and a soft repose for the head or heart-ache.

The Stoicks pretended to give ease to pain, by persuading themselves ‘there was no evil in it;’ as though the mere misnaming of things would destroy their nature: but the Christian, by a sweet submission to the evil which his heavenly Father inflicts upon his flesh, reposes himself at the foot of God on the covenant of grace, and bears the wounds and the smart with much more serenity and honour. ‘It is my heavenly Father that scourges me, and I know he designs me no hurt, though he fills my flesh with present pain: his own presence, and the sense of his love, soften the anguish of all that I feel: he bids me not yield to fear, for when I pass through the fires he will be with me; and he that loved me, and died for me, has suffered greater sorrows and more anguish on my account, than what he calls me to bear under the strokes of his wise and holy discipline: he has left his word with me as an universal medicine to relieve me under all my anguish, till he shall bring me to those mansions on high, where sorrows and pains are found no more.’

6. Anguish and pain of nature here on earth teach us Hhe excellency and use of the mercy-seat in heaven, and the admirable privilege of prayer.’ Even the sons of mere nature are ready to think of God at such a season; and they who never prayed before, ‘pour out a prayer before him when his chastening is upon them,’ Isa. xxvi. 16. An hour of twinging and tormenting pain, when creatures and medicines can give no relief, drives them to the throne of God to try whether he will relieve them or not. But much more delightful is it for a child of God that has been used to address the throne of grace, to run thither with pleasure and hope, and to spread all his anguish before the face of his heavenly Father. The blessed God has built this mercy-seat for his people to bring all their sorrows thither, and spread them before his eyes in all their smarting circumstances, and he has been often pleased to speak a word of relief.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, when he dwelt in flesh and blood, practised this part of religion with holy satisfaction and success. “Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly,” and an angel was sent to strengthen and comfort him, Luke xxii. 43,44.

Tin’s was the relief of holy David in ancient times, Psalm xxv. 18, “Look upon my affliction and my pain, and pardon all my sins.” Psal. cxvi. 3, 4, “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell, or the grave, took hold of me; then called I upon the name of the Lord; 0 Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.” And when he found a gracious answer to his request, he acknowledges the grace of God therein, and charges his soul to dwell near to God; “return to thy rest, 0 my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee; I was brought low, and he helped me, he delivered my soul from death, and mine eyes from tears.”

But we have stronger encouragement than David was acquainted with, since it is revealed to us, that we “have an high Priest” at this throne ready to bespeak alknecessary relief for us there, Heb. ii. 18. “An high Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” who has sustained the same sorrows and pains in the flesh, who can pity and relieve his people under their maladies and acutest anguish, Heb. iv. 15. When we groan and sigh under continued pains, they are ready to make nature weary and faint: we groan unto the Lord, who knows the language of our frailty; our High Priest carries every groan to the mercy-seat; his compassion works towards his brethren, and he will suffer them to continue no longer under this discipline than is necessary for their own best improvement and happiness.

0 how much of this sort of consolation has many a Christian learnt and tasted, by a holy intercourse with heaven, in such painful seasons? How much has he learnt of the tender mercies of God the Father, and of the pity and sympathy of our great High Priest above? Who would be content to live in such a painful world as this is, without the pleasure and relief of prayer? Who would live without an interest at this mercy-seat, and without the supporting friendship of this Advocate at the throne?

Thus I have run over the chief lessons of instruction or doctrine, which may be derived from our sensations of pain here in this world: but there is no need of this sort of discipline in the blessed regions of heaven to teach the inhabitants such truths.

They will remember ‘what feeble helpless creatures they were’ when they dwelt in flesh and blood; but they have put off those fleshly garments of mortality, with all its weaknesses together. The spirits of the blessed know nothing of those frailties, nor shall the bodies of the saints, new raised from the dust, bring back any of their old infirmities with them. These blessed creatures know well ‘how entirely dependent they are for all things upon God’ their Creator, without the need of pains and maladies to teach them, for they live every moment with God, and in a full dependence upon him: they are supported in their life, and all its everlasting blessings, by his immediate presence, power and mercy.

They have no need of pain in those fields or gardens of pleasure to teach them the evil of sin; they well remember all the sorrows they have passed through in their mortal state, while they were traversing the wilderness of this world, and they know that sin was the cause of them all. They see the evil of sin in the glass of the divine holiness, and the hateful contrariety that is in it to the nature of God is discovered in the immediate light of all his perfections, his wisdom, his truth and his goodness. They behold the evil of sin in the marks of the sufferings of their blessed Saviour; he appears in glory ‘as the Lamb that was slain,’ and carries some memorials of his death about him, to let the saints know for ever what he has suffered to make atonement for their sins.

Nor have the blessed above any need to learn ’ how dreadfully God can punish sin and sinners,’ while they behold his indignation going forth in a long and endless stream, to make the wicked enemies of God in hell for ever justly miserable. And in this sense it may be said, that “the smoke of their torments comes up before God and his holy angels, and his saints for ever.”

Nor do these happy beings stand in need of new sensations of pain, to teach them ‘the exceeding greatness of the love of Christ,’ who exposed himself to intense and smarting anguish, both of flesh and spirit, to procure their salvation. For while they dwell amidst the blessedness of that state, which the Redeemer purchased with the price of his own sufferings, they can never forget his love.

Nor do they want to learn in heaven the ‘value of the word of God and his promises,’ by which they were supported under their pains and sorrows in this mortal state. Those promises have been fulfilled to them partly on earth, and in a more glorious and abundant manner in the heavenly world. They relish the sweetness of all those words of mercy, in reviewing the means whereby divine grace sustained them in their former state of trial, and in the complete accomplishment of the best of those promises in their present situation amidst ten thousand endless blessings.

And if any of them were too cold and remiss, and infrequent in their applications to the mercy-seat by prayer, when they were here on earth, and stood in need of chastisement to make them pour out their prayers to God, yet they can never forget ‘the value of this privilege,’ while they themselves dwell round about the throne, and behold all their ancient sincere addresses to the mercy-seat answered and swallowed up in the full fruition of their present glories and joys. Praise is properly the language of heaven, when all their wants are supplied, and their prayers on earth are finished; and whatever further desires they may have to present before God, the throne of grace is ever at hand, and God himself is ever in the midst of them to bestow every proper blessing in its season that belongs to the heavenly world. Not one of them can any more stand in need of chastisement or painful exercises of the flesh to drive them to the throne of God, while they are at home in their Father’s house, and for ever near him and his all-sufficiency. It is from thence they are constantly deriving immortal supplies of blessedness, as from a spring that will never fail.

§ V. I proceed now to consider in the last place, what are the ’ practical lessons which pain may teach us while we are here on earth’ in our state of probation and discipline, and shall afterwards make it evident, that there is ‘no need of pain in heaven for the same purposes.’

1. The frequent returns of pain may put us in mind ’ to offer to God his due sacrifices of praise for the months and years of ease which we have enjoyed;’ we are too ready to forget the mercy of God herein, unless we are awakened by new painful sensations; and when we experience new relief, then our lips are opened with thankfulness, and our mouth shews forth his praise. Then we cry out with devout language, ‘Blessed be the Lord that has delivered us!’ When we have been oppressed for some time with extreme anguish, then one day, or one hour of ease fills the heart and the tongue with thankfulness; * blessed be the God of nature that has appointed medicines to restore our ease, and blessed be that goodness that has given success to them!’ What a rich mercy is it under our acute torments, that there are methods of relief and hsaling found among the powers of nature, among the plants and the herbs, and the mineral stores which are under ground? Blessed be the Lord, who in the course of his providence has given skill to physicians to compose and to apply the proper means of relief! Blessed be that hand that has planted every herb in the field or the garden, and has made the bowels of the earth to teem with medicines for the recovery of our health and ease, and blessed be his name who has rebuked our maladies, who has constrained the smarting diseases to depart by the use of balms and balsams that are happily applied!

While we enjoy the benefits of common life, in health of body and in easy circumstances, we are too often thoughtless of the hand of God, which showers down these favours of heaven upon us in a long and constant succession; but when he sees fit to touch us with his finger, and awaken some lurking malady within us, our ease vanishes, our days are restless and painful, and tiresome nights of darkness pass over us without sleep or repose. Then we repent that we have so long forgotten the God of our mercies; and we learn to lift up our praises to the Lord, that every night of our lives has not been restless, that every day and hour has not been a season of racking pain. Blessed be the Lord that enables us, without anguish or uneasiness, to fulfil the common business of the day; and blessed be his hand that draws the peaceful curtains of the night round about us! And even in the midst of moderate pains, we bless his name who gives us refreshing slumbers; and we grow more careful to employ and improve every moment of returning ease, as the most proper way of expressing our thankfulness to our Almighty healer.

Alas, what poor, sorry, sinful creatures are we in th present state, who want to be taught the value of our mercies by the removal of them! The man of a robust and vigorous make, and a healthy constitution, knows not the true worth of health and ease, nor sets a due value upon these blessings of heaven; but we are taught to thank God feelingly, for an easy hour after long repeated twinges of pain. We bless that goodness which gives us an easy night after a day of distressing anguish. Blessed be the God of nature and grace, that has not made the gout or the stone immortal, nor subjected our sensible powers to an everlasting cholic or tooth-ache.

2. Pain in the flesh more effectually teaches us ‘to sympathise with those who suffer.’ We learn a tenderness of soul experimentally by our own sufferings. We generally love self so well, that we forget our neighbours under special tribulation and distress, unless we are made to feel them too. In a particular manner, when our nature is pinched and pierced through with some smarting malady, we learn to pity those who lie groaning under the same disease. A kindredship of sorrows and sufferings works up our natures into compassion; and we find our own hearts more sensibly affected with the groans of our friends under a sharp fit of the gout or rheumatism, when we ourselves have felt the stings of the same distemper.

Our blessed Saviour himself, though he wanted not compassion and love to the children of men, since he came down from heaven on purpose to die for them; yet he is represented to us as our merciful High Priest, who had learnt sympathy and compassion to cur sorrows in the same way of experience as we learn it. He was “encompassed about with infirmities,” when he took the sinless frailties of our nature upon him, that he might learn to pity us under those frailties. “In that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted. For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are,” though he was always “without sin; and by the things which he suffered, “he may be said, after the manner of men, to learn ‘sympathy and pity’ to miserable creatures, as well as obedience to God, who is blessed for ever, Heb. ii. 18, and iv. 15, and v. 2, 8.

3. Since our natures are subject to pain, it should teach us ‘watchfulness against every sin, lest we double our own distresses by the mixture of guilt with them.’ How careful should we be to keep always a clear conscience, that we may be able at all times to look up with pleasure to the hand of God who smites us, and be better composed to endure the pains which he inflicts upon us for our trial and improvement in grace. Innocence and piety, and a peaceful conscience, are an admirable defence to support the spirit against the overwhelming efforts of bodily pain: but when inward reproaches of mind, and a racking conscience join with acute pain in the flesh, it is double misery, and aggravated wretchedness. The scourges and inward remorse of our own hearts, joined to the sorrows of nature, add torment to torment. How dreadful is it when we are forced to confess, ‘I have procured all this to myself by intemperance, by my rashness, by my obstinacy against the advice of friends,’ and rebellion against the commands of God!

Probably it was such circumstances as these, that gave the soul of David double anguish, “when his bones waxed old, through his roaring all the day long, when day and night the hand of God was heavy upon him, and his moisture was turned into the drought of summer;” when he complained unto God, “thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore: there is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger; nor any rest in my bones, because of my sin. Mine iniquities are gone over mine head as an heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. Deep calls unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts, all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.” The ‘deep of anguish’ in my flesh calls to the ‘deep of sorrow’ in my soul, and makes a tremendous tumult within me. “My wounds stink, and are corrupt, because of my foolishness: I am feeble and sore broken; I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart;” nor could he find any rest or ease till he “acknowledged his sin unto God, and confessed his transgressions,” and till he had some comfortable hope that “God had forgiven the iniquity of his sin.” See this sorrowful scene exemplified in a very affecting manner in the 32d and 38th Psalms. Happy is the man that walks closely with his God in the days of health and ease, that whenever it shall please his heavenly Father to try him with smarting pain, he may find sweet relief from a peaceful conscience, and humble appeals to God concerning his own sincerity and watchfulness.

4. Pain in the flesh may sometimes be sent by the hand of God, to teach us ‘to wean ourselves by degrees from this body, which we love too well; this body, which has all the springs of pain in it. ‘How little should we be fond of this flesh and blood in the present feeble state, wherein we are continually liable to one malady or another; to the head-ache or the heart-ache, to wounds or bruises, and uneasy sensations of various kinds? Nor can the soul secure itself from them, while it is so closely united to this mortal body. And yet we are too fond of our present dwelling, though it be but a cottage of clay, feeble and ruinous, where the winds and the storms are continually ready to break in and distress us. A sorry habitation indeed for an immortal spirit, since sin has mingled so many diseases in our constitution, has made so many avenues for smart and anguish in our flesh, and we are capable of admitting pain and agonies at every pore.

Pain is appointed to be a sort of balance to the ‘tempting pleasures of life,’ and to make us feel that perfect happiness does not grow among the inhabitants of flesh and blood. Pain takes away the pleasures of the day and the repose of the night, and makes life bitter in all the returning seasons. The God of nature and grace is pleased, by sending sickness and pain, to loosen his own children by degrees from their fond attachment to this fleshly tabernacle, and to make us willing to depart at his call.

A long continuance of pain, or the frequent repeated twinges of it, will teach a Christian and incline him to meet death with courage, at the appointed hour of release.’ This will much abate the fierceness of the king of terrors, when he appears as a sovereign physician to finish every malady of nature. Death is sanctified to the holy soul, and by the covenant of grace this curse of nature is changed into a blessing. The grave is a safe retiring place from all the attacks of disease and anguish: and there are some incurables here on earth, which can find no perfect relief but in the grave. Neither maladies, nor tyrants can stretch their terrors beyond this life: and if we can but look upon death as a conquered enemy, and its sting taken away by the death of Christ, we shall easily venture into this last combat, and obtain an everlasting victory. Blessed be God for the grave as. a refuge from smarting pains! Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus, who enables us to triumph over the last pain of nature, and to say, “0 death where is thy sting? and 0 grave where is thy victory?”

In the fifth and last place, by the pains that we suffer in this body, ‘we are taught to breathe after the blessedness of the heavenly state wherein there shall be no pain.’ When the soul is dismissed from the bonds of flesh, and presented before God in the world of spirits without spot or blemish by Jesus our great Forerunner, it is then appointed to dwell among the “spirits of the just made perfect,” who were all released in their several seasons from the body of flesh and sin. Maladies and infirmities of every kind are buried in the grave, and cease for ever; and if we survey the properties of the new raised body in the great resurrection-day, as described 1 Cor. xv, we shall find no room for pain there, no avenue or residence for smart or anguish. It will not be such a body of flesh and blood as can be a source of maladies, or subject to outward injuries; but by its own principles of innate vigour and immortality, as well as by the power and mercy of God, it shall be for ever secured from those uneasy sensations which made our flesh on earth painful and burdensome, and which tended toward dissolution and death. It is such a body as our Lord Jesus wore at his ascent to heaven in a bright cloud, for ever incorruptible; “for llesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. As we have borne the image of the earthly” Adam in the frailties and sufferings that belong to it, so shall “we also bear the image of the heavenly,” even the “Lord Jesus Christ who shall change our vile body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself,” Phil. iii. 21. “We shall hunger no more, we shall thirst no more, nor shall the sun light on us” with its parching beams, nor shall we be annoyed with fire or frost, with heat or cold, in those temperate and happy regions. “The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed” his people for ever there “with the fruits of the tree of life,” and with unknown entertainments suited to a glorified state. “He shall lead them to living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

Thus have I set before you ‘the practical lessons’ which pain is designed to teach us in our present state; and we find that a body subject to maladies and pains, is a well appointed school, wherein our great Master gives us these divine instructions, and trains us up by degrees for the heavenly world. It is rough discipline indeed for the flesh, but it is wholesome for the soul: and there are many Christians here on earth that have been made to confess, that they had never learnt the practice of some of these virtues, if they had not been taught by such sort of discipline.

Pain, which was brought into human nature at first by sin, is happily suited by the providence of God to such a state of probation, wherein creatures born in the midst of sins and sorrows are by degrees recovered to the love of God and holiness, and fitted for a world of peace and joy.

But when we have done with this world, and departed from the tribes of mortal men, and from all the scenes of allurement and temptation, there is no more need that such lessons should be taught us in heaven, nor any painful scourge made use of by the Father of spirits, to carry on, or to maintain the divine work of holiness and grace within us. Let us survey this matter according to the foregoing particulars.

Is it possible that while the blessed above are surrounded with endless satisfactions flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, they should l forget their benefactor, and neglect his praises?’ Is it possible they should dwell in immortal health and ease without interruption, under the constant vital influences of the King of Glory, and yet want gratitude to the spring of all their blessings?

Nor is there any need for the inhabitants of a world, where no pains and sorrows are found, ‘to learn compassion and sympathy to those who suffer,’ for there are no sufferers there: but love and joy, intense and intimate love, and a harmony of joy runs through all that blessed company, and unites them in a universal sympathy, if I may so express it, or blissful sensation of each other’s happiness. And I might add also, could there be such a thing as sorrow and misery in those regions, the divine principle of love would work sweetly and powerfully towards such objects in all necessary compassion.

What if pain was once made a spur to our duties, in this frail state of flesh and blood? What if pain were designed as a guard against temptation, and a means to awaken our watch against new transgression and guilt? But in a climate where all is holiness, and all is peace, in the full enjoyment of the great God, and secured by that everlasting covenant which was sealed by the blood of the Lamb, there is no more danger of sinning. The soul is moulded into the more complete likeness of God, by living for ever under the light of his countenance and the warmest beams of his love.

What if we had need of the stings of pain and anguish in time past, Ho wean us by degrees from this body, and from all sensible things,’ and to make us willing to part with them all at the call of God? Yet when we arrive at the heavenly world, we shall have no more need of being weaned from earth, we shall never look back upon that state of pain and frailty with a wishful eye, being for ever satisfied in the affluence of present joys.

0 glorious and happy state! where millions of creatures who have dwelt in bodies of sin and pain, and have been guilty of innumerable follies and offences against their Maker, yet are all forgiven, ‘their robes are washed, and made white in the blood of Jesus,’ their iniquities are cancelled for ever, and there shall not be one stroke more from the hand of God to chasten them, nor one more sensation of pain to punish them. Divine and illustrious privilege indeed, and a glorious world, where complete sanctification of all the powers of nature shall for ever secure us from new sins, and where the springs and causes of pain shall for ever cease, both within us and without us. Our glorified bodies shall have no avenue for pain to enter; the gates of heaven shall admit no enemy to afflict or hurt us. God is our everlasting friend, and our souls shall be satisfied with the “rivers of pleasure which flow for ever at the right hand of God.” Amen.

ST