JANUARY 27.
WHO can say so here? How many of our fellow creatures, the subjects of infirmity, langour, and nervous apprehension, are saving, " I am made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day." Another' is "chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain : his flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen ; and his bones that were not seen, stick out. Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers." There are few, perhaps none, who never feel indisposition or sickness.
Sickness is the effect of sin, which brought death into the world, and all our woe. It now, under the providence of God, which is not only punitive, but salutary, subserves various purposes. It is taken into covenant, so to speak, with the godly, and is one of the paths of the Lord, which are to them all mercy and truth. It checks them in going astray. It frees them from many a temptation, arising from more intercourse with the world. It gives them the most sensible proofs of the care and kindness and fidelity of their Lord and Saviour. He knows their frame, and has promised to be with them in trouble, and to comfort them on the bed of languishing, yea, to comfort them as one whom his mother comforteth ; and she, while none of her children are neglected by her, will be sure to pay the most tender attentions to the poor little ailing invalid.
Yet sickness is an evil in itself, and it is trying to flesh and blood. It not only deducts from the relish of all, and prevents entirely the enjoyment of some of our outward comforts, but it injures, it hinders the performance of a thousand duties, relative, civil, and religious. It also often brings a gloom over the mind, and genders unworthy apprehensions of God, and misgivings of our spiritual condition. It not only shuts us out from the loveliness of nature, but from the public means of grace, and fills us with a mournful pleasure at the thought of seasons when we went in company to the house of God, with the voice of joy and gladness, to keep holy day. Hence Hezekiah, anxious to ascertain his recovery, asked, "What is the sign that I shall go up to the house Of the Lord ?" How feelingly has Watts described the Lord's prisoner, when the Sabbath comes
"Lo, the sweet day of sacred rest returns;
But not to me returns
Rest with the day. Ten thousand hurrying thoughts
Bear me away tumultuous, far from heaven
And heavenly work : alas, flesh drags me down
From things celestial, and confines nay sense
To present maladies. Unhappy state!
Where the poor spirit is subdued t' endure
Unholy idleness; and painful absence
From trod and heaven, and angels' blessed work;
And hound to bear the agonies and woes,
That sickly flesh and shattered nerves impose "
Well, soon the warfare with the body will be accomplished, and we shall put off the flesh, and be in joy and felicity. And as there will be no more sin, neither will there be any more pain, for the former things are all passed away.
A union with the body, were it to rise as it now is, would be dreaded, rather than desirable. But the body will not only be raised, but improved---improved beyond all our present comprehension, but not beyond our present BELIEF. For we can trust him who has assured us, that though it be sown in weakness, it shall be raised in power; though it he sown a natural body, it shall be raised a spiritual body. This corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. We shall bear, not the image of the earthly, but of the heavenly. Our bodies will not be made like the body of Adam in paradise, but like the Saviour's own glorious body, "according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto himself." No burdens, no depressions then ; no clogs; no confinements ; no animal wants ; no debasing appetites ; no unruly passions ; no fluttering heart ; no aching head! "The inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick."
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TO REV. WILLIAM JAY'S HOMEPAGE
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TO REV. THOMAS BOSTON'S HOMEPAGE