January 27

"And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick." Isaiah 33:24.

WHO can say so here? How many of our fellow-creatures, the subjects of infirmity, langour, and nervous apprehension, are saying, "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