i that there is a world where it shall he un-
known. No pain in heaven! No little irritating
disquiet ; no sharp piercir^ P^"g i '"^ great over-
whelming agouy, that tells its tale in groans and
shrielts that wears out life, that racks and maddens !
Tet not that it shall be there, that you escape pain by
giving up pleasure ; not that yon cease to feel pain,
because you cease to feel at all. No ; the soul in
glory shall still be invested with a bodily frame, the
most delicately sensitive, alive to every thiill of bliss,
feeluig all feeling with a keenness and intensity never
known before ; tlie perfection, in short, of a sensitive
material nature, a nature which, doubtless, could feel
suffering with fearfiil reality, if suffering could ever
come there. But in that better country there shall
be absent forever the cause in suffering, no less tlian
the signs in t«ars ; for " tiiere shall be no more i3eath,
neither sorrow, nor crying) neither shall there be any
more pain I "

But all this naturally leads us to ask, If pain be so
bad a thing, and if it be so happy an assurance that
the day is coming when there shall be no more of it,
wliy is it here at all? Why is there such a thing
now? Well, bi-ethren, I do not think it would stagger
our trust in God's wisdom and goodness, even if we
could find no answer at all to that question. It would
only be part of the great question as to why Evil is at
all permitted in this creation ; and the answer to that



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NO MORE PAIN. 231

question is one of those secret things which belong to
God. But in the matter of pain, we can, in so far,
answer the question. We can discern several impor-
tant uses which are served by pain ; and we can dia-
cem, too, that pain will not be needed for these uses
in the better world. It will not cease till its occupa-
tion is gone. The lessons it is meant fo teach us
will not be wanted there. They will be weU remem-
bered, without our having pain ever (so to speak) at
our elbow to remind us of them.
