xxxiii. 24. _And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick._
In a besieged city, from watching, anxiety, and scarcity of food,
there is usually considerable sickness. When an epidemic disease is
prevalent, sickness becomes the general experience. There is in any
large population always a considerable amount of sickness, more or
less serious. Nor is it confined to the city. In the country it is
much the same. At the best it is only somewhat less. Medical men are
everywhere required. Sanitary arrangements, temperate habits, and
medical skill may diminish the extent and alleviate the severity of
sickness, but they cannot uproot it. When, therefore, we read of a
city in which there shall be no sickness, our thoughts turn from
earth to heaven. The text is a beautifully poetic representation of
the termination of the conscious weakness that rested on Jerusalem
while the Assyrian army lay before it. But there is a sense in which
the words may be literally understood. We believe in "the holy city,
the new Jerusalem." Let us meditate on that new condition of our life.
+I. Sickness is weakness.+ We give the name to all states of the body
other than sound and perfect health. How numerous! Our condition here
is one of constant liability to it. At every period of life we are
exposed to it. It may be borne to us by the air we breathe; taken
with the food we eat and the water we drink; received by contact with
our fellows; lurk secretly in some part of our body unsuspected;
develop itself from the slight cold, the result of carelessness, or
in spite of the utmost thoughtfulness; it may attack the youth as
well as the old man, those who boast the fulness of their strength as
well as those who know themselves to be less firmly built. But it
always supposes weakness. Under the name of weakness it holds its
victim with a firm grasp. While he persuades himself that he has
conquered, it secretly spreads through every vein, and eventually
lays him prostrate. The strongest man becomes powerless when sickness
holds him in its grasp. As he is too weak to throw off the weakness,
he is too weak to perform the tasks which at other times he performs
with perfect ease. The student, the mechanic, the merchant. Visit
some sick-bed and your confidence of perpetual strength will depart.
Sickness is humiliating because it is weakening. It is often attended
with pain. Pain increases weakness. In the grasp of pain the sufferer
may be held for days, with no power of resistance, no prospect of
relief.
Have you not sometimes thought what a contrast it would be if you
could be entirely free from sickness and from liability to it? We may
indulge the thought. That will be the condition of the resurrection
body in the celestial city. It will be fashioned like to the body of
Christ's glory (1 Cor. xv. 42-44). As Christ on the cross endured the
last sickness and pain He was ever to know, so shall all His
followers rise, as He did, to a life from which sickness and pain are
for ever excluded. Are you one with Him? Then in pain, weariness,
languor, sickness, let all impatience be subdued as you remember that
it is only a little longer. "Neither shall there be any more pain."
+II. Sickness is sorrow.+ Sorrow because of lost time and business,
fear that the end of life is near, the leaving behind not only all
pleasant earthly things and persons, but especially those dependent
on the patient's life, to whom his loss may be ruin. Not to the
patient only is it a time of sorrow. Enter the house. All is gloom.
Rooms darkened. The family tread softly and speak under their breath,
as if every sound would not only disturb the sufferer, but be out of
harmony with their own feelings. It is the little one that has come
home sick from school (2 Kings iv. 19). His mother takes him on her
knee. Soon she perceives the signs of one of the sicknesses that are
the terror of childhood. Medical aid is procured. The sickness
deepens. Every one watches with aching heart, for the child is a
universal favourite. And if he is taken, oh, what distress! Or it is
the young man who has grown to maturity. He is active in business.
His father, under the burden of advancing years, is gradually
devolving responsibility on him, that he may himself enjoy a few
years' rest after a life of hard and anxious work. But sickness
comes. It passes by those you would expect it to strike. It singles
out the young and strong. Gradually that fine young man wastes away.
Day and night the mother, whose advancing years and infirmities
demand the attention, watches over him with a breaking heart. All is
done that strong affection can inspire. It is vain. Oh! what sorrow
through these months! And when the end comes, what tongue can
describe the agony?
We wonder if it will ever cease to be true that "man was made to
mourn." Thank God we can entertain the prospect of the complete
cessation of sorrow. "Neither sorrow." "Sorrow and sighing shall flee
away." "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." For "the
inhabitant shall not say, I am sick."
+III. Sickness is the prelude to death.+ It usually precedes. Any
sickness may end in it. Death changes everything; the body different;
the soul different. But there shall be no more death. There will be
the perpetuated life of paradise regained; for there will be the tree
of life; there will be the resurrection body (1 Cor. xv. 53, 54).
+IV. Sickness, sorrow, and death are the fruit of sin.+ Does not
Scripture thus trace them? There was no sickness before sin. Sin was
the seed. The heavenly city is free from sin. There is perfect
holiness. It is the completion of the redeeming work of Christ from
sin, sorrow, death. The seed which bears sickness is taken out of the
soil.
Shall we dwell in that city of immortal health? Are we travelling
towards it? If not, we cannot reach it. Jesus is the way. Come to Him
(Rev. xxi. 27). It is a prepared place for a prepared people.--_J.
Rawlinson._