Sin punished by physical suffering, but such suffering not always a punishment for sin.
God has many weapons in his quiver wherewith to chastise sin. One of them is physical pain. He can cause the limbs to ache, the temples to throb, the blood to be inflamed, the breathing to labour, the head to be racked, the nerves to thrill and tingle—the whole body, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, to be nothing but a mass of "wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores." There is no part of our frame, no process, no function, but can be made the seat of an intolerable agony. God, for the most part, spares us, in the hope that his goodness and long-suffering will lead us to repentance. He had long spared Pharaoh and the Egyptians—had shown them his power in ways that annoyed and harassed, but did not seriously hurt. Now he must adopt severer measures. So his hand is laid upon their bodies, which are smitten with disease, disfigured, made loathsome to the eye, and racked with physical suffering. Here we may note three things:—
I. GOD PUNISHES SIN TO A LARGE EXTENT IN THIS WAY. Many sins have physical consequences attached to them by a natural law, which are in the highest degree painful, which injure the health, destroy the tissues, produce disease, madness, idiocy. Men know these consequences, but hope that they may individually escape them. As Moses and Aaron warned in vain, so now vain too often are the uplifted voices of God's ministers. Nine-tenths, probably, of the physical suffering in England at the present day is caused by those sins of intemperance and uncleanness which are the crying evils of our age and country, and which nothing seems able to uproot or even seriously to diminish. Children are born now for the most part with the seeds of disease in them, which are the consequence of their parents' vices. They lack the physical stamina and the moral vigour which they would have possessed, had their parents led good, pious, consistent, religious lives. They have unhealthy appetites, desires, cravings, which they would not have had but for their parents' sins. Too often, to all this is added the force of bad example. Intemperance and uncleanness follow, and the inborn germs of disease are stimulated into activity; pain follows pain, agony follows agony. A wretched, life is terminated by an early death. If they leave children behind them, their case is even more hopeless. The physical taint is deepened. The moral strength to resist is weaker. Happy is it if God takes the little ones away from the evil to come.
II. GOD DOES NOT EXEMPT FROM THIS PUNISHMENT, EITHER THE WEALTHY OR THE HIGHLY EDUCATED. "The boil was on the magicians." The taint of uncleanness, the mental weakness which results from habits of intemperance afflict the great, the rich, the "upper ten thousand," as surely as their humbler fellow-subjects who herd in courts and alleys. There are great families in which it is a well-known fact that intemperance has become hereditary. There are others where the heir never lives to the age of thirty. No rank—not even royal rank—exempts from subjection to hygienic laws. Neither does intellect nor education. It may be that the intellectual and highly educated are less likely than others to plunge into dissipation and sensual vices. But if, in spite of their higher nature, they give the reins to their lower, the same results follow as in the case of the least gifted of their fellow-men. Retribution reaches them. They "receive within themselves the reward of their iniquity." Their physical nature, no less than their moral, is tainted; and pain, suffering, often agony, are their portion.
III. THOSE WHO RECEIVE THE PUNISHMENT OFTEN HARDEN THEMSELVES. The boil was on the magicians; but we do not hear that the magicians submitted themselves, or owned the supremacy of Jehovah. So now, those whose sin draws down upon them suffering rarely repent, rarely forsake their sin, rarely humble themselves beneath the chastening rod of the Almighty. No doubt drunkards are occasionally reformed and profligates reclaimed. But for one lost sheep thus recovered, how many scores perish in their evil courses, and descend the rapid incline which conducts to the gulf of destruction? We are amazed at the obstinacy of Pharaoh; but we are most of us just as obstinate. Nothing will induce us to give up our pet vices. We cling to them, even when the boil is upon us. If we give them up for a time, we recur to them. If we leave them off in act, we dwell fondly upon them in thought and imagination. O hard human hearts, that will not yield to God's discipline of pain, when sent as chastisement! What can ye expect, but that chastisement will give place to vengeance? Physical suffering is sometimes sent, not to punish, but to refine and purify. Job's comforters supposed that one so afflicted must have committed some great crime, or be concealing some habitual vice of a grave character. But it was not so. The sufferings of saints are blessing. They give a fellowship with Christ, which nothing else can give. They make the saint rehearse in thought, over and over again, each step of that grievous, yet blessed via dolorosa, along which he went upon his way to the Cross of Calvary. They intensify faith and love—they give assurance of acceptance (Hebrews 12:6)—they elevate, purify, sanctify. Earth has no lovelier sight than that not uncommon one of a crippled sufferer, stretched day after day and year after year upon a bed of pain, yet always cheerful, always thoughtful for others, always helpful by advice, kind word, even (if their strength allows) kind acts. Such Blessed ones live with Christ, suffer with Christ, feel themselves to be in Christ; as St. Paul says, they "fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in their flesh" (Colossians 1:24), and "are joyful in their tribulation" (2 Corinthians 7:4).
HOMILIES BY J. ORR