II.

THE THORN IN THE FLESH.

2 ('ORINTHIANS Xii. 7-9: "And lest I should be exalted

above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

WHAT is known in sacred biography as Paul's thorn in the flesh, has been a thorn in the pulpit expositions of all the Christian ages. Carefully concealing its nature himself, he has thereby set all that want to be wise above what is written, in a state of uneasiness to find it out. The result, as might be expected, has been very curious and quite inconclusive. One commentator is clear it was a defect of the eyes; another is certain it was a defect in the speech; and lameness has been supposed, and neuralgia, and a want of

that dignity of appearance that is supposed to be indispensable to a successful minister; and so almost endlessly, as different men have been led by different fancies, to this or that conclusion.

So I suppose it cannot be of much use to us to know exactly what this thorn was, since the man who suffered from it did not care to tell us. He certainly cannot have meant to put preachers into the perplexity that has come of his concealment. He may have felt it was too delicate a thing to be made a matter of common talk, even to the brethren, as most persons do who are in Paul's case. Be that as it may, he felt it was right to say that the thorn was there, and he could not get rid of it; could not pray it out, or cry it out, or believe it out, or tear it out, or get the Lord to take it out. There the thorn was, whatever it was, and there it would stay, very likely, to the end of this mortal life. But then he found in the struggle to be free from the thorn, what in the end was better than any such freedom, power and patience to bear his pain; still the power was not his own, nor the patience, only the thorn. But this was the end of it: the two things together carried him right to God,

and laid him to rest in the arms of the Eter nal. And as a sick child rests in the arms of its mother, unable to shake off the pain, but still wonderfully supported and comforted out of her love, so it was in his suffering, when God said, "My strength is made perfect in thy weakness."

Yet with all this hiding, there is one thing of the deepest possible moment, and that is, the rea son why this thorn should be there. This the apostle cannot leave in the dark. He clearly feels that we ought all to know WHY the thorn came. It happened to him once, he says, to be just as happy as a man can be. It seems still, after fourteen years, that he was in heaven, whether in the body, or out of the body, he cannot tell. All he knows is, that these were the most exalted moments of his life; there he heard things he cannot report, because human language would fail to convey the idea if he were free to tell it, and right in the heart of that experience he got his thorn; it came then; it was there still; and the reason why it came is clear to him also. He' was in danger of losing his balance, of being carried quite away by his felicity, and so losing the sense of his kinship to our pained and suffer.

ing humanity and his reliance upon Heaven, 30 there was given him a thorn in the flesh. And so it is when we know this much about the thorn, we can see that we do not need to know any more. The particular fact in the life of one man, opens thereby into an experience that is in some measure common to all. If we could know that 'Paul's thorn in the flesh was a defect in his eyes, or his speech, or a pain in his head, or the want of a foot to his stature, that particular thorn would fasten us down to a particular experience, and we should lose the great general lesson which I want to find, if I can, to-day, in speaking to you. First, of the thorn in the flesh of our common humanity.

Second, what we can ourselves do about it. And,

Third, what can come to us with any thorn, if we can find out Paul's way of dealing with it.

And first, is it not true in a great general sense, that we all have some time a thorn in the flesh. Something that we do not care to describe by particulars, any more than Paul did, and would never mention without grave reason, but there it is, as sure as we live, and as long as we

live, touching us to the quick with its pain now and then, and never letting us go quite so free as we were before it first began to stab us.

In the ranges of our common human history, we cannot fail to see the presence of this thorn in the greatest and noblest lives. Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes another. Now on the surface, and now in the nature. Those that soar highest, as Paul soared when he saw heaven, bear it with them, or bring it back, and carry it, as we do, wherever they go. It may be a mean thing, like Byron's club-foot; it shall torment me for all that, as if there is no greater misfortune possible to man than to go halting all his days; or it may be as great a thing as Dante's worship of Beatrice, as he appears in the picture, with that face, sad beyond expression, looking up to the beautiful saint, whose "soul was like a star, and dwelt apart," it shall be a thorn all the same to each man. Or it may be a great vice, like that which seized and held Coleridge and De Quincey, and put them down in the dungeon of the Giant Despair. Or it may be only like the dyspepsia, that now, in these days, darkens the whole vision of Mr. Carlyle, turning his beautiful after