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difficult for anything that happens to make you angry; and thus you will be far happier.

Just the same thing is true of every sinfulness; and just the same thing is true of every trouble which comes upon us; and this, whether it is brought upon us by the wicked act of any body or not. As the plants which have a bad correspondence are sometimes poisons and sometimes medicines, so there are two ways of eating them, in the spiritual sense. When you indulge the sins they represent, it is as if you eat the poisons correspondent to these sins; but when you turn to your own improvement the troubles brought upon you by the evil doings of others, then it is as if you eat of these plants as medicines.

It is to get rid of sinfulness, and of the disposition to sin, that we live in this world. And it is to help us to get rid of them that troubles come to us. And you may be always perfectly sure, that the Lord will never permit, and that He never does permit, any trouble whatever, great or small, or of any kind, to come upon us, in any way whatever, unless He knows that the trouble

which He permits may be used by us as a medicine for the soul. That is, unless He sees in us some inclination to sin, and unless He sees that the trouble He permits may be so used by us as to check that inclination and get rid of that sin, or confirm us in some good. Every human being is sometimes troubled and afflicted, and the reason is that every human being has some sin, some sickness of the soul, for which he needs and receives from the Lord the medicine of affliction.

Generally, when you take medicine, you do not know how it is to help you; but you think they know who give it to you, and therefore you take it, trusting that it will relieve your pain and make you better. Just so, it will often happen that you are not able to see why an affliction has come to you, or what good it can do to you. But you can know, in the first place, that it may do some good, or it would not be permitted. And you may

know, in the next place, that if you try and endeavor to be patient, and to be calm, and to have a belief in the Lord's goodness, and to wish that His will may be done, then it is certain that

this endeavor will do you good, and will be useful to you forever.

Sometimes troubles and afflictions may fall upon infants who cannot know anything about it. But they could not fall upon an infant, if they were not needed to make some change in the infant, by means of which, when the infant grows older, in this world or in the other, it may more easily turn away from what is evil, and love what is good, and be good, and thus be happy. Though what this change is, or how it is to be brought about, it may be impossible for us to know.

As we live in this world that these changes may take place in us, the troubles brought upon us by the wicked are permitted, and things which correspond to wicked feelings and acts grow upon earth. But if you permit the Lord to lead you to goodness, when you die you will go to heaven, and there you will not need these changes, and there no wicked persons will be. Therefore there are no such correspondences in heaven. All the good and beautiful and useful things of this world are in heaven,—only more numerous, and far more

beautiful, and more perfect. And there is nothing there but what is good and beautiful, because there are no thoughts, nor feelings, nor actions there, to which things good and beautiful cannot correspond.

LESSON

THIRTEENTH.

You may read, in the one hundred and third Psalm, verse third, these words: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." These words, in the literal sense, tell us, that pardon of sin, and the cure of sickness, come from the Lord, and from Him only. But, in the spiritual sense, they tell We learn why these two things are put

us more.

together in this verse.

We learn that they mean

almost the same thing. pens, the other must take place also; that is, when the Lord "healeth our diseases,” in the spiritual sense of these words, or cures our sinfulness, then "He forgiveth our iniquities."

When one of them hap

The Lord is never revengeful; He never ceases to be merciful; He loves all, always and infinitely; and there is no evil spirit whom He would not willingly make happy, and none whom He does not make as happy as such a spirit can be. But an evil spirit, or a wicked man, regards the trou

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