CanTherebeUnity
2. The general benefits which sickness confers on mankind. 3. The special duties to which sickness calls us. 1. The universal prevalence of sickness I need not dwell long on this point. To elaborate the proof of it would only be multiplying truisms, and heaping up common-places which all allow. Sickness is everywhere. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in America; in hot countries and in cold, in civilized nations and in savage tribes,— men, women, and children sicken and die. Sickness is among all classes. Grace does not lift a believer above the reach of it. Riches will not buy exemption from it. Rank cannot prevent its assaults. Kings and their subjects, masters and servants, rich men and poor, learned and unlearned, teachers and scholars, doctors and patients, ministers and hearers, all alike go down before this great foe. "The rich man's wealth is his strong city." (Proverbs 18:11) The Englishman's house is called his castle; but there are no doors and bars which can keep out disease and death. Sickness is of every sort and description. From the crown of our head to the sole of our foot we are liable to disease. Our capacity of suffering is something fearful to contemplate. Who can count up the ailments by which our bodily frame may be assailed? Who ever visited a museum of morbid anatomy without a shudder? "Strange that a harp of thousand strings should keep in tune so long." It is not, to my mind, so wonderful that men should die so soon, as it is that they should live so long. Sickness is often one of the most humbling and distressing trials that can come upon man. It can turn the strongest into a little child, and make him feel— "the grasshopper a burden." (Ecclesiastes 12:5) It