The Christian's Death
“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” — Rev. xiv. 13,
The plateau, or raised ocean bed, which stretches across the Atlantic between Great Britain and America, and along which they laid the lines that were to unite two worlds together, and flash our messages over the bed of the sea, is covered, to some depth, with a fine impalpable powder. To the naked eye, when brought up from the depths of the sea and dried, it looks like dust; mere dust, devoid alike of beauty, and organiza tion. But under the microscope how it changes! It is a cabinet of the most beautiful shells; each of them once the habitation of a creature exceedingly minute. Their home was in the upper regions of the sea; and when they died, their shells became their coffins, and, sinking many thousand fathoms down, they found a grave in the ocean bed. It has taken the dust and burial of many generations to raise the mould on t?.e Avails of that old, sacred ruin, around which the rude foro.fatliers of the hamlet sleep; but how many ages must have elapsed before the coffins and corpses cf ci’catures so exceedingly small, could have raised the broad bed of ocean? To account for this phenomenon it is necessary to suppose that these animalculas are
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falling in showers, by night and day, through summer, winter, seed-time, and harvest; dropping down into their graves in numbers many as the drops of summer rain, or the snow-flakes of a winter storm. If so, how great the profusion of life in the vast ocean!
This is one of the last, and not the least interesting of the evidences that go to prove how this world teems with life. You find these indeed everywhere. Turn where you may, you meet with life in some one of its many forms. Not detected by the naked eye, but wisely, kindly concealed from it, you devour it in every morsel; you inhale it in every breath; you drink it in the cup filled at the mountain spring; you bathe in it among the billows of the briny ocean. Walking wild moor, or shaggy mountain, or flowery meadow, at every step your foot goes down on life. It sleeps the winter through in every bud; opens in every flower-bud; dances and quivers in every leaf; and rises before you in every spike of grass. Where is life not? More changeful than the fabled Proteus, it assumes innumerable shapes. There it cleaves the air on feathery wing; there cleaves the deep with fins; there crawls forth in the slimy worm; and there stands before you in the majesty of the human form. Here it breathes in vile corruption; and there plays and dances in the pure light of sunbeams. Water cannot drown it. Earth cannot bury it. Open the secrets of the grave — for a moment — life is there; penetrating the domain of death, it seizes on the lifeless body, and takes possession of the tomb. We can say to it what David Baid to its great Giver, “Whither shall I flee from thy U presence? Thou hast beset me behind and before. Thou compassest my path.”
Common as life is, death, its counterpart, though less apparent, is not less common. As if it were the shadow which life casts upon the ground, there, along with it, goes that dark, unsocial, dumb companion. For though not coeval, death is co-existent with life; so that wherever you find the one in this world, you find the other. Is it not the fate of all that lives to die? We forget this. Some like, and try to forget it; and, indeed, all of us are too prone to do so, turning to an irreligious use that beautiful, and kind, and beneficial arrangement, whereby God, for death is not lovely, provides that the evidences of it shall not long remain to disfigure this fair creation. You may walk a whole day in the crowded city, nor once meet a nodding hearse, or poverty’s plainest funeral. I have walked down a long summer day across moor, mountain, and woodland, nor seen a sign of death. No shriek of pain, nor groan of agony, disturbed the melody of nature; and where the merry cricket chirped among the grass, and the lark sang in bright skies, and cattle lowed in fragrant pastures, and its silver tenants leaped and played in the stream, and flowers with their ten thousand golden censers offered up odours of praise to God, and all nature rejoiced and revelled in the possession of life, no withering skeleton crumbled beneath my feet. No sign of death was there. As if God had not only no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but no pleasure in the death of any creature, its evidences, the footsteps of this fell destroyer, are speedily effaced. Let bird or beast fall, and curious creatures come creeping forth to do the sextons office; the d<3nizens of air and earth seize on the lifeless body; so that if death is quick to seize on life, life is no less quick to seize on death — nature covering with a green and flowery shroud all that moulders and decays; changing foul corruption into beauty, and the lifeless corpse of one creature into the pregnant womb of ten thousand lives! Yet though life is thus a far more apparent thing than death, the one is as common as the other. The fate of all that your eye looks on, is to die. You never see a flower to admire its beauty, but it shall die. In the Crystal Palace, in the trunk of a mighty pine, stands the noblest specimen of the vegetable world that man has looked on, or that has fallen to his hand. Towering more than three hundred feet above the ground, it had seen three times three hundred years, ere the forest resounded to its groans, and the axe of the woodman had laid its head in the dust. Still, in these blows, man but anticipated the hand of time. Before his scythe all things go down. There is not a tree that grows, nor a bird that sings, nor a flower that blooms, nor a child that laughs, nor a man that toils, nor anything that lives, but is doomed to die.
The penalty of sin, bitter fruit of man’s unsanctified ambition, death hangs over all of us. Ten, twenty, fifty years after this where shall we be? A few brief years, and not this or that congregation only shall be changed, but this great city shall have changed all its tenants. There is no familiar face you meet on your way to shurch or market, shall be seen then. The
Sabbath bells will ring out from city steeples, but they shall be rung by other hands, and rung for other wor« shippers; pulpits shall be filled by other preachers, and the pews by other worshippers. We go the way of all the living. A few years more, and all these animated, breathing forms, shall lie still and cold in death, mouldering in the silent grave. What says the apostle? “Death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Yet we say with John, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.
Before shewing that death, by grace, is changed into a blessing, let me observe —
I. Death is a curse.
My text, no doubt, says, “Blessed are the dead,” still death is a curse. Who has read the poetry of Milton but knows that, with a poets license, he represents Death as the son of the Devil, begotten in the womb of Sin. He pictures Satan, on his flight to our world, as encountering two strange and terrible ob’ jects at the gates of hell: —
“Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape; The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast; a serpent armed “With mortal sting. The other shape, If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguished in member, joint or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either, black it stood as night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell. And shook a dreadful dart. “What seemed his head, The likeness of a kingly crown had on.*’
Sin, the half lovely woman, half scaly reptile, who as porteress guarded the gates of hell, thus explains to to Satan the name and history of the other crowned and armed monster: —
“Pensive here I sat Alone; but long I sat not, till my -womb Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown, Prodigious motion felt and rueful throesf. At last this odious offspring whom thou seest. Thine own begotten, breaking violent away, Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew Transformed; but he my inbred enemy Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart. Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out. Death! Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resoundec’ Death!”
In that picture Milton embodies a very common notion, and common error. For many people fancy that there was no death till there was sin in the world; and misunderstanding the apostle’s observation “death by sin” — which applies only to man — they extend it out and beyond him; making it embrace the whole of this world’s creation. In regard to the lower animals, as well as to man, they believe there never was death till there was sin; and that by sin, man’s sin, came death on them. Now, no person of common intelligence can open a shark’s mouth and look at those rows of tremendous teeth, can look at the broad paw and claws of the lion, can examine the talons of an eagle, or the beautiful mechanism of a serpent’s fang, with its poison-bag, and the groove by which the
318 THE CIiRISTIAN’s DEATH.
fatal drop enters into the wound — but he must see that death, in point of time, preceded sin. Unless these animals, which were before man, were made for the very purpose of living by killing, why were they armed with such instruments of destruction? In the original plan of the divine government, God evidently took death into his arrangements; laid his account with death; provided for it, planned for it — death as much as life being one of his purposes, and forming an essential part of his plan in the government of the world.
It is not expressly stated in the Bible that there was death before sin; but though I do not find that in God’s word, I find it in what is as good. I read it plainly written in God’s works. I have the testimony of the Bible to this, that “death reigned from Adam to Moses;” but although I have not the same testimony to this, that death, which reigned long before Moses, reigned long before Adam too, I have what is equally divine — the testimony of the rocks. It is written there on tables of stone, in letters legible as those which Moses brought with him from the mount. On turning over these stony leaves of Natural Revelation, we read of death that was, long before Adam was; we find its eddence in the remains of monstrous creatures that, armed with tremendous powers of destruction, turned this world into a vast scene of battle and of death, long before Eden bloomed; and whose bones were entombed in the rocks, where the convulsioDS of nature buried them, long ages before Adam was made. Why there should be death when there was no sin, is a difficulty I cannot solve. I do not pi»etend to give the question a satisfactory answer. It is a mystery. But so are many things else. It is a mystery why the dumb creatures should cry, and howl, and groan, under sufferings that often move our pity. It is a mystery to me why a benignant and benevolent God, that could have no pleasure in the pain of any creature, inflicted it on an innocent creation. And it is a mystery, perhaps, even to the intellects of angels, why that should suffer which never sinned. Still we can perceive a manifest difference between the death of these creatures and that of man. It is when death extends its ravages to him that it rises into a curse. “The sting of death is sin.” That has armed his dart.
The lower creatures die, but with how little pain! in what happy ignorance! Death springs on them with a tiger’s leap. The coming event casts no shadow before. I have seen a lamb go gambolling on its tvay to the slaughter-house, cropping the wayside flowers. No vision of the butcher and his axe disturbs the ox, as he browses contented in abundant pastures. See this pale mother, her brow clouded with care as she trims the lamp by the cradle of her withering child! She is to be pitied. But no fear dashes the joy of yon mother bird that embraces her nestlings in her wings; or, seated on the bending spray on a sweet summer eve, sings her young to sleep. The prospect of death never alarms either beast or bird. The grcans of a dying steed do not disturb the feast of his fellow in the neighbouring stall. The dead body of their own kindred never suggests the idea that
820 THE CHEISTIAN^S DEATH.
they also are to die; and fills them with dread of their approachiDg fate. Thus, there is no curse, so to speak, in their death; no dread hereafter. Happy creatures! they enjoy life unembittered by the fear of losing it; and when it is lost, they part with it in most instances with very little pain; sometimes with none at all.
It is otherwise with us. The bravest men are afraid of death; and true bravery lies not in insensibility to its terrors, but in facing what we fear. It is an easy thing for a soldier, amid the whirl and excitement of a battle-field, to dash on the serried bayonets; but shew me the man, unless a true, lofty, strong-minded Christian, who will, calmly, and coolly, and undauntedly, meet his dying hour. Ah! this fate, from which nature shrinks with instinctive horror, tries the courage of the bravest, and the piety of the best of men. The great mass of mankind are undeniably afraid to meet death; to stand face to face, and front to front, with the King of Terrors. Afraid to meet him? they are afraid even to think of him! Trembling to hear his hand knocking at a neighbour’s door, they take alarm, and are ready to fly at his approach. They do not quarrel with grey hairs so much because they spoil their beauty, as because, like the snow powdered on mountain heights that proclaims the approach of winter, they are the unwelcome heralds of death and a gravf,. And why are thousands in this world, perhaps some of us, happy? The secret of your gay and light-hearted humom is this — you are hopeful that you will not die to day; no, nor to-morrow; nor next week noi- for another year. Talk of the ills of poverty, exile, disease, calumny; evils of human life as they are, they all make way for death. Trampling under his feet kingly crowns and dear-bought laui’els, flowering hopes and loving, bleeding hearts — he marches at the head of all human ills — crowned, by the universal consent of mankind, the King of Terrors. “Skin for skin,” said the devil — and for once the father of liars spake the truth — “Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Yes. Let men brave death as they may, or rather may pretend to do, it is an awful curse. A doom to all but Christian faith intolerable, it admits no true comfort, but the hope of salvation by the blood of Christ. Have you that? Happy are you! I congratulate you. Though you were a beggar, happy are you! If you have it not, I would not change places with you; not for a thousand worlds.
Separate and apart from the consolations of Christian faith, death is a tremendous evil. Nature shrinks from it, shuddering. I do not like to think of being a cold, pale, inanimate form of clay, unconscious of the love and grief of all around me; screwed down into a narrow coffin; borne away from my cheerful home; and when the green sod has been beaten down above me, left, not by enemies, but by those I loved, to be the food of rile worms, and lie mouldering in the silent grave. Ncr is that all; the grave is the land of oblivion; and who does not shrink from the thought of being forgotten? We may be remembered some little time within the family circle, and now and then a 14”- sigh may be heaved over our memory, and now and then a tear may be dropped on our grave; but ere many years we shall be forgotten by all — even though the grave may not close over us as the waters over a sinking ship, that in going down makes a surging swell, but soon leaves the billows to pui’sue their course, or the placid sea to become smooth again. Then who but shrinks from the thought of being torn from those he loves? of leaving the cheerful voices and bright countenances of his family circle to keep companionship with those dumb, grim tenants of the grave, that lie there for years, and centuries, but never exchange a word? Then God has made this body beautiful; and I do not like to see the sad ravages that age, still less the awful ruin that death works on us. Then God has made me to love life; and I love it; the bright sky; the song of the birds; merry voices; cheerful faces; nor do I like to think of being laid in that narrow, black pit among yellow skulls and mouldering bones. Profess what men like, flesh and blood shrink from that. Nor, believe me, is there any mere earth-born and earth-supported power that can stand by an open grave, and look down to speak of it, as a bed of sweet and peaceful rest.
Besides these sad imaginings, the sufferings that usually attend the close of life and gather like heavy clouds around its setting sun, make death a curse. Some are, so to speak, translated like Enoch. Last evening, on the street, at his post of duty, amid his family, the good man ‘’ was; “the chariot with silent wheels comes to his door at the dead of night; he la borne away before he has time to wake; never tasting death, he is in glory before he knows, and is woke to consciousness, not by the song of birds that welcome in the spring, but of angels welcoming him to the presence of his Saviour and to the glories of heaven: and they tell how next morning they found the body lying calm in death —” He was not, for God took him.’’ Happy fate to a true believer! notwithstanding that in the beautiful litany of the Church of England they pray, “from plague and pestilence, from battle, murder, and sudden decdh, good Lord, deliver us.” But such cases are rare. In the ordinary providence of God many weary days and nights precede the closing scene. Anticipate it! Think what agonies may then rack our frame! and how our last hours may resemble those of one in combat with an invisible enemy, that with hand clutching his throat, is choking him! In most cases, death presents the unmistakable features of a tremendous curse; being attended with sufferings which, however unpleasant to think of, it is well to anticipate, that we may be prepared for the worst, and, fortified by faith, may stand the rude shocks of dissolution, possessing our souls in patience and in peace. And where faith in Jesus raises a dying man above the sufferings of nature, and a sinful man above the terrors of guilt, illuminating the closing scene with the hopes and very light of approaching glory, this close of life is the grandest of sunsets. Nowhere, does religion look so magnificent as amid such scenes. And never does she seem so triumphant as when, v*^ith her fingers closing the filmy eyes, she contemplates the peaceful corpse; and bending down to take one fond kiss of pallid lip, or marble brow, rises, and raising her hands to heaven, exclaims, Blessed are the dead! The battle done; t’^ie victory won; rest, warrior! workman! pilgrim! — rest! “Blessed are the dead which die in the Loi i; for they rest from their labom-s, and their works do follow them.”
n. Death is a blessing.
How true these words — “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord!” Die in the Lord! That is a remarkable expression; but one that corresponds with others in the word of God. For example: the apostle Paul sometimes speaks of us “being in the Lord,” and sometimes of the Lord “being in us.” He says, for instance, “Christ in us the hope of glory.” Elsewhere also he uses this remarkable expression: “Nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Now, whether the expression be, that “Christ is in us,” or that “we are in Christ,” the meaning is thus far the same, that both expressions are used to describe that intimate, spiritual, indissoluble, eternal union which is formed by faith between the Saviour and the saved. A union that, more intimate than marriage which unfaithfulness in either party dissolves; a union that, more intimate than the connection between body and soul which a slight accident may endanger, which an ounce of lead, an inch of steel, a drop of poison, a wrong step, the hand of a child may dissolve; a union that, more intimate than binds together those sections of the church which, though differing, co-operata
The union which is formed between Christ and his people being one of incorporation and not one merely of co-operation what the one is, the other is; and where the one is, the other is; and as the one feels, the other feels; and as our bodies and their limbs have blood in common, or the branches and trunk of a tree have sap in common, so Jesus and his people have all things in common. “xVll mine is thine,” he says — his Father, ours; his merit, ours; his righteousness, ours; his victory, ours; his glory, ours. A rich inheritance indeed! And as we were in Adam on that day when, standing by the fatal tree, and before the beautiful temptress, he took of fruit forbidden, and ate, and sinned, and fell, all of us falling in his fall; so, on that other and better day, when the Son of Man stood by another tree, giving his hands to the nails, and his side to the spear, and his brow to the thorns, and his soul to the wrath of God due for sin, we were in him. As I was condemned in Adam on the day of the fall, a believer in Christ, in him I satisfied divine justice before earth and heaven; in him I triumphed or. the cross; in him, on the third day of burial, I left the tomb, rising in anticipation of the hour when the dead shall wake to the sound of the trumpet; and, rising in Christ, mortal shall put on immortality, and those whom once Satan conquered, and sin enslaved, shall bG ci’owned with victory.
To be in Christ, therefore, to be in the Lord, implies that we shall infallibly enjoy all the blessings, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, which he shed his blood to purchase; these being secured to us by the great oath of God, and the bonds of a covenant which is well ordered in all things and sure. What more could we have; could we wish for than this? To be in Christ is to be in his Father’s bosom, to be his beloved children — all sin forgiven — sure of the supply of every want on earth; and sure of heaven at last; for where the head is, all the members of the body shall sooner or later be. With Christ we shall be crowned and throned in glory.
Well then may the apostle say, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord!” They are blessed. They must be blessed. How can it be otherwise? “Die!” No doubt they must die; but death has lost its sting; and it does not matter when, or how, or where they die. The dying is nothing, if they are in the Lord; whether they die in their bed, among holy prayers and blessed voices; or die in battle, amid thundering cannon; or die like a martyr, swinging in the air; or die whelmed in the deep, with the rush of waters in their drowning ears. Dying in the Lord, they are blessed. It has proved a comfort to a sinking child, to feel a kind mother’s arms around it; to expire with its head resting on her bosom. And when candles burned dim and the mists of death were gathering thick over the eyes, I have heard the dying, unable to see, ask if some loved one was near; and I have felt their hand grasp my own, as if, on passing through the deep waters, there was some stay even in a human hand. But oh! in that coming hour, may God give ua to feel that we have a firm hold of Christ; that our head is lying on his blessed bosom; that his own kind hand is wiping away nature’s last, bitter tears! Beyond the tender accents of a mother’s, or wife’s, or child’s, or any human voice, oh! how blessed it will be to hear Jesus whispering, “Fear not, for I am with thee. Be not afraid, for I am thy God.” We may be ready to shrink back, saying. Ah, Lord! the water is dork; the stream is cold, and deep! How blessed then to hear him say. Go forward; fear not. I have redeemed thee. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy one of Israel, thy Saviour.
Believer, let the world shrink from death — not you. Familiarize your mind with that inevitable event! Think of it, as life! Gloomy though the portal seems, death is the gate of life to a good and pious man. Think of it, therefore, not as death, but as glory — going to heaven and to your father. Regard it in the same light as the good man who said when I expressed my sorrow to see him sinking into the grave, “I am going home.” If you will think of it as death, then let it be as the death of sin; the death of pain; the death of fear; the death of care; the death of Death. Regard its pangs and struggles as the battle that goes before victory; its troubles as the swell of the sea on heaven’s happy shore; and yon gloomy passage as the cypress-shftded avenue that shall conduct your steps to heaven. It is life through Christ, and life in Christ; life most blissful, and life evermore. How much happier and holier we shcild be if we could look on death in that light. I have heard people say, that we should think each morning that we may be dead before night; and each night that we may be dead before morning! True: yet how much better to think every morning, I may be in heaven before night; and every night that the head is laid on the pillow, and the eyes are closed for sleep, to think. Next time I open them it may be to look on Jesus, and the land where there is no night, nor morning; nor sunset, nor cloud; nor grave, nor grief; nor sin, nor death, nor sorrow; nor toil, nor trouble; where” they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.
in. Death is a blessing as introducing us into a state of rest.
1. At death the believer rests from the toils of life.
Not that a moderate measure of labour, either of the hands or of the brain, is a curse; or even a misfortune from which we should desire exemption. Other creatures, as well as man, have to earn their bread; some in the air, where from morn to dewy eve the swallow is on the wing: some in pastures, where herds of cattle roam from field to field, and herds of deer from hill to hill; some in the waters, whose silvery tenants flash through stream and pool; and some beneath the soil, where the mole, mining in darkness, like death, shews his progress by the mounds he throws up. And like them, our bodies were made for working, as our brains were for thinking, our eyes for seeing, and our ears for hearing. Nor is the workman’s life the least agreeable; if toil has its hardships, it has its advantages — in health, for instance, strong in frames accustomed to labour, and glowing in cheeks 1hat are kissed by the winds and browned by the sun of heaven*
Come hither, ye that press your beds of down, And sleep not: see him sweating o’er his bread Before he eats it. ‘Tis the primal curse But softened into mercy: made the pledge Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan.
Yet, though labor is the best medicine for health, the best stimulant for a happy humour, the best opiate for sleep; and though fullness of bread and abundance of idleness, the curse of Sodom, is a danger from which the upper classes, and many, indeed, who are exempt from the necessity of working for their daily bread need to protect themselves by devoting their time to the cause of philanthropy, or some department of the public service, death brings a happy relief to those whose hard and humble lot chain them like slaves to the oar of toil. Their circumstances doom many to such excess of labour as exhausts the energies both of body and mind. Little better than animated machines, they live to work, and work to live, their minds lying, like waste land, uncultivated — like a gold mine with no time to dig it. The book, the very Bible, at evening worship, drops from the weary hand, and drowsiness steals over the senses of one who kneels for mercy at the throne of grace. Such toils degrade the higher part of our nature, if they do not make life a burden; and while they make the Sabbath, with i+s rest, a precious boon to thousands, they unfit us for its lively enjoyment. From these death discharges the weary labourer, and brings him welcome relief. A child of God, he enters into rest. To him in the grave “there is rest for the weary;” and what a blessed change to the pious occupant of many a humble, country cottage, of dingy room in the obscure lanes of the crowded city, when the head, once bent over the soil, or the loom, shall be lifted up and crowned with priory among the acclamations of angels, and in the presence of God. Hope of better things, and submission to your father’s will — teaching you to say with Paul, I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content — work on without repining, now and then lifting your eye to heaven! Death’s cold, clammy sweat, is the last that shall stand on a good man’s brow. Son of toil, when thou hast breathed out thy life, thy work is done, and an eternal Sabbath begun!
2. At death the believer rests from the cares of life.
Next to sin, these form life’s heaviest burden. Money is a cure for poverty, and medicine for sickness; time closes grief’s bleeding wounds; peace sends the soldier home; and when the bell strike?, the labourer drops his tools, and, in sports or books, or company, or among his prattling children, forgets awhile his toil — when the day’s work is done, it is done. But cares are bosom burdens which we carry with us. Their spring is in the heart, and they rise like water to fill the well anew so soon as it is emptied.
People complain of providence, and are discontented with thoir lot. It is so full of cares! It is not their lot, but themselves that are full of cares. We blame God for evils which we ourselves create, like the child whose fears create the spectres that give terror to a dark bedroom, and chase away sleep. Would we lie in the bosom of Providence as confidingly as a child in its mother’s, had we such faith as God encourages us to cherish, wo would shake off our cares as a lark does the dew drops from her feathers; or a lion the dew from his mane. If God had thrown up the helm and left the management of our fortunes to us, or if Christ had gone to sleep in heaven as he did in the boat on the sea of Galilee, or if the rising of every sun in the east, and the swelling of every tide on the shore, if the lightsome song of every little bird, and the beautiful dress of every little flower, as it steps out on this world, did not proclaim the providence anci care of God, we might and must carry the burden of our own cares. But the Lord reigneth! We are to cast our cares on him; and the more we lay on him, the more shall we find that his promises and faithfulness possess that remarkable property of the arch, by virtue of which the more the arch is loaded, the firmer it stands.
How strange that any who can trust God’s mercy for their eternal salvation should not be able to trust his providence for daily bread; for blessing? he bestows even on the wicked and ungodly! If “God spared not his own son, shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” There is a logic in that question, level to the humblest understanding; and a love that should make us careful for nothing. But faith is often weak, and man is fearful; and so our life has many a troubled dream that fills those with fears and terrors who are all the while safely folded in a Fathers arms. Like ghosts, these shall vanish when the morning breaks, and we enter on eternal day. There will be nothing in the household above to withdraw Martha from sitting with her sister at Jesus’ feet — there Jacob mourns no Joseph, and David weeps no Absolom; the pious widow dreads no empty barrel; Lazarus fears no rich man’s frown, nor courts his favour; the ungodly wring no tears from the eyes of Paul, nor is he burdened with the care of churches; nor mother with the care of infants; nor fathers with the care of families; nor merchants with the cares of business. The cares of the journey belong to the road. They cease when we arrive at home.
3. At death the believer rests from the griefs of life.
God’s people are often sorely tried. No wonder He intends them for great honours; and so he puts a great deal of work on them. By successive trials they are thus cleansed from all the scum and dregs of sin; that they may be thoroughly purified, they are emptied, as it were, from vessel to vessel. Through their sufferings he baptizes them with the Holy Ghost as with fire: dealing with them as the jeweller with gold that, intended for no vulgar use, and set with diamonds, and rubies, and emeralds, and pearls, and all manner of precious stones, is to form the framework of a crown. He purifies that seven times in the fire. And “many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord will deliver him out of them;” if never before, at death. Death cures all griefs; and his own best physic and physician, he applies the most healing balm to the wounds his own hands have made. For “to be absent from the body” is not only “to be present with the Lord,” but with those friends of ours, and friends of his whom death had snatched from our reluctant arms. The dying seldom weep even when all around them are dissolved in tears; the dead in Christ never. They weep for the dead no more. Why should they? Death has restored them to their society; and how pleasant to think of being again united to those we loved on earth; and of embracing, after years of separation, our parents, our brothers, and sisters, and children, and dear friends, all unchanged, but that they are more lovely and more loving. The brightest prospect a parent can cherish for his children, the happiest end he can work, and pray, and toil for, is not to see them great but good; heirs, not of estates, but “of the kingdom;” to meet them all in heaven — the storms and dangers of life past, every one of that scattered fleet, one after another, entering the port, and all at length safely anchored in the desired haven.
Between many believers and the full happiness of those that die in the Lord, there may be much suffering; much toil and trouble before entering on the promised rest. The steepest part of a hill is commonly nearest the top. The green sward, the gentle slopes, the bubbling springs, with their bright mossy carpets, the grateful songs and shade of woods lie below J while up by the summit the air is keen, the vegetation dwarfed and siianty, and the steep severe. Paiitr ing, with short steps and shorter breath, the traveller climbs upward to find the last part of the journey the hardest; and as he throws himself down on the summit, he welcomes its grateful rest. It is so with life. Old age, with its flagging spirits and short, feeble steps, with its torpid faculties and growing infirmities, with losses that have each left a wound in our hearts, and griefs that have each drawn a furrojv on our brow, is, unless sustained by the consolations and hopes of religion, a dark and dreary time. Yet good people wish to be spared to old age, and many aged saints have rejoiced in their recovery; and clung to life, when it was little desirable, like trees that take a stronger hold of the naked rock than of a fertile soil. Strange! since old age, bereft of the briskness of youth and strength of manhood, is apt to become stale, flat, and unprofitable; and, unless grace corrects its tendencies, like old wine, grows sour. Men talk of venerable ruins, and admire old castles, and hoary, mouldering trees; and affections may cling to the human ruin, close and green, and beautiful as the ivy which mantles some crumbling tower; yet it is sad to see mans noble form bent with decrepitude, strength changed into tottering weakness, the fire quenched in the eye, perhaps the eclipse of reason, and the second childhood that excites a melancholy smile. Happy was Moses, on whose head one hundred and twenty winters had shed no snows; blending the wisdom of age with the spirit of youth, he was an old man without the usual infirmities of years: so that on the day of his death •’ his eye was not dim, neither was his natural strength abated.”
Some, their sun setting at noon, escape the pains and infirmities that cloud the evening of life; but few escape those dying troubles that break like a rough swell on the shores of the better land, and make many shrink back from entering them who hare a good hope of heaven. Our text, thank God, has virtues to deprive these of their terrors; and work such change as man’s invention works on the heavy rollers that beat the coasts of Africa, and threaten to swamp the stoutest boats that venture to the shore. However smooth the sea aloDg the coast, and someway off land, close in shore, in the calmest day, great white breakers line the beach; defending it, and deterring the weary voyager from a land, whose green and graceful foliage tempts him ashore, and whose fragrant spices float out to him on the wings of gentle winds. But how to land in safety? It can be done; — is done. The boat is cautiously brought up to the edge of the roaring swell; then from its bows they empty a vessel of oil on the angry deep. Borne landward, what a wondrous change it works! The surge goes down before it; it forms a smooth, and glassy, and narrow passage to the shore; and, with breakers on either hand, roaring in thunders, and foaming in impotent rage, the boat leaps forward to the bending oars, glides along the surface of this strip of calm sea, and but softly heaved on the bosom of a gentle swell, is run up in safety on the beach. Even so may death be disarmed of terrors, the sight of which is so apt to cool our eagerness to reach the blessed land.
The hope of a man-child bore the Hebrew mother bravely through her pangs. Liberty has been consid* ered an ample recompense for all the blood, and suffering amid which it was born. The relief which we expect to follow some most painful operation has made the patient impatient for the hour; and enabled him to bear its tortures without a cry or groan. And he prepares himself to endure the sufferings of a dying hour, and prepares for himself an easy landing on the shores of heaven, who learns to regard death, in the light of my text, as an introduction to the rest that remaineth to the people of God. No more true or beautiful way of announcing a good man’s death than the old-fashioned phrase. He is at rest! Holy in his life, and blessed in his death, he is joined to the multitude of whom the elder said, These are they
WHICH CAME OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION, AND HAVE WASHED THEIR ROBES, AND MADE THEM WHITE IN THE BLOOD OF THE LaMB. THEREFORE ARE THEY BEFORE THE THRONE OF GOD, AND SERVE HIM DAY AND NIGHT IN HIS TEMPLE: AND HE THAT SITTETH ON THE THRONE SHALL DWELL AMONG THEM. ThEY SHALL HUNGER NO MORE, NEITHER SHALL THE SUN LIGHT ON THEM, NOR ANY HEAT. FOR THE LaMB WHICH IS IN THE mDST OP THE THRONE SHALL FEED THEM, AND SHALL LEAD THEM UNTO LIVING FOUNTAINS OF WATERS I AND GOD SHALL WIPE AWAY ALL TEARS FROM THEIR EYES.