And is this the preparation the scriptures require? Is this giving the heart to God? Are such persons consistent worshippers of that God, who is a Spirit? Can these be said to be preparing to meet the Lord? Are they at all ready to go forth at the coming of the bridegroom? No. A spiritual infirmity, deeper than that lameness, which prevented Mephibosheth from going out to meet King David, incapacitates, and indisposes them totally for the advent of the King of kings. Their preparation, like the ceremony of a funeral, is nothing but the pageantry of the dead; and the decorations of a breathless corpse carried in pompous procession to be food for worms in the grave, exhibit too striking a representation of that unanimated and lifeless formality, which, with all its gaudy trappings, is but the corpse of religion, and leads to the chambers of everlasting death.
3. An habitual watchfulness of spirit, that implies diligence, solicitude, fidelity, prayer, holiness, is absolutely required of those, who would wish to meet God with joy. This watchfulness, in scripture, is contrasted to sloth, inaction, unfaithfulness, inordinate care, worldly-mindedness, and carnal security. It is compared to that circumspection and fidelity which should mark the conduct of a servant, entrusted with the care of a household, and obliged by the nature of his office, as well as the injunctions of his master, to manage every thing in his absence with wisdom, and to prepare for his return; and to that wakeful diligence, by which a house is guarded against the depredations of nightly robbers. Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return from the wedding. Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. And this know, that if the good man of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Luke, xii. 35–39. The contrary temper of unwatchfulness is described in the character of an unfaithful, quarrelsome, disobedient, and drunken servant, who takes occasion to riot and revel, from the delay of his master’s returning home. But, and if that servant say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken, the Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. Luke, xii. 45, 46. And in all those instances, the principal argument to urge the necessity of watching, is founded on the uncertainty of the time of our Lord’s arrival. Be ye therefore ready, for the Son of man cometh at an hour, when ye think not. Luke, xii. 40. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. 2 Pet. iii. 10.
The watchfulness, therefore, recommended by our Lord, and implied in the text, comprehends an habitual spirit of prayer; hence the exhortation, Watch and pray—habitual sobriety; Watch and be sober; Thes. v. 6;—holiness in conversation; Set a watch before my mouth; Psal. cxli. 3;—a patient, yet ardent expectation of the Lord’s arrival; and a cautious avoidance of every care, of every pleasure, and of every entanglement, which might ensnare the heart, captivate the senses, and immerse the affections in sloth and self-indulgence. All which is enjoined in that concise but most solemn and comprehensive exhortation of the Son of God, What I say unto you, I say unto all. Watch! Mark, xiii. 37.
SERMON X.
ON THE DEATH OF MR. I. A.
“He shall enter into peace.” Isaiah, lvii. 2.
The great and irreversible decree of Heaven, respecting the whole human race, is, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” This sentence, originally pronounced upon the transgression of the first man, evidently included also his whole posterity to the end of time. It has already received its solemn execution upon the generations that are past: we see with our eyes, its effects in the multitudes, that are daily passing from time to eternity: nor shall its influence cease, until the wide-extended dominion of death be destroyed, and mortality swallowed up of life.
The divine appointment, through which the grave becomes the common receptacle of all men, is not more awful, than it is just: for, “the wages of sin is death.” Man deserves to die, because he hath sinned. Hence, there ariseth a necessary and inevitable connexion between our origin and our end. So that, if we wish to trace the innumerable calamities attendant upon death, to their source; we shall soon find, that they all originate from SIN. “As by one man SIN entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Rom. v. 12. It is sin that hath brought universal disorder into the natural and spiritual world. It hath sown the seeds of mortality in the human frame; hath filled the heart with alienation from God; and rendered body and soul obnoxious to the sentence of everlasting separation from the kingdom of heaven. Sin hath given death his sting; and furnished that king of terrors with his formidable message and tremendous appearance. It hath opened the horrors of the tomb, and expanded wide the mouth of hell. It hath armed the law with a curse, more to be dreaded than death; hath given the sword of justice its sharpest edge; and hath awakened the indignation of that God, who is as a consuming fire. It is the great bar of separation between the creature and the Creator; and is that moral evil, which, when finished, brings forth death, temporal and eternal. It brought a flood of waters upon the old world; was the cause of Sodom’s destruction; and will, at last, bring a deluge of fire upon the world that now is.
In a review of those innumerable evils, of which, even death is not the greatest, it will be incumbent upon us, therefore, to keep our eye fixed on the origin of them all, SIN. Hereby we shall be able to vindicate the righteous procedure of God, even when we behold him sending death to pull down the beautiful fabric, which his own hands had made; and opening the grave, as the sad and silent repository of his own curious workmanship. When we reflect, that it is sin, that hath produced this melancholy change, and that this evil is found upon us; the reflection will help to restrain the extravagance of grief, and to suppress that predominancy of discontented repining, which often makes sinners fly in the face of God, and charge him foolishly. For, if death be not duly considered and acknowledged as the desert and wages of sin, I can easily conceive that, for want of such humble consideration, sinners may be led to arraign the dispensations of the Most High; to charge unerring wisdom with foolishness; infinite justice with unrighteousness; and mercy itself with cruelty. But, when once sin is viewed, in its damning nature, its dreadful effects, and just deserts; the discovery will produce submission to the divine will, under the most severe dispensations. It will make us “put our mouths in the dust,” in silent acquiescence in the wise and sovereign disposals of Heaven. Or, if we open them, it will only be to confess, that “the Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.” By attentively considering the nature of sin and the manner of its introduction, in order to account for the origin of all the evils that prevail in the natural and spiritual world, and to vindicate eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God with men; we shall hereby also possess the consequent advantage of beholding, in its most glorious point of view, the inestimable REMEDY for sin, by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, if the former considerations may be deemed sufficient to work in the heart patient submission, and unrepining acquiescence in the dispensations of Jehovah; this will inspire it with a hope blooming, and full of immortality. If reflections on the demerit of sin can stop the mouth in silence in the dust; this will open it in bursts of praise, and glowing effusions of gratitude and admiration. Sin is redemption’s advantageous foil. And as the variegated colors of the rainbow shine with greatest beauty on the blackest cloud: so, the malignity of sin, and the gloom of death, tend proportionably to set off the glory of the Saviour, and to give additional lustre to that bright manifestation of life and immortality, which are brought to light by the gospel.
This chain of thought, if pursued, will necessarily lead us, not only to behold the riches of divine grace and the out beaming of all the divine attributes, rendered eventually more glorious even by the intrusion of the most horrid evil; but also to consider death itself as the portal to eternal life. This consideration will immediately fix the heart in delightful meditation on the great work of HIM, who came “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and through death to destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil.” Heb. ii. 14. And here such a bright scene will present itself to the eye of contemplative faith, as shall dispel the horrors of the tomb; gild with joy and triumph the shadow of death; and enable us to derive wisdom and consolation, even from the solemn apparatus of a funeral. Here we shall be led to meditate on the great and glorious end of the Redeemer’s incarnation, and the wonderful effects of his mediatorial undertaking. We shall behold him triumphing over sin in his cross, and leading captivity captive by his glorious resurrection. Bereaving death of its sting, and embalming the regions of the dead by his own burial;—shutting the mouth of Tophet, and opening to his people the gates of everlasting bliss; and still going forth conquering and to conquer, till sin, Satan, the world, and death, are made his footstool.