Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

is with the death of the body, that the scriptures say, they sleep. Blessed assurance! Hear its ad

monitions.

1st. Death brings no peril to a child of God; and ought to be no more an object of his fear than the approach of sleep at the close of day. I speak not of the physical pangs of dying, which relate to our animal perceptions, and to which our animal part never can nor should be reconciled. I speak of death as affecting our moral being. In this view he is rightly named the king of terrors," because, to ungodly men he is the wages of sin. It is from guilt that he draws his terrifying power. He announces to the wicked the end of their respit; the filling up of their cup; a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries; and if they be not alarmed, if their faces gather not blackness, and their bosoms horror, it is because they are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Their stupidity will only heighten the surprise and consternation of the eternal world. But Jesus, having delivered his people from the wrath to come, delivered them by the blood of his cross, has for them stripped death of his terrors, and given them authority to cry, as he hands them over the threshold of life, O Death, where is thy sting? the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law;

but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! In such a case death deserves not the name. It is but a sleep; sleep in its most heavenly form; sleep in Jesus.

2d. Death is to believers a cessation from their toils and griefs, even as sleep is a repose from fatigue.

We who are in this tabernacle do groan; while the day lasts we must bear its burden and its heat. I shall not dwell upon the pains and endurances of a Christian soldier-his fight of faith-his race for the prize-his conflict with flesh and blood; and what is more, with principalities and powers his weakness, his weariness, his wounds, his faintings, his falls, his recoveries; in a word, his many and great vicissitudes. The point before us is, the end-it is peace. So saith the word of our God: He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds; each one that walketh in his uprightness. To others, death is, emphatically, the beginning of sorrows-to a Christian, the termination. Grief and he have parted. The hour of release is come. He bids adieu to the field of battle. He puts off his harness; and knowing that his labor shall not be in vain, he lays his head on the bosom of the Captain of his salvation, and goes quietly to sleep. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labors, and

their works do follow them.

Thus, in the nature

of a believer's death there is ample reason why we should not be swallowed up of over much sorrow. He sleeps.

2. His condition in and after death is another spring of our consolation. He sleeps in Jesus. Here we ascertain two momentous truths.

1st. Death, which dissolves every other tie, touches not our union with the Lord Christ. Even then his saints are in him: as much the members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, as when they were serving him in their mortal life. Seest thou that breathless corse? It was but a moment ago, the abode of a spirit now glorified with Christ. It was also an abode of the Divine Spirit. Know ye not, saith Paul, that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? The human spirit is fled but shall death, suppose ye, expel the Spirit of God from his own temple? No, he still resides in it, ahd will keep it for himself. Change it shall. The process of taking it down has already begun. It must descend to dust. It must see corruption. But, notwithstanding, it is the Savior's property; a part of that whole person which is inseparably one with him. It is an object of his care and love. He does not scruple to call the church's dead his own body. This makes their dust precious: and that which he values shall not be worthless in our eyes.

2d. From their sleeping in Jesus, we ascertain that all the rights and privileges which belong to believers in virtue of their union with him, remain to them, after death, undiminished and unimpaired. Dead they are, but they are dead in Christ. They are as much comprehended in his covenant; summed up in him as their head; represented by him as their advocate who has all their claims in his hand for their benefit, as they possibly could be, when, here on earth, they lived by faith, walked by faith, suffered in faith, drew near to God by faith in his blood. Whatever is meant by being in Christ, is meant of them now they are dead; and shall be made good to them at his appearing. They sleep in Jesus.

3d. We derive consolation under the death of Christian friends from the prospect of their glorious resurrection. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

Whatever have been the disputes about other doctrines of Christianity, no man can deny that it teaches the resurrection of the body. The very gates of hell, in the shape of that unhallowed philosophy which fritters away its most precious truths into eastern metaphors and Jewish allegories, have not ventured to tamper with the faith of the resurrection. This stands conVOL. I.

37

[ocr errors]

fest a Christian peculiarity. Let us contemplate its nature and proof as displayed in the text.

1st. This clay which we commit to the grave, under that universal sentence, Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return, will be quickened again, and reassume, even after the slumber of ages, the organization, the lineaments, the expression, of that self-same human being with whom we were conversant upon earth. Otherwise it were a new creation, and not a resurrection; and will be reanimated by that self-same spirit which forsook it at death; otherwise it were a different being altogether, and not the one with whom, under that form, we held sweet communion in this life; and walked to the house of God in company. It has, indeed, been questioned whether Christian friends shall know each other in the world of the risen. But why not? Did not the disciples know the Lord Jesus after his resurrection? Did they not know him at the moment of his ascension? Shall the body which he wore upon earth be the only one recognized in heaven? If Peter and Paul, if James and John shall not be able to distinguish each other, upon what principle shall they be able to distinguish their Lord? And why should the body be raised at all, if the associations with . which its reappearance is connected are to be broken and lost? It cannot be-But then,

« ForrigeFortsæt »