You will say, “But why not remove a common and ordinary person?” Because it would not have that effect. Thou, God, hast spoken from the castle, where the flag, half elevated, hung out the sign of sorrow, and thou hast said to princes who must hear, and to Czars who must listen, “I am God and beside me there is none else. As for you, ye kings, your breath is in your nostrils; men of high degree are vanity; wherein are ye to be accounted of?” We, the multitude, can hear sermons every day, when we see our fellows and our equals removed from us by death; but these high and lofty ones sit up in their state like the gods in high Olympus, and if there were not death in their ranks, they might write themselves down as demigods, and demand worship at our bands, is thy pride, O empire! thy escutcheon marred and blotted; for Death, the herald, hath challenged the royalty of emperors and kings, and dashed down, once for all, his gauntlet in defiance of the princes of the earth. Ye shall sleep like your serfs and slaves; ye shall die like your subjects. Heroes has passed away, as well as the minions he led to slaughter. And so, ye mighty ones, must ye find that Death advances with equal foot to the palace of the king—to the cottage of the poor.
More than this: who can tell how many a heart that had been careless in our court, and thoughtless among our lords, may be made to consider? If anything can do it, this must. They who have been dazzled with the brightness of splendor, and have lost their thought amidst the noise of pomp, will hear for once a sermon by a preacher whom they dare not despise; for God will say to them, “Courtiers! noblemen! peers! I have taken away your head from you; prepare ye to meet your God! “And it may be that today there are knees bowed in prayer which never bowed before, and eyes may weep for sin as well as for death to-day, and hearts may be breaking with a consciousness of guilt, as well as with a sense of loss. ‘Tis hard for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, thus Providence attempts to make it easy. It is not easy to get the ear of those who are thus immersed in the ordinary gaieties and cares of Court life; but this detains them, death holds the wedding guests, while with his lean and skinny hand uplifted, he tells out the tale, and makes them hear, and checks and keeps them till the story is done. It may be that God intends to bring out for this our age, some who shall stand towards the Church of God to-day, as Lady Huntingdon and Ann Erskine did to the Church a hundred years ago. It may be he is tutoring to-day, some women who, like Anne of Bohemia, the friend of the Reformers, may become promoters of the gospel of Christ; and those who otherwise might have been strangers may come to lend their influence and their power to the promotion of real godliness, and the vital interests of men.
I think these are not unreasonable things to say. We may see that God has his purpose here. Besides, methinks today God has spoken to us as a people. He has shown to us our entire dependence upon him. He can take away every Prince and every Noble, every Cabinet Minister, and every Privy Councillor; he can leave this nation like a ship dismasted; he can, if he so wills, take the hand from the helm, and let her be drifted out to sea, and there she may be encompassed with the clouds of war and the lightnings of judgment, and all our state may suffer wreck like Nineveh and Babylon of old. Britain! God hath blessed thee, but remember, it is thy God. England, God hath honored thee; but forget not the God who keeps thee. O nation, too apt to become proud of thine own strength, now that thou art today wrapped about with sackcloth, and the ashes are on thy head, bow thou and say, “God is God alone; the shields of the mighty belong unto him, and unto him, and unto him alone, be glory and honor, for ever and ever.”
Then, he has spoken to each of us as individuals. I hear a voice which says to me, “Preacher! be instant in season and out of season, be up and doing earnest and fervent, for thy day is short, and thy time shall soon be over.” I hear a voice which says to you, officers of I he Church, “Be diligent in business, fervent in spirit,—serving the Lord; for soon shall the pallor of death overtake you, and he shall lay his chill hand upon your hoary heads, and stretch you in the cold grave.” I hear a voice which speaks to the people of my charge,—the members of this Christian Church—”Work while it is called to-day, for the night cometh wherein no man can work.” And I hear a solemn note, tinging as a funeral bed to you who are unconverted, and I translate its message thus,—”Prepare to meet your God, ye careless ones, who are at ease, make ready, for he comes; ye thoughtless ones, who give yourselves no trouble about eternity, make ready, for he comes, drunkard, thou who art a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God, make ready for he comes, swearer, blasphemer, if there be such a one here, make ready, for he comes; he comes whom thou hast blasphemed; and each one of you, if ye be out of Christ, if your sins still lie upon you, if ye have never sought and found absolution from the lips of God your Father, seek it, seek it, for he comes “When at the battle of Balaklava, the troop of soldiers rode into the valley of death, it must have been a frightful thing to see your comrade reel in the saddle and fall back, to hear bullet after bullet whistling about one’s ears; and shots finding their mark in one’s companion; to see the road strewed with bodies, and the ranks so continually riddled and thinned. And what has been the life of many of us but such a charge as that? Companions of our boyhood! where are ye? Friends of our youth! how many of you have fallen? And the gray-haired sire, as he looks back can say, “How few survive of all I once new? How many have gone! What multitudes have fallen in the valley of decision!” And we stand miracles of long-suffering; we stand monuments of mercy! Must not our turn soon come? Must not our turn soon come, I say? Have we a lease of our lives? Can we postpone the dread moment? Can we hope to live long, when the whole of the longest life is short? Let us prepare, for to-morrow may see our coffin measured, to-morrow may behold us ready for our cerements; nay, to-night the setting sun may set upon our dead bodies. I do beseech you, remember, men, that ye are mortal. Call to recollection, by this solemn drapery of woe, and by the garment. Of your sorrow, that soon you must be wept over; soon mourners shall go about the streets for you, and you shall go to your long homes. I am addressing some of you this morning, who awake my tenderest anxieties. You have been to hear this voice before, some of you, and you have trembled; but your strong passions are too much for you. You have said, “Go thy way; when I have a more convenient season I will send for thee;” and that convenient season has not come yet. You would be saved; but you must be damned. You have longings after life at times, but the cravings of that old lust, that old habit of drunkenness, that old vice, those old corruptions, come, and you go back like dogs to your vomit, and like sows that were washed to your wallowing in the mire. I speak to some this morning, who have trembled in this house, when they heard the Word preached, and they have gone home, and they have felt for a little while solemnly impressed, but they have put the anger of mercy from them; they have despised their own salvation. Well, ye shall do it but a few times more, ye shall despise your own souls but a few more days, and then ye shall know, on your deathbeds, that we have not lied to you, but have spoke to you God’s truth. May God convince you of that, before you discover it too late, when the judgment shall sit, and your body, together reunited, shall stand before the judgment seat. Feeble as my words may be, it will make a sad part of the account that you were warned to think on your latter end, and to turn to God. Oh! by death and all its terrors, if unaccompanied by faith—by resurrection and the horrors it shall increase, if you shall perish unforgiven—by the judgment and its tremendous pomp—by the sentence and its eternal certainty—by the punishment and its everlasting agony—by time and eternity—by death and the grave—by heaven and by hell—by God and by the wounds of the Savior—awake, ye sleeping ones! Awake, ere ye sleep the sleep of death! The way of salvation is again proclaimed. “Whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ hath everlasting life.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” On yonder tree he pours out his blood a sacrifice. Trust thy soul with him, and he will save you; put it in his hands, and he will keep it, and at the last he will be answerable for thy soul, and he will present it “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” before the throne of God, even the Father. May the Lord follow with his blessing what has been said, and to him shall be glory.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
