'... All things are yours ... death.'--1 COR. iii. 21, 22.
What Jesus Christ is to a man settles what everything else is to Him.
Our relation to Jesus determines our relation to the universe. If we
belong to Him, everything belongs to us. If we are His servants, all
things are our servants. The household of Jesus, which is the whole
Creation, is not divided against itself, and the fellow-servants do
not beat one another. Two bodies moving in the same direction, and
under the impulse of the same force, cannot come into collision, and
since 'all things work together,' according to the counsel of His
will, 'all things work together for good' to His lovers. The
triumphant words of my text are no piece of empty rhetoric, but the
plain result of two facts--Christ's rule and the Christian's
submission. 'All things are yours, and ye are Christ's,' so the stars
in their courses fight against those who fight against Him, and if we
are at peace with Him we shall 'make a league with the beasts of the
field, and the stones of the field,' which otherwise would be
hindrances and stumbling-blocks, 'shall be at peace with' us.
The Apostle carries his confidence in the subservience of all things
to Christ's servants very far, and the words of my text, in which he
dares to suggest that 'the Shadow feared of man' is, after all, a
veiled friend, are hard to believe, when we are brought face to face
with death, either when we meditate on our own end, or when our
hearts are sore and our hands are empty. Then the question comes, and
often is asked with tears of blood, Is it true that this awful force,
which we cannot command, does indeed serve us? Did it serve those
whom it dragged from our sides; and in serving them, did it serve us?
Paul rings out his 'Yes'; and if we have as firm a hold of Paul's
Lord as Paul had, our answer will be the same. Let me, then, deal
with this great thought that lies here, of the conversion of the last
enemy into a friend, the assurance that we may all have that death is
ours, though not in the sense that we can command it, yet in the
sense that it ministers to our highest good.
That thought may be true about ourselves when it comes to our turn to
die, and, thank God, has been true about all those who have departed
in His faith and fear. Some of you may have seen two very striking
engravings by a great, though somewhat unknown artist, representing
Death as the Destroyer, and Death as the Friend. In the one case he
comes into a scene of wild revelry, and there at his feet lie, stark
and stiff, corpses in their gay clothing and with garlands on their
brows, and feasters and musicians are flying in terror from the
cowled Skeleton. In the other he comes into a quiet church belfry,
where an aged saint sits with folded arms and closed eyes, and an
open Bible by his side, and endless peace upon the wearied face. The
window is flung wide to the sunrise, and on its sill perches a bird
that gives forth its morning song. The cowled figure has brought rest
to the weary, and the glad dawning of a new life to the aged, and is
a friend. The two pictures are better than all the poor words that I
can say. It depends on the people to whom he comes, whether he comes
as a destroyer or as a helper. Of course, for all of us the mere
physical facts remain the same, the pangs and the pain, the slow
torture of the loosing of the bond, or the sharp agony of its
instantaneous rending apart. But we have gone but a very little way
into life and its experiences, if we have not learnt that identity of
circumstances may cover profound difference of essentials, and that
the same experiences may have wholly different messages and meanings
to two people who are equally implicated in them. Thus, while the
physical fact remains the same for all, the whole bearing of it may
so differ that Death to one man will be a Destroyer, while to another
it is a Friend.
For, if we come to analyse the thoughts of humanity about the last
act in human life on earth, what is it that makes the dread darkness
of death, which all men know, though they so seldom think of it? I
suppose, first of all, if we seek to question our feelings, that
which makes Death a foe to the ordinary experience is, that it is
like a step off the edge of a precipice in a fog; a step into a dim
condition of which the imagination can form no conception, because it
has no experience, and all imagination's pictures are painted with
pigments drawn from our past. Because it is impossible for a man to
have any clear vision of what it is that is coming to meet him, and
he cannot tell 'in that sleep what dreams may come,' he shrinks, as
we all shrink, from a step into the vast Inane, the dim Unknown. But
the Gospel comes and says, 'It _is_ a land of great darkness,' but
'To the people that sit in darkness a great light hath shined.'
'Our knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim.'
But faith has an eye, and there is light, and this we can see--One
face whose brightness scatters all the gloom, One Person who has not
ceased to be the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His beams, even
in the darkness of the grave. Therefore, one at least of the
repellent features which, to the timorous heart, makes Death a foe,
is gone, when we know that the known Christ fills the Unknown.
Then, again, another of the elements, as I suppose, which constitute
the hostile aspect that Death assumes to most of us, is that it
apparently hales us away from all the wholesome activities and
occupations of life, and bans us into a state of apparent inaction.
The thought that death is rest does sometimes attract the weary or
harassed, or they fancy it does, but that is a morbid feeling, and
much more common in sentimental epitaphs than among the usual
thoughts of men. To most of us there is no joy, but a chill, in the
anticipation that all the forms of activity which have so occupied,
and often enriched, our lives here, are to be cut off at once. 'What
am I to do if I have no books?' says the student. 'What am I to do if
I have no mill?' says the spinner. 'What am I to do if I have no
nursery or kitchen?' say the women. What are you to do? There is only
one quieting answer to such questions. It tells us that what we are
doing here is learning our trade, and that we are to be moved into
another workshop there, to practise it. Nothing can bereave us of the
force we made our own, being here; and 'there is nobler work for us
to do' when the Master of all the servants stoops from His Throne and
says: 'Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many things; have thou authority over ten cities.' Then
the faithfulness of the steward will be exchanged for the authority
of the ruler, and the toil of the servant for a share in the joy of
the Lord.
So another of the elements which make Death an enemy is turned into
an element which makes it a friend, and instead of the separation
from this earthly body, the organ of our activity and the medium of
our connection with the external universe being the condemnation of
the naked spirit to inaction, it is the emancipation of the spirit
into greater activity. For nothing drops away at death that does not
make a man the richer for its loss, and when the dross is purged from
the silver, there remains 'a vessel unto honour, fit for the Master's
use.' This mightier activity is the contribution to our blessedness,
which Death makes to them who use their activities here in Christ's
service.
Then, still further, another of the elements which is converted from
being a terror into a joy is that Death, the separator, becomes to
Christ's servants Death, the uniter. We all know how that function of
death is perhaps the one that makes us shrink from it the most, dread
it the most, and sometimes hate it the most. But it will be with us
as it was with those who were to be initiated into ancient religious
rites. Blindfolded, they were led by a hand that grasped theirs but
was not seen, through dark, narrow, devious passages, but they were
led into a great company in a mighty hall. Seen from this side, the
ministry of Death parts a man from dear ones, but, oh! if we could
see round the turn in the corridor, we should see that the solitude
is but for a moment, and that the true office of Death is not so much
to part from those beloved on earth as to carry to, and unite with,
Him that is best Beloved in the heavens, and in Him with all His
saints. They that are joined to Christ, as they who pass from earth
are joined, are thereby joined to all who, in like manner, are knit
to Him. Although other dear bonds are loosed by the bony fingers of
the Skeleton, his very loosing of them ties more closely the bond
that unites us to Jesus, and when the dull ear of the dying has
ceased to hear the voices of earth that used to thrill it in their
lowest whisper, I suppose it hears another Voice that says: 'When
thou passest through the fire I will be with thee, and through the
waters they shall not overflow thee.' Thus the Separator unites,
first to Jesus, and then to 'the general assembly and Church of the
first-born,' and leads into the city of the living God, the pilgrims
who long have lived, often isolated, in the desert.
There is a last element in Death which is changed for the Christian,
and that is that to men generally, when they think about it, there is
an instinctive recoil from Death, because there is an instinctive
suspicion that after Death is the Judgment, and that, somehow or
other--never mind about the drapery in which the idea may be embodied
for our weakness--when a man dies he passes to a state where he will
reap the consequences of what he has sown here. But to Christ's
servant that last thought is robbed of its sting, and all the poison
sucked out of it, for he can say: 'He that died for me makes it
possible for me to die undreading, and to pass thither, knowing that
I shall meet as my Judge Him whom I have trusted as my Saviour, and
so may have boldness before Him in the Day of Judgment.'
Knit these four contrasts together. Death as a step into a dim
unknown _versus_ Death as a step into a region lighted by Jesus;
Death as the cessation of activity _versus_ Death as the introduction
to nobler opportunities, and the endowment with nobler capacities of
service; Death as the separator and isolator _versus_ Death as
uniting to Jesus and all His lovers; Death as haling us to the
judgment-seat of the adversary _versus_ Death as bringing us to the
tribunal of the Christ; and I think we can understand how Christians
can venture to say, 'All things are ours, whether life or death'
which leads to a better life.
And now let me add one word more. All this that I have been saying,
and all the blessed strength for ourselves and calming in our sorrows
which result therefrom, stand or fall with the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. There is nothing else that makes these things certain. There
are, of course, instincts, peradventures, hopes, fears, doubts. But
in this region, and in regard to all this cycle of truths, the same
thing applies which applies round the whole horizon of Christian
Revelation--if you want not speculations but certainties, you have to
go to Jesus Christ for them. There were many men who thought that
there were islands of the sea beyond the setting sun that dyed the
western waves, but Columbus went and came back again, and brought
their products--and then the thought became a fact. Unless you
believe that Jesus Christ has come back from 'the bourne from which
no traveller returns,' and has come laden with the gifts of 'happy
isles of Eden' far beyond the sea, there is no certitude upon which a
dying man can lay his head, or by which a bleeding heart can be
staunched. But when He draws near, alive from the dead, and says to
us, as He did to the disciples on the evening of the day of
Resurrection, 'Peace be unto you,' and shows us His hands and His
side, then we do not only speculate or think a future life possible
or probable, or hesitate to deny it, or hope or fear, as the case may
be, but we _know_, and we can say: 'All things are ours ... death'
amongst others. The fact that Jesus Christ has died changes the whole
aspect of death to His servant, inasmuch as in that great solitude he
has a companion, and in the valley of the shadow of death sees
footsteps that tell him of One that went before.
Nor need I do more than remind you how the manner of our Lord's death
shows that He is Lord not only of the dead but of the Death that
makes them dead. For His own tremendous assertion, 'I have power to
lay down My life, and I have power to take it again,' was confirmed
by His attitude and His words at the last, as is hinted at by the
very expressions with which the Evangelists record the fact of His
death: 'He yielded up His spirit,' 'He gave up the ghost,' 'He
breathed out His life.' It is confirmed to us by such words as those
remarkable ones of the Apocalypse, which speak of Him as 'the Living
One,' who, by His own will, 'became dead.' He died because He would,
and He would die because He loved you and me. And in dying, He showed
Himself to be, not the Victim, but the Conqueror, of the Death to
which He submitted. The Jewish king on the fatal field of Gilboa
called his sword-bearer, and the servant came, and Saul bade him
smite, and when his trembling hand shrank from such an act, the king
fell on his own sword. The Lord of life and death summoned His
servant Death, and He came obedient, but Jesus died not by Death's
stroke, but by His own act. So that Lord of Death, who died because
He would, is the Lord who has the keys of death and the grave. In
regard to one servant He says, 'I will that he tarry till I come,'
and that man lives through a century, and in regard to another He
says, 'Follow thou Me,' and that man dies on a cross. The dying Lord
is Lord of Death, and the living Lord is for us all the Prince of
Life.
Brethren, we have to take His yoke upon us by the act of faith which
leads to a love that issues in an obedience which will become more
and more complete, as we become more fully Christ's. Then death will
be ours, for then we shall count that the highest good for us will be
fuller union with, a fuller possession of, and a completer conformity
to, Jesus Christ our King, and that whatever brings us these, even
though it brings also pain and sorrow and much from which we shrink,
is all on our side. It is possible--may it be so with each of
us!--that for us Death may be, not an enemy that bans us into
darkness and inactivity, or hales us to a judgment-seat, but the
Angel who wakes us, at whose touch the chains fall off, and who leads
us through 'the iron gate that opens of its own accord,' and brings
us into the City.