Neither death nor life can do it. Not death--nor even life. Both are
formidable forces; and Paul knew which was the more dangerous of the
two.
So he died for his faith. That is fine--
More than most of us do.
But, say, can you add to that line
That he lived for it, too?
When Elizabeth came to the English throne, a number of men and women,
who were awaiting martyrdom under Mary, were liberated. Animated by the
spirit of Ridley and Latimer, they would have kissed the faggots and
embraced the stake. Yet, in the years that followed, some of them lapsed
into indifference, went the way of the world, and named the name of
Christ no more. The ordeal of life proved more potent and more terrible
than the ordeal of a fiery death.
Bunyan had learned that lesson. When he was in the depths of his
despair, envying the beasts and birds about him, and tormenting himself
with visions of hell-fire, he went one day to hear a sermon on the love
of Christ. To use his own words, his 'comforting time was come.' 'I
began,' he says, 'to give place to the word which with power did over
and over again make this joyful sound within my soul: "_Who shall
separate me from the love of Christ?_" And with that my heart was filled
full of comfort and hope, and I could believe that my sins would be
forgiven me. Yea, I was so taken with the love and mercy of God that I
remember that I could not tell how to contain till I got home; I thought
I could have spoken of His love to the very crows that sat upon the
ploughed lands before me. Surely I will not forget this forty years
hence?'
Forty years hence! Forty years hence Bunyan was sleeping in his quiet
grave in Bunhill Fields; and nobody who visits that familiar
resting-place of his supposes for a moment that _death_ has separated
him from the love of Christ.
But _life_! Life is a far more dangerous foe. 'The tempter,' Bunyan
tells us, 'would come upon me with such discouragements as these: "You
are very hot for mercy, but I will cool you. This frame shall not last.
Many have been as hot as you for a spirit, but I have quenched their
zeal." With this, several, who were fallen off, would be set before mine
eyes. Then I would be afraid that I should fall away, too, but, thought
I, I will watch and take care. "Though you do," said the tempter, "I
shall be too hard for you. I will cool you insensibly, by degrees, by
little and little. Continual rocking will lull a crying child to sleep.
I shall have you cold before long!" These things,' Bunyan continues,
'brought me into great straits. I feared that time would wear from my
mind my sense of the evil of sin, of the worth of heaven, and of my need
of the blood of Christ.' But at that critical moment a text came to his
help--Uncle Tom's text, Signor Gavazzi's text. '_What shall separate us
from the love of Christ? For I am persuaded that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall
be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord._' 'That,' Bunyan says, 'was a good word to me.'
Death cannot do it!--that is good!
Life cannot do it!--that is better!
'And now I hoped,' says Bunyan, in concluding his narrative of this
experience, 'now I hoped that long life would not destroy me nor make me
miss of heaven.'
V
Paul dares the universe. He defies infinity. He summons, in pairs, all
the powers that be, and glories in their impotence to dissolve the
sacred tie that binds him to his Lord.
He calls _Life and Death_ before him and dares them to do it!
He calls the _Powers of this World_ and the _Powers of Every Other_;
none of them, he says, can do it!
He calls the _Things of the Historic Present_ and the _Developments of
the Boundless Future_. Whatever changes may come with the pageant of the
ages, there is one dear relationship that nothing can ever affect!
He calls the _Things in the Heights_ and the _Things in the Depths_; but
neither among angels nor devils can he discover any force that makes his
faith to falter!
He surveys _this Creation_ and he contemplates _the Possibility of
Others_; but it is with a smile of confidence and triumph.
'_For I am persuaded_,' he says, '_that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord._'