repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord also hath put away
thy sin; thou shalt not die"; which means most expressively, thou
shalt not die to God.
In one sense David died, as all men die; nor was he by any means
freed from the punishment of his sin; he was not, in that sense,
forgiven, but he was allowed still to regard God as his God; and
therefore his punishments were but fatherly chastisements from God's
hand, designed for his profit that he might be partaker of God's
holiness.
And thus altho Saul was sentenced to lose his kingdom, and altho he
was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa, yet I do not think that
we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou shalt surely die"; and
therefore we have no right to say that God had ceased to be his God
altho He visited him with severe chastisements and would not allow
him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel. Observe also the
language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions
occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall surely die."
We have no right to refer these to a mere extension on the one
hand, or a cutting short on the other, of the term of earthly
existence. The promise of living long in the land or, as in
Hezekiah's case, of adding to his days fifteen years, is very
different from the full and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely
live." And we know, undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to
whom Ezekiel spoke died alike the natural death of the body. But
the peculiar force of the promise and of the threat was, in the
one case, Thou shalt belong to God; in the other, Thou shalt cease
to belong to Him; although the veil was not yet drawn up which
concealed the full import of those terms, "belonging to God," and
"ceasing to belong to Him": nay, can we venture to affirm that it is
fully drawn aside even now?
I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to
place the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a
light which is exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think
the Scripture implies, that to be dead and to be without God are
precisely the same thing, then can it be denied that the symptoms of
death are strongly marked upon many of us? Are there not many who
never think of God or care about His service? Are there not many
who live, to all appearance, as unconscious of His existence, as we
fancy the inferior animals to be?
And is it not quite clear that to such persons God cannot be said
to be their God? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of
the universe, the God of Christ's Church; but He is not their God,
for they feel to have nothing at all to do with Him; and therefore,
as He is not their God, they are, and must be according to the
Scripture, reckoned among the dead.
But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are
alive live unto Him; all who live unto Him are alive. "God said, I
am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob";
and therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are not
and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns them: He
is not ashamed to be called their God; therefore they are not cast
out from Him; therefore, by necessity, they live.
Wonderful, indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement, as
we have seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as she
who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was in a moment relieved
from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out from Him;
so they who are not cast out from God, but have anything whatever to
do with Him, feel the virtue of His gracious presence penetrating
their whole nature; because He lives, they must live also.
Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote (if a few
years be, indeed, to be called remote), but even now present before
us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto God,
or dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we
are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In
the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that
highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been
revealed to us, that we know now that death means a conscious and
perpetual death, as life means a conscious and perpetual life.
But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we fancy that,
by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the infinite
heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in those
little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far deeper,
than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even on the
first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that infinite
ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us a
foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this mortal state, even
to you, advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey,
life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to be alive
to Him, are things perceptibly different.
For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most
separate from Him, and most without Him, whether there is not now
actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness,
the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether
they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are
not: for they who fear God are not dead to Him, nor He to them.
The thought of Him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very
point we start from. But I would ask them whether they know what
it is to feel God's blessing. For instance: we all of us have our
troubles of some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our
sorrows. In these troubles, in these disappointments,--I care not
how small they may be,--have they known what it is to feel that
God's hand is over them; that these little annoyances are but
His fatherly correction; that He is all the time loving us, and
supporting us? In seasons of joy, such as they taste very often,
have they known what it is to feel that they are tasting the
kindness of their heavenly Father, that their good things come from
His hand and are but an infinitely slight foretaste of His love?
Sickness, danger; I know that they come to many of us but rarely;
but if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter
form, if not in its graver,--have we felt what it is to know that we
are in our Father's hands, that He is with us, and will be with us
to the end; that nothing can hurt those whom He loves?
Surely, then, if we have never tasted anything of this: if in
trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left wholly to ourselves
to bear as we can and enjoy as we can; if there is no voice that
ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us to give any
answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this vast
world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever
we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone,
the coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the
things which we see around us cannot remain with us nor we with
them. The coldness and loneliness of the world, without God, must
be felt more and more as life wears on; in every change of our own
state, in every separation from or loss of a friend, in every more
sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every additional experience
of the uncertainty of our own counsels,--the deathlike feeling will
come upon us more and more strongly: we shall gain more of that
fearful knowledge which tells us that "God is not the God of the
dead."
And so, also, the blessed knowledge that He is the God "of the
living" grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely He "is not far
from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who
live unto Him that He is their God and that they are His children.
On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the
warmth of His love is spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere
of their lives; they forever feel His blessing. And if it fills
them with joy unspeakable even now, when they so often feel how
little they deserve it; if they delight still in being with God, and
in living to Him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the
unerring witness of life eternal: God is the God of the living, and
all who are with Him must live.
Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home in any degree to the
minds of those who are dead; for it is of the very nature of the
dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that,
even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news
reached me that one who two months ago was one of your number, who
this very half-year has shared in all the business and amusements of
this place, is passed already into that state where the meanings of
the terms life and death are become fully revealed. He knows what it
is to live unto God and what it is to die to Him. Those things which
are to us unfathomable mysteries are to him all plain: and yet but
two months ago he might have thought himself as far from attaining
this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it is clear that these
things, life and death, may hurry their lesson upon us sooner than
we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to receive it. And that
were indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and yet little feeling it
because of the enjoyments of our worldly life, those enjoyments
were on a sudden to be struck away from us, and we should find then
that to be dead to God was death indeed, a death from which there is
no waking, and in which there is no sleeping forever.
WAYLAND
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JESUS OF NAZARETH
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Francis Wayland, preacher and philosopher, was born in New York,
in 1796. He graduated at Union College in 1813 and in 1816 entered
Hudson Theological Seminary. His first charge was the First
Baptist Church in Boston. Here he established his reputation as an
able and vigorous pulpit orator. Five years later he accepted a
chair in Union College, but in 1827 entered upon an incumbency of
twenty-eight years as President of Brown University, Providence.
This institution he built up on a broad and liberal basis, quite
emancipating it from narrow sectarianism. In 1855 he became pastor
of the First Baptist Church in Providence and died in 1865.
WAYLAND
1796-1865
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JESUS OF NAZARETH
_And the apostles, when they were returned, told him all that they
had done. And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert
place, belonging to the city called Bethsaida. And the people
when they knew it, followed him: and he received them, and spake
unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of
healing. And when the day began to wear away, then came the twelve,
and said unto him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into
the towns and country round about, and lodge and get victuals: for
we are here in a desert place. But he said unto them, Give ye them
to eat. And they said, We have no more but five loaves and two
fishes; except we should go and buy meat for all this people. For
they were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples,
Make them sit down by fifties in a company. And they did so, and
made them all sit down. Then he took the five loaves and the two
fishes and looking up to heaven, he blessed them and brake, and gave
to the disciples to set before the multitude. And they did eat, and
were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained
to them twelve baskets._--Luke ix., 10-17.
It was the sagacious opinion of, I think, the late Professor
Porson, that he would rather see a single copy of a daily newspaper
of ancient Athens, than read all the commentaries upon the
Grecian tragedies that have ever been written. The reason for
this preference is obvious. A single sheet, similar to our daily
newspapers, published in the time of Pericles, would admit us at
once to a knowledge of the habits, manners, modes of opinion,
political relations, social condition, and moral attainments of
the people, such as we never could gain from the study of all the
writers that have ever attempted to illustrate the nature of Grecian
civilization.
The same remark is true in respect to our knowledge of the character
of individuals who have lived in a former age. What would we not,
at the present day, give for a few pages of the private diary of
Julius Cesar, or Cicero, or Brutus, or Augustus; or for the minute
reminiscences of any one who had spent a few days in the company of
either of these distinguished men? What a flood of life would the
discovery of such a manuscript throw upon Roman life, but especially
upon the private opinions, the motives, the aspirations, the moral
estimates of the men whose names have become household words
throughout the world! A few such pages might, perchance, dissipate
the authority of many a bulky folio on which we now rely with
implicit confidence. Not only would the characters of these heroes
of antiquity stand out in bolder relief than they have ever done
before, but the individuals themselves would be brought within the
range of our personal sympathy; and we should seem to commune with
them as we do with an intimate acquaintance.
It is worthy of remark, that we are favored with a larger portion
of this kind of information, respecting Jesus of Nazareth, than
almost any other distinguished person that has ever lived. He left
no writings Himself; hence all that we know of Him has been written
by others. The narrators, however, were the personal attendants, and
not the mere auditors or pupils of their master. The apostles were
members of the family of Jesus; they traveled with Him, on foot,
throughout the length and breadth of Palestine; they partook with
Him of his frugal meals, and bore with Him the trial of hunger,
weariness, and want of shelter; they followed Him through the lonely
wilderness and the crowded street; they saw His miracles in every
variety of form, and listened to His discourses in public as well
as to His explanations in private. Hence their whole narrative is
instinct with life; a vivid picture of Jewish manners and customs,
rendered more definite and characteristic by the moral light which
then, for the first time, shone upon it. Hence it is that these few
pages are replete with moral lessons that never weary us in the
perusal, and which have been the source of unfailing illumination to
all succeeding ages.
The verses which I have read, as the text of this discourse, may
well be taken as an illustration of all that I have here said. They
may, without impropriety, be styled a day in the life of Jesus of
Nazareth. By observing the manner in which our blessed Lord spent a
single day, we may form some conception of the kind of life which
He ordinarily led; and we may, perchance, treasure up some lessons
which it were well if we should exemplify in our daily practice.
The place at which these events occurred was near the head of the
Sea of Galilee, where it receives the waters of the upper Jordan.
This was one of the Savior's favorite places of resort. Capernaum,
Chorazin, and Bethsaida, all in this immediate vicinity, are always
spoken of in the gospels as towns which enjoyed the largest share of
His ministerial labors, and were distinguished most frequently with
the honor of His personal presence. The scenery of the neighborhood
is wild and romantic. To the north and west, the eye rests on the
lofty summits of Lebanon and Hermon. To the south, there opens upon
the view the blue expanse of the lake, enclosed by frowning rocks,
which here and there jut over far into the waters, and then again
retire towards the land, leaving a level beach to invite the labors
of the fishermen. The people, removed at a considerable distance
from the metropolis of Judea, cultivated those rural habits with
which the simple tastes of the Savior would most readily harmonize.
Near this spot was also one of the most frequented fords of the
Jordan, on the road from Damascus to Jerusalem; and thus, while
residing here, He enjoyed unusual facilities for disseminating
throughout this whole region a knowledge of those truths which He
came on earth to promulgate.
Some weeks previous to the time in which the events spoken of in
the text occurred, our Lord had sent His disciples to announce the
approach of the kingdom of heaven, in all the cities and villages
which He Himself proposed to visit. He conferred on them the power
to work miracles, in attestation of their authority, and of the
divine character of Him by whom they were sent. He imposed upon them
strict rules of conduct, and directed them to make known to every
one who would hear them the good news of the coming dispensation.
As soon as He sent them forth, He Himself went immediately abroad
to teach and to preach in their cities. As their Master and Lord,
He might reasonably have claimed exemption from the personal
toil and the rigid self-denials to which they were by necessity
subjected. But He had laid no claim to such exemption. He commenced
without delay the performance of the very same duties which He
had imposed upon them. He felt himself under obligation to set an
example of obedience to His own rules. "The Son of Man," said He,
"came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His
life a ransom for many." "Which," said He, "is greater, he that
sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? but I am among you as He that
serveth." Would it not be well, if, in this respect, we copied more
minutely the example of our Lord, and held ourselves responsible
for the performance of the very same duties which we so willingly
impose upon our brethren? We best prove that we believe an act
obligatory, when we commence the performance of it ourselves. Many
zealous Christians employ themselves in no other labor than that
of urging their brethren to effort. Our Savior acted otherwise.
In this respect, His example is specially to be imitated by His
ministers. When they urge upon others a moral duty, they must be
the first to perform it. When they inculcate an act of self-denial,
they themselves must make the noblest sacrifice. Can we conceive
of anything which could so much increase the moral power of the
ministry, and rouse to a flame the dormant energy of the churches,
as obedience to this teaching of Christ by the preachers of His
gospel?
It seems that the Savior had selected a well-known spot, at the
head of the lake, for the place of meeting for his apostles, after
this their first missionary tour had been completed. "The apostles
gathered themselves unto Jesus, and told Him all things, both
what they had done, and what they had taught." There is something
delightful in this filial confidence which these simple-hearted
men reposed in their almighty Redeemer. They told Him of their
success and their failure, of their wisdom and their folly, of
their reliance and their unbelief. We can almost imagine ourselves
spectators of this meeting between Christ and them, after this
their first separation from each other. The place appointed was
most probably some well-known locality on the shore of the lake,
under the shadow of its overhanging rocks, where the cool air from
the bosom of the water refreshed each returning laborer, as he came
back beaten out with the fatigues of travel, under the burning sun
of Syria. You can imagine the joy with which each drew near to the
Master, after this temporary absence; and the honest greetings with
which every newcomer was welcomed by those who had chanced to arrive
before him. We can seem to perceive the Savior of men listening with
affectionate earnestness to the recital of their various adventures;
and interposing, from time to time, a word either of encouragement
or of caution, as the character and circumstances of each narrator
required it. The bosom of each was unveiled before the Searcher of
Hearts, and the consolation which each one needed was bestowed upon
him abundantly. The toilsomeness of their journey was no longer
remembered, as each one received from the Son of God the smile
of His approbation. That was truly a joyful meeting. Of all that
company there is not one who has forgotten that day; nor will he
forget it ever. With unreserved frankness they told Jesus of all
that they had done, and what they had taught; of all their acts,
and all their conversations. Would it not be better for us, if we
cultivated more assiduously this habit of intimate intercourse with
the Savior? Were we every day to tell Jesus of all that we have
done and said; did we spread before Him our joys and our sorrows,
our faults and our infirmities, our successes and our failures, we
should be saved from many an error and many a sin. Setting the Lord
always before us, He would be on our right hand, and we should not
be moved. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
The Savior perceived that the apostles needed much instruction which
could not be communicated in a place where both He and they were so
well known. They had committed many errors, which He preferred to
correct in private. By doing His will, they had learned to repose
greater confidence in His wisdom, and were prepared to receive from
Him more important instruction. But these lessons could not be
delivered in the hearing of a promiscuous audience. Nor was this
all. He perceived that the apostles were worn out with their labors,
and needed repose. Surrounded as they were by the multitude, which
had already begun to collect about them, rest and retirement were
equally impossible. "There were many coming and going, and they had
no leisure, even so much as to eat." He therefore said to them,
"Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while."
For this purpose, He "took ship, and crossed over with his disciples
alone, and went into a desert place belonging to Bethsaida."
The religion of Christ imposes upon us duties of retirement, as
well as duties of publicity. The apostles had been for some time
past before the eyes of all men, preaching and working miracles.
Their souls needed retirement. "Solitude," said Cecil, "is my great
ordinance." They would be greatly improved by private communion both
with Him and with each other. It was for the purpose of affording
them such a season of moral recreation, that our Lord withdrew them
from the public gaze into a desert place. Nor was this all. Their
labor for some weeks past had been severe. They had traveled on foot
under a tropical sun, reasoning with unbelievers, instructing the
ignorant, and comforting the cast-down. Called upon, at all hours,
both of the day and night, to work cures on those that were opprest
with diseases, their bodies, no less than their spirits, needed
rest. Our Lord saw this, and He made provision for it. He withdrew
them from labor, that they might find, tho it were but for a day,
the repose which their exhausted natures demanded. The religion of
Christ is ever merciful, and ever consistent in its benevolence.
It is thoughtful of the benefactor as well as the recipient. It
requires of us all labor and self-sacrifice, but to these it affixes
a limit. It never commands us to ruin our health and enfeeble our
minds by unnatural exhaustion. It teaches us to obey the laws of
our physical organization, and to prepare ourselves for the labors
of to-morrow by the judiciously conducted labors of to-day. It was
on this principle that our Lord conducted His intercourse with His
disciples. "He knew their frame, and remembered that they were dust."