It is possible, then, at the end of life to feel that it has satisfied
one's wishes. Whether it does or no will depend mostly on ourselves,
and very slightly on our circumstances. Length of days, competence,
health, and friends are important; but neither these nor any other
externals will make the difference between a life which, in the
retrospect, will seem to have been sufficient for our desires, and one
which leaves a hunger in the heart. It is possible for us to make our
lives of such a sort, that whether they run on to the apparent maturity
of old age, or whether they are cut short in the midst of our days, we
may rise from the table feeling that it has satisfied our desires, met
our anticipation, and been all very good.
Possibly, that is not the way in which most of us look at life. That is
not the way in which a great many of us seem to think that it is an
eminent part of Christian and religious character to look at life. But
it is the way in which the highest type of devotion and the truest
goodness always look at it. There are people, old and young, who,
whenever they look back, whether it be over a long tract of years or
over a short one, have nothing to say about it except: 'Vanity of
vanities! all is vanity and vexation of spirit'; a retrospect of weary
disappointments and thwarted plans.
How different with some of us the forward and the backward look! Are
there not some listening to me, whose past is so dark that it flings
black shadows over their future, and who can only cherish hopes for
to-morrow, by giving the lie to and forgetting the whole of their
yesterdays? It is hard to paint the regions before us like 'the Garden
of the Lord,' when we know that the locusts of our own godless desires
have made all the land behind us desolate. If your past has been a
selfish past, a godless past, in which passion, inclination, whim,
anything but conscience and Christ have ruled, your remembrances can
scarcely be tranquil; nor your hopes bright. If you have only
'prospects drear,' when you 'backward cast your eye,' it is not
wonderful if 'forwards though you cannot see,' you will 'guess and
fear.' Such lives, when they come towards an end, are wont to be full
of querulous discontent and bitterness. We have all seen godless old
men cynical and sour, pleased with nothing, grumbling, or feebly
complaining, about everything, dissatisfied with all which life has
thus far yielded them, and yet clinging desperately to it, and afraid
to go.
Put by the side of such an end this calm picture of the old man going
down into his grave, and looking back over all those long days since he
came away from his father's house, and became a pilgrim and a stranger.
How all the hot anxieties, desires, occupations, of youth have quieted
themselves down! How far away now seem the warlike days when he fought
the invading kings! How far away the heaviness of heart when he
journeyed to Mount Moriah with his boy, and whetted the knife to slay
his son! His love had all been buried in Sarah's grave. He has been a
lonely man for many years; and yet he looks back, as God looked back
over His creative week, and feels that all has been good. 'It was all
for the best; the great procession of my life has been ordered from the
beginning to its end, by the Hand that shapes beauty everywhere, and
has made all things blessed and sweet. I have drunk a full draught; I
have had enough; I bless the Giver of the feast, and push my chair
back; and get up and go away.' He died an old man, and satisfied with
his life.
Ay! And what a contrast that makes, dear friends, to another set of
people. There is nothing more miserable than to see a man, as his years
go by, gripping harder and tighter at this poor, fleeting world that is
slipping away from him; nothing sadder than to see how, as
opportunities and capacities for the enjoyment of life dwindle, and
dwindle, and dwindle, people become almost fierce in the desire to keep
it. Why, you can see on the face of many an old man and woman a hungry
discontent, that has not come from the mere wrinkles of old age or
care; an eager acquisitiveness looking out of the dim old eyes,
tragical and awful. It is sad to see a man, as the world goes from him,
grasping at its skirts as a beggar does at the retreating passer-by
that refuses him an alms. Are there not some of us who feel that this
is our case, that the less we have before us of life here on earth, the
more eagerly we grasp at the little which still remains; trying to get
some last drops out of the broken cistern which we know can hold no
water? How different this blessed acquiescence in the fleeting away of
the fleeting; and this contented satisfaction with the portion that has
been given him, which this man had who died willingly, being satisfied
with life!
Sometimes, too, there is satiety--weariness of life which is not
satisfaction, though it looks like it. Its language is: 'Man delights
me not; nor woman neither. I am tired of it all.' Those who feel thus
sit at the table without an appetite. They think that they have seen to
the bottom of everything, and they have found everything a cheat. They
expect nothing new under the sun; that which is to be hath already
been, and it is all vanity and striving after the wind. They are at
once satiated and dissatisfied. Nothing keeps the power to charm.
How different from all this is the temper expressed in this text,
rightly understood! Abraham had had a richly varied life. It had
brought him all he wished. He has drunk a full draught, and needs no
more. He is satisfied, but that does not mean loss of interest in
present duties, occupations, or enjoyments. It is possible to keep
ourselves fully alive to all these till the end, and to preserve
something of the keen edge of youth even in old age, by the magic of
communion with God, purity of conduct, and a habitual contemplation of
all events as sent by our Father. When Paul felt himself very near his
end, he yet had interest enough in common things to tell Timothy all
about their mutual friends' occupations, and to wish to have his books
and parchments.
So, calmly, satisfied and yet not sickened, keenly appreciating all the
good and pleasantness of life, and yet quite willing to let it go,
Abraham died. So may it be with us too, if we will, no matter what the
duration or the externals of our life. If we too are his children by
faith, we shall be 'blessed with faithful Abraham.' And I beseech you
to ask yourselves whether the course of your life is such as that, if
at this moment God's great knife were to come down and cut it in two,
you would be able to say, 'Well! I have had enough, and now contentedly
I go.'
Again, it is possible at the end of life to feel that it is complete,
because the days have accomplished for us the highest purpose of life.
Scaffoldings are for buildings, and the moments and days and years of
our earthly lives are scaffolding. What are you building inside the
scaffolding, brother? What kind of a structure will be disclosed when
the scaffolding is knocked away? What is the end for which days and
years are given? That they may give us what eternity cannot take
away--a character built upon the love of God in Christ, and moulded
into His likeness. 'Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him
for ever.' Has your life helped you to do that? If it has, though you
be but a child, you are full of years; if it has not, though your hair
be whitened with the snows of the nineties, you are yet incomplete and
immature. The great end of life is to make us like Christ, and pleasing
to Christ. If life has done that for us, we have got the best out of
it, and our life is completed, whatever may be the number of the days.
Quality, not quantity, is the thing that determines the perfectness of
a life. And like as in northern lands, where there is only a week or
two from the melting of the snow to the cutting of the hay, the whole
harvest of a life may be gathered in a very little space, and all be
done which is needed to make the life complete. Has your life this
completeness? Can you be 'satisfied' with it, because the river of the
flowing hours has borne down some grains of gold amidst the mass of
mud, and, notwithstanding many sins and failures, you have thus far
fulfilled the end of your being, that you are in some measure trusting
and serving the Lord Jesus Christ?
Again, it is possible, at the end of life, to be _willing_ to go as
satisfied.
Most men cling to life in grim desperation, like a climber to a cliff
giving way, or a drowning man clutching at any straw. How beautiful the
contrast of the placid, tranquil acquiescence expressed in that phrase
of our text! No doubt there will always be the shrinking of the bodily
nature from death. But that may be overcome. There is no passion so
weak but in some case it has 'mated and mastered the fear of death,'
and it is possible for us all to come to that temper in which we shall
be ready for either fortune, to live and serve Him here, or to die and
enjoy Him yonder. Or, to return to an earlier illustration, it is
possible to be like a man sitting at table, who has had his meal, and
is quite contented to stay on there, restful and cheerful, but is not
unwilling to put back his chair, to get up and to go away, thanking the
Giver for what he has received.
Ah! that is the way to face the end, dear brethren, and how is it to be
done? Such a temper need not be the exclusive possession of the old. It
may belong to us at all stages of life. How is it won? By a life of
devout communion with God. The secret of it lies in obeying the
commandment and realising the truth which Abraham realised and obeyed:
'I am the Almighty God, walk before Me, and be thou perfect.' 'Fear
not, Abram, I am thy shield and thine exceeding great reward.' That is
to say, a simple communion with God, realising His presence and feeling
that He is near, will sweeten disappointment, will draw from it its
hidden blessedness, will make us victors over its pains and its woes.
Such a faith will make it possible to look back and see only blessing;
to look forward and see a great light of hope burning in the darkness.
Such a faith will check weariness, avert satiety, promote satisfaction,
and will help us to feel that life and the great hereafter are but the
outer and inner mansions of the Father's house, and death the short
though dark corridor between. So we shall be ready for life or for
death.
2. Now I must turn to consider more briefly the glimpse of the joyful
society beyond, which is given us in that other remarkable expression
of our text: 'He was gathered to his people'
That phrase is only used in the earlier Old Testament books, and there
only in reference to a few persons. It is used of Abraham, Ishmael,
Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron, and once (Judges ii. 10) of a whole
generation. If you will weigh the words, I think you will see that
there is in them a dim intimation of something beyond this present life.
'He was gathered to his people' is not the same thing as 'He died,'
for, in the earlier part of the verse, we read, 'Abraham gave up the
ghost and died ... and was gathered to his people.' It is not the same
thing as being buried. For we read in the following verse: 'And his
sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the
field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre.'
It is then the equivalent neither of death nor of burial. It conveys
dimly and veiledly that Abraham was buried, and yet that was not all
that happened to him. He was buried, but also 'he was gathered to his
people.' Why! his own 'people' were buried in Mesopotamia, and his
grave was far away from theirs. What is the meaning of the expression?
Who were the people he was gathered to? In death or in burial, 'the
dust returns to the earth as it was.' What was it that was gathered to
his people?
Dimly, vaguely, veiledly, but unmistakably, as it seems to me, is here
expressed at least a premonition and feeling after the thought of an
immortal self in Abraham that was not there in what 'his sons Isaac and
Ishmael laid in the cave at Machpelah,' but was somewhere else and was
for ever. That is the first thing hinted at here--the continuance of
the personal being after death.
Is there anything more? I think there is. Now, remember, Abraham's
whole life was shaped by that commandment, 'Get thee out from thy
father's house, and from thy kindred, and from thy country.' He never
dwelt with his kindred; all his days he was a pilgrim and a sojourner,
a stranger in a strange land. And though he was living in the midst of
a civilisation which possessed great cities whose walls reached to
heaven, he pitched his tent beneath the terebinth tree at Mamre, and
would have nothing to do with the order of things around him, but
remained an exotic, a waif, an outcast in the midst of Canaan all his
life. Why? Because he 'looked for the city which hath the foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.' And now he has gone to it, he is
gathered to his people. The life of isolation is over, the true social
life is begun. He is no longer separated from those around him, or
flung amidst those that are uncongenial to him. 'He is gathered to his
people'; he dwells with his own tribe; he is at home; he is in the city.
And so, brethren, life for every Christian man must be lonely. After
all communion we dwell as upon islands dotted over a great archipelago,
each upon his little rock, with the sea dashing between us; but the
time comes when, if our hearts are set upon that great Lord, whose
presence makes us one, there shall be no more sea, and all the isolated
rocks shall be parts of a great continent. Death sets the solitary in
families. We are here like travellers plodding lonely through the night
and the storm, but soon to cross the threshold into the lighted hall,
full of friends.
If we cultivate that sense of detachment from the present, and of
having our true affinities in the unseen, if we dwell here as strangers
because our citizenship is in heaven, then death will not drag us away
from our associates, nor hunt us into a lonely land, but will bring us
where closer bonds shall knit the 'sweet societies' together, and the
sheep shall couch close by one another, because all are gathered round
the one shepherd. Then many a broken tie shall be rewoven, and the
solitary wanderer meet again the dear ones whom he had 'loved long
since, and lost awhile.'
Further, the expressions suggest that in the future men shall be
associated according to affinity and character. 'He was gathered to his
people,' whom he was like and who were like him; the people with whom
he had sympathy, the people whose lives were shaped after the fashion
of his own.
Men will be sorted there. Gravitation will come into play undisturbed;
and the pebbles will be ranged according to their weights on the great
shore where the sea has cast them up, as they are upon Chesil beach,
down there in the English Channel, and many another coast besides; all
the big ones together and sized off to the smaller ones, regularly and
steadily laid out. Like draws to like. Our spiritual affinities, our
religious and moral character, will settle where we shall be, and who
our companions will be when we get yonder. Some of us would not
altogether like to live with the people that are like ourselves, and
some of us would not find the result of this sorting to be very
delightful. Men in the Dantesque circles were only made more miserable
because all around them were of the same sort as, and some of them
worse than, themselves. And an ordered hell, with no company for the
liar but liars, and none for the thief but thieves, and none for impure
men but the impure, and none for the godless but the godless, would be
a hell indeed.
'He was gathered to his people,' and you and I will be gathered
likewise. What is the conclusion of the whole matter? Let us follow
with our thoughts, and in our lives, those who have gone into the
light, and cultivate in heart and character those graces and
excellences which are congruous with the inheritance of the saints in
light. Above all, let us give our hearts to Christ, by simple faith in
Him, to be shaped and sanctified by Him. Then our country will be where
He is, and our people will be the people in whom His love abides, and
the tribe to which we belong will be the tribe of which He is
Chieftain. So when our turn comes, we may rise thankfully from the
table in the wilderness, which He has spread for us, having eaten as
much as we desired, and quietly follow the dark-robed messenger whom
His love sends to bring us to the happy multitudes that throng the
streets of the city. There we shall find our true home, our kindred,
our King. 'So shall _we_ ever be with the Lord.'