meant this: that those who die in the fear of God, and in the faith of
Christ, do not really taste death; that to them there is no death, but
only a change of place, a change of state; that they pass at once, and
instantly, into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings,
unchanged,—purified doubtless from earthly stains, but still the same
living, thinking, active beings which they were here on earth. I say,
active. The Bible says nothing about their sleeping till the Day of
Judgment, as some have fancied. Rest they may; rest they will, if they
need rest. But what is the true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind.
To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care,—this is
the true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of
all—knowing one’s duty, and yet not being able to do it. That is true
rest; the rest of God, who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever;
as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles each day,
and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously,
fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, in perfect
work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final
consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of
His elect.
I hope that this is so. I trust that this is so. I think our Lord’s
great words can mean nothing less than this. And if it be so, what
comfort for us who must die? What comfort for us who have seen others
die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it
changes in us is our body—the mere shell and husk of us—such a change as
comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and
gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and
spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of
death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us
for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do
service to men or God? Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far
from the grave holding us down, it frees us from the very thing which
holds us down,—the mortal body?
Death is not death, then, if it kills no part of us, save that which
hindered us from perfect life. Death is not death, if it raises us in a
moment from darkness into light, from weakness into strength, from
sinfulness into holiness. Death is not death, if it brings us nearer to
Christ, who is the fount of life. Death is not death, if it perfects our
faith by sight, and lets us behold Him in whom we have believed. Death
is not death, if it gives us to those whom we have loved and lost, for
whom we have lived, for whom we long to live again. Death is not death,
if it joins the child to the mother who is gone before. Death is not
death, if it takes away from that mother for ever all a mother’s
anxieties, a mother’s fears, and lets her see, in the gracious
countenance of her Saviour, a sure and certain pledge that those whom she
has left behind are safe, safe with Christ and in Christ, through all the
chances and dangers of his mortal life. Death is not death, if it rids
us of doubt and fear, of chance and change, of space and time, and all
which space and time bring forth, and then destroy. Death is not death;
for Christ has conquered death, for Himself, and for those who trust in
Him. And to those who say, ‘You were born in time, and in time you must
die, as all other creatures do; Time is your king and lord, as he has
been of all the old worlds before this, and of all the races of beasts,
whose bones and shells lie fossil in the rocks of a thousand
generations;’ then we can answer them, in the words of the wise man, and
in the name of Christ who conquered death:—
‘Fly, envious time, till thou run out thy race,
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain
And merely mortal dross.
So little is our loss, so little is thy gain.
For when as each bad thing thou hast entombed,
And, last of all, thy greedy self consumed,
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss,
And joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When everything that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
And truth, and peace, and love shall ever shine
About the supreme throne
Of Him, unto whose happy-making sight alone
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit
Triumphant over death, and chance, and thee, O Time!’
SERMON IV.
THE WAGES OF SIN.
(_Chapel Royal June_, 1864)
ROM. vi. 21–23.
What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?
for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from
sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness,
and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the
gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
THIS is a glorious text, if we will only believe it simply, and take it
as it stands.
But if in place of St. Paul’s words we put quite different words of our
own, and say—By ‘the wages of sin is death,’ St. Paul means that the
punishment of sin is eternal life in torture, then we say something which
may be true, but which is not what St. Paul is speaking of here. For
wages are not punishment, and death is not eternal life in torture, any
more than in happiness.
That, one would think, was clear. It is our duty to take St. Paul’s
words, if we really believe them to be inspired, simply as they stand;
and if we do not quite understand them, to explain them by St. Paul’s own
words about these matters in other parts of his writings.
St. Paul was an inspired Apostle. Let him speak for himself. Surely he
knew best what he wished to say, and how to say it.
Now St. Paul’s opinions about death and eternal life are very clear; for
he speaks of them often, and at great length.
He considered that the great enemy of God and man, the last enemy Christ
would destroy, was death; and that, after death was destroyed, the end
would come, when God would be all in all. Then came the question, which
has puzzled men in all ages—How death came into the world. St. Paul
answers, By sin. He says, as the author of the third chapter of Genesis
says, that Adam became subject to death by his fall. By one man, he
says, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. And thus, he says, death reigned
even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s
transgression.
That he is speaking of bodily death is clear, because he is always
putting it in contrast to the resurrection to life,—not merely to a
spiritual resurrection from the death of sin to the life of
righteousness; but to the resurrection of the body,—to our Lord’s being
raised from the dead, that He might die no more.
Then he speaks of eternal life. He always speaks of it as an actual
life, in a spiritual body, into which our mortal bodies are to be
changed. Nothing can be clearer from what he says in 1 Cor. xv., that he
means an actual rising again of our bodies from bodily death; an actual
change in them; an actual life in them for ever.
But he says, again and again,—As sin caused the death of the body, so
righteousness is to cause its life.
‘When ye were the servants of sin,’ he says to the Romans, ‘what fruit
had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those
things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants
to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
This is St. Paul’s opinion. And we shall do well to believe it, and to
learn from it, this day, and all days.
The wages of sin and the end of sin is death. Not the punishment of sin;
but something much worse. The wages of sin, and the end of sin.
And how is that worse news? My friends, every sinner knows so well in
his heart that it is worse news, more terrible news, for him, that he
tries to persuade himself that death is only the arbitrary punishment of
his sin; or, quite as often, that the punishment of his sin is not even
death, but eternal torment in the next life.
And why? Because, as long as he can believe that death, or hell, are
only punishments arbitrarily fixed by God against his sins, he can hope
that God will let him off the punishment. Die, he knows he must, because
all men die; and so he makes up his mind to that: but being sent to hell
after he dies, is so very terrible a punishment, that he cannot believe
that God will be so hard on him as that. No; he will get off, and be
forgiven at last somehow, for surely God will not condemn him to hell.
And so he finds it very convenient and comfortable to believe in hell,
just because he does not believe that he is going there, whoever else may
be.
But, it is a very terrible, heartrending thought, for a man to find out
that what he will receive is not punishment, but wages; not punishment
but the end of the very road which he is travelling on. That the wages
of sin, and the end of sin, to which it must lead, are death; that every
time he sins he is earning those wages, deserving them, meriting them,
and therefore receiving them by the just laws of the world of God. That
does torment him, that does terrify him, if he will look steadfastly at
the broad plain fact—You need not dream of being let off, respited,
reprieved, pardoned in any way. The thing cannot be done. It is
contrary to the laws of God and of God’s universe. It is as impossible
as that fire should not burn, or water run up hill. It is not a question
of arbitrary punishment, which may be arbitrarily remitted; but of wages,
which you needs must take, weekly, daily, and hourly; and those wages are
death: a question of travelling on a certain road, whereon, if you travel
it long enough, you must come to the end of it; and the end is death.
Your sins are killing you by inches; all day long they are sowing in you
the seeds of disease and death. Every sin which you commit with your
body shortens your bodily life. Every sin you commit with your mind,
every act of stupidity, folly, wilful ignorance, helps to destroy your
mind, and leave you dull, silly, devoid of right reason. Every sin you
commit with your spirit, each sin of passion and temper, envy and malice,
pride and vanity, injustice and cruelty, extravagance and
self-indulgence, helps to destroy your spiritual life, and leave you bad,
more and more unable to do the right and avoid the wrong, more and more
unable to discern right from wrong; and that last is spiritual death, the
eternal death of your moral being. There are three parts in you—body,
mind, and spirit; and every sin you commit helps to kill one of these
three, and, in many cases, to kill all three together.
So, sinner, dream not of escaping punishment at the last. You are being
punished now, for you are punishing yourself; and you will continue to be
punished for ever, for you will be punishing yourself for ever, as long
as you go on doing wrong, and breaking the laws which God has appointed
for body, mind and spirit. You can see that a drunkard is killing
himself, body and mind, by drink. You see that he knows that, poor
wretch, as well as you. He knows that every time he gets drunk he is
cutting so much off his life; and yet he cannot help it. He knows that
drink is poison, and yet he goes back to his poison.
Then know, habitual sinner, that you are like that drunkard. That every
bad habit in which you indulge is shortening the life of some of your
faculties, and that God Himself cannot save you from the doom which you
are earning, deserving, and working out for yourself every day and every
hour.
Oh how men hate that message!—the message that the true wrath of God,
necessary, inevitable, is revealed from heaven against all
unrighteousness of men. How they writhe under it! How they shut their
ears to it, and cry to their preachers, ‘No! Tell us of any wrath of God
but that! Tell us rather of the torments of the damned, of a frowning
God, of absolute decrees to destruction, of the reprobation of millions
before they are born; any doctrine, however fearful and horrible: because
we don’t quite believe it, but only think that we ought to believe it.
Yes, tell us anything rather than that news, which cuts at the root of
all our pride, of all our comfort, and all our superstition—the news that
we cannot escape the consequences of our own actions; that there are no
back stairs up which we may be smuggled into heaven; that as we sow, so
we shall reap; that we are filled with the fruits of our own devices;
every man his own poisoner, every man his own executioner, every man his
own suicide; that hell begins in this life, and death begins before we
die:—do not say that: because we cannot help believing it; for our own
consciousness and our own experience tell us it is true.’ No wonder that
the preacher who tells men that is hated, is called a Rationalist, a
Pantheist, a heretic, and what not, just because he does set forth such a
living God, such a justice of God, such a wrath of God as would make the
sinner tremble, if he believed in it, not merely once in a way, when he
hears a stirring sermon about the endless torments: but all day long,
going out and coming in, lying on his bed and walking by the way, always
haunted by the shadow of himself, knowing that he is bearing about in him
the perpetually growing death of sin.
And still more painful would this message be to the sinner, if he had any
kindly feeling for others; and, thank God, there are few who have not
that. For St. Paul’s message to him is, that the wages of his sin is
death, not merely to himself, but to others—to his family and children
above all. So St. Paul declares in what he says of his doctrine of
original or birth sin, by which, as the Article says, every man is very
far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined
to evil, so that the flesh lusteth against the spirit.
St. Paul’s doctrine is simple and explicit. Death, he says, reigned over
Adam’s children, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of
Adam’s transgression; agreeing with Moses, who declares God to be one who
visits the sins of the fathers on the children, to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate Him. But how the sinner will shrink from
this message—and shrink the more, the more feeling he is, the less he is
wrapped up in selfishness. Yes, that message gives us such a view of the
sinfulness of sin as none other can. It tells us why God hates sin with
so unextinguishable a hatred, just because He is a God of Love. It is
not that man’s sin injures God, insults God, as the heathen fancy. Who
is God, that man can stir Him up to pride, or wound or disturb His
everlasting calm, His self-sufficient perfectness? ‘God is tempted of no
man,’ says St. James. No. God hates sin. He loves all, and sin harms
all; and the sinner may be a torment and a curse, not only to himself,
not only to those around him, but to children yet unborn.
This is bad news; and yet sinners must hear it. They must hear it not
only put into words by Moses, or by St. Paul, or by any other inspired
writer; but they must hear it, likewise, in that perpetual voice of God
which we call facts.
Let the sinner who wishes to know what original sin means, and how actual
sin in one man breeds original sin in his descendants, look at the world
around him, and see. Let him see how St. Paul’s doctrine and the
doctrine of the Ten Commandments are proved true by experience and by
fact: how the past, and how the present likewise, show us whole families,
whole tribes, whole aristocracies, whole nations, dwindling down to
imbecility, misery, and destruction, because the sins of the fathers are
visited on the children.
Physicians, who see children born diseased; born stupid, or even idiotic;
born thwart-natured, or passionate, or false, or dishonest, or
brutal,—they know well what original sin means, though they call it by
their own name of hereditary tendencies. And they know, too, how the
sins of a parent, or of a grand parent, or even a great-grandparent, are
visited on the children to the third and fourth generation; and they say
‘It is a law of nature:’ and so it is. But the laws of nature are the
laws of God who made her: and His law is the same law by which death
reigns even over those who have not sinned after the likeness of Adam;
the law by which (even though if Christ be in us, the spirit is life,
because of righteousness) the body, nevertheless, is dead, because of
sin.
Parents, parents, who hear my words, beware—if not for your own sakes, at
least for the sake of your children, and your children’s children—lest
the wages of your sin should be their death.
And by this time, surely, some of you will be asking, ‘What has he said?
That there is no escape; that there is no forgiveness?’
None whatsoever, my friends, though you were to cry to heaven for ever
and ever, save the one old escape of which you hear in the church every
Sunday morning: ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness
that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he
shall save his soul alive.’
What, does not the blood of Christ cleanse us from all sin?
Yes, from all sin. But not, necessarily, from the wages of all sin.
Judge for yourselves, my friends, again. Listen to the voice of God
revealed in facts. If you, being a drunkard, have injured your
constitution by drink, and then are converted, and repent, and turn to
God with your whole soul, and become, as you may, if you will, a truly
penitent, good, and therefore sober man,—will that cure the disease of
your body? It will certainly palliate and ease it: because, instead of
being drunken, you will have become sober: but still you will have
shortened your days by your past sins; and, in so far, even though the
Lord has put away your sin its wages still remain, as death.
So it is, my friends, if you will only believe it, or rather see it with
your own eyes, with every sin, and every sort of sin.
You will see, if you look, that the Article speaks exact truth when it
says, that the infection of nature doth remain, even in those that are
regenerate. It says that of original sin: but it is equally true of
actual sin.
Would to God that all men would but believe this, and give up the too
common and too dangerous notion, that it is no matter if they go on wrong
for a while, provided they come right at last!
No matter? I ask for facts again. Is there a man or woman in this
church twenty years old who does not know that it matters? Who does not
know that, if they have done wrong in youth, their own wrong deeds haunt
them and torment them?—That they are, perhaps the poorer, perhaps the
sicklier, perhaps the more ignorant, perhaps the sillier, perhaps the
more sorrowful this day, for things which they did twenty, thirty years
ago? Is there any one in this church who ever did a wrong thing without
smarting for it? If there is (which I question), let him be sure that it
is only because his time is not come. Do not fancy that because you are
forgiven, you may not be actually less good men all your lives by having
sinned when young.
I know it is sometimes said, ‘The greater the sinner, the greater the
saint.’ I do not believe that: because I do not see it. I see, and I
thank God for it, that men who have been very wrong at one time, come
very right afterwards; that, having found out in earnest that the wages
of sin are death, they do repent in earnest, and receive the gift of
eternal life through Jesus Christ. But I see, too, that the bad habits,
bad passions, bad methods of thought, which they have indulged in youth,
remain more or less, and make them worse men, sillier men, less useful
men, less happy men, sometimes to their lives’ end: and they, if they be
true Christians, know it, and repent of their early sins, not once for
all only, but all their lives long; because they feel that they have
weakened and worsened themselves thereby.
It stands to reason, my friends, that it should be so. If a man loses
his way, and finds it again, he is so much the less forward on his way,
surely, by all the time he has spent in getting back into the road. If a
child has a violent illness, it stops growing, because the life and
nourishment which ought to have gone towards its growth, are spent in
curing its disease. And so, if a man has indulged in bad habits in his
youth, he is but too likely (let him do what he will) to be a less good
man for it to his life’s end, because the Spirit of God, which ought to
have been making him grow in grace, freely and healthily, to the stature
of a perfect man, to the fulness of the measure of Christ, is striving to
conquer old bad habits, and cure old diseases of character; and the man,
even though he does enter into life, enters into it halt and maimed; and
the wages of his sin have been, as they always will be, death to some
powers, some faculties of his soul.
Think over these things, my friends; and believe that the wages of sin
are death, and that there is no escaping from God’s just and everlasting
laws. But meanwhile, let us judge no man. This is a great and a solemn
reason for observing, with fear and trembling, our Lord’s command, for it
is nothing less, ‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not and
ye shall not be condemned.’
For we never can know how much of any man’s misconduct is to be set down
to original, and how much to actual, sin;—how much disease of mind and
heart he has inherited from his parents, how much he has brought upon
himself.
Therefore judge no man, but yourselves. Search your own hearts, to see
what manner of men you really wish to be; judge yourselves, lest God
should judge you.
Do you wish to go on as you like here on earth, right or wrong, in the
hope that, somehow or other, the punishment of your sins will be forgiven
you at the last day?
Then know that that is impossible. As a man sows, so shall he reap; and
if you sow to the flesh, of the flesh you will reap—corruption. The
wages of sin are death. Those wages will be paid you, and you must take
them whether you like or not.
But do you wish to be Good? Do you see (I trust in God that many of you
do) that goodness is the only wise, safe, prudent life for you because it
is the only path the end of which is not death?
Do you see that goodness is the only right and honourable life for you,
because it is the only path by which you can do your duty to man or to
God; the only method by which you can show your gratitude to God for all
His goodness to you, and can please Him, in return for all that He has
done by His grace and free love to bless you?
Do you, in a word, repent you truly of your former sins, and purpose to
lead a new life? Then know, that all beyond is the free grace, the free
gift of God. You have to earn nothing, to buy nothing. The will is all
God asks. Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ.
Freely He forgives you all your past sins, for the sake of that precious
blood which was shed on the cross for the sins of the whole world.
Freely He takes you back, as His child, to your Father’s house. Freely,
He gives you His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Goodness, the Spirit of Life,
to put into your mind good desires, and enable you to bring those desires
to good effect, that you may live the eternal life of grace and goodness
for ever, whether in earth or heaven.
Yes, it is the Gift of God, which raises you from the death of sin to the
life of righteousness; and if you have that gift, you will not murmur,
surely, though you have to bear, more or less, the just and natural
consequences of your former sins; though you be, through your own guilt,
a sadder man to your dying day. Be content. You are forgiven. You are
cleansed from your sin; is not that mercy enough? Why are you to demand
of God, that He should over and above cleanse you from the consequences
of your sin? He may leave them there to trouble and sadden you, just
because He loves you, and desires to chasten you, and keep you in mind of
what you were, and what you would be again, at any moment, if His Spirit
left you to yourself. You may have to enter into life halt and maimed:
yet, be content; you have a thousand times more than you deserve, for at
least you enter into Life.
SERMON V.
NIGHT AND DAY.
(_Preached at the Chapel Royal_.)
ROMANS xiii. 12.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off
the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
CERTAIN commentators would tell us, that St. Paul wrote these words in
the expectation that the end of the world, and the second coming of
Christ, were very near. The night was far spent, and the day of the Lord
at hand. Salvation—deliverance from the destruction impending on the
world, was nearer than when his converts first believed. Shortly the
Lord would appear in glory, and St. Paul and his converts would be caught
up to meet Him in the air.
No doubt St. Paul’s words will bear this meaning. No doubt there are
many passages in his writings which seem to imply that he thought the end
of the world was near; and that Christ would reappear in glory, while he,
Paul, was yet alive on the earth. And there are passages; too, which
seem to imply that he afterwards altered that opinion, and, no longer
expecting to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, desired to depart
himself, and be with Christ, in the consciousness that ‘He was ready to
be offered up, and the time of his departure was at hand.’