' . . . Them also which sleep in Jesus . . .'--1
THESS. iv. 14.
That expression is not unusual, in various forms, in the Apostle's
writings. It suggests a very tender and wonderful thought of closeness
and union between our Lord and the living dead, so close as that He is,
as it were, the atmosphere in which they move, or the house in which
they dwell. But, tender and wonderful as the thought is, it is not
exactly the Apostle's idea here. For, accurately rendered--and accuracy
in regard to Scripture language is not pedantry--the words run, 'Them
which sleep _through_ Jesus.'
Now, that is a strange phrase, and, I suppose, its strangeness is the
reason why our translators have softened it down to the more familiar
and obvious 'in Jesus.' We can understand living through Christ, on
being sacred through Christ, but what can _sleeping_ through Christ
mean? I shall hope to answer the question presently, but, in the
meantime, I only wish to point out what the Apostle does say, and to
plead for letting him say it, strange though it sounds. For the strange
and the difficult phrases of Scripture are like the hard quartz reefs in
which gold is, and if we slur them over we are likely to loose the
treasure. Let us try if we can find what the gold here may be.
Now, there are only two thoughts that I wish to dwell upon as suggested
by these words. One is the softened aspect of death, and of the state of
the Christian dead; and the other is the ground or cause of that
softened aspect.
I. First, then, the softened aspect of death, and of the state of the
Christian dead.
It is to Jesus primarily that the New Testament writers owe their use of
this gracious emblem of sleep. For, as you remember, the word was twice
upon our Lord's lips; once when, over the twelve-years-old maid from
whom life had barely ebbed away, He said, 'She is not dead, but
sleepeth'; and once when in regard of the man Lazarus, from whom life
had removed further, He said, 'Our friend sleepeth, but I go that I may
awake him out of sleep.' But Jesus was not the originator of the
expression. You find it in the Old Testament, where the prophet Daniel,
speaking of the end of the days and the bodily Resurrection, designates
those who share in it as 'them that sleep in the dust of the earth.' And
the Old Testament was not the sole origin of the phrase. For it is too
natural, too much in accordance with the visibilities of death, not to
have suggested itself to many hearts, and been shrined in many
languages. Many an inscription of Greek and Roman date speaks of death
under this figure; but almost always it is with the added, deepened note
of despair, that it is a sleep which knows no waking, but lasts through
eternal night.
Now, the Christian thought associated with this emblem is the precise
opposite of the pagan one. The pagan heart shrank from naming the ugly
thing because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the
man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to drape the dreadfulness in
some kind of thin, transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word
between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the use
of the word is the precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression
because the thing has become gentler.
It is profoundly significant that throughout the whole of the New
Testament the plain, naked word 'death' is usually applied, not to the
physical fact which we ordinarily designate by the name, but to the grim
thing of which that physical fact is only the emblem and the parable,
viz., the true death which lies in the separation of the soul from God;
whilst predominately the New Testament usage calls the physical fact by
some other gentler form of expression, because, as I say, the gentleness
has enfolded the thing to be designated.
For instance, you find one class of representations which speak of death
as being a departing and a being with Christ; or which call it, as one
of the apostles does, an 'exodus,' where it is softened down to be
merely a change of environment, a change of locality. Then another class
of representations speak of it as 'putting off this my tabernacle,' or,
the dissolution of the 'earthly house'--where there is a broad, firm
line of demarcation drawn between the inhabitant and the habitation, and
the thing is softened down to be a mere change of dwelling. Again,
another class of expressions speak of it as being an 'offering,' where
the main idea is that of a voluntary surrender, a sacrifice or libation
of myself, and my life poured out upon the altar of God. But sweetest,
deepest, most appealing to all our hearts, is that emblem of my text,
'them that sleep.' It is used, if I count rightly, some fourteen times
in the New Testament, and it carries with it large and plain lessons, on
which I touch but for a moment. What, then, does this metaphor say to
us?
Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive
conception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively it is by no means
wholesome. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and
the ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their
activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friends, there are
some of us like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with
the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and
bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts
are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of
shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and duties and tasks
and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I
believe, for my part, that, after all, the deepest longing of
men--though they search for it through toil and effort--is for repose.
As the poet has taught us, 'there is no joy but calm.' Every heart is
weary enough, and heavy laden, and labouring enough, to feel the
sweetness of a promise of rest:--
'Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'
Yes! but the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only
applicable to the bodily frame. The word 'sleep' is a transcript of what
sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded
hands and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that
this repose, deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the
repose of unconsciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not
believe, that this emblem refers to the vigorous, spiritual life, or
that the passage from out of the toil and moil of earth into the calm of
the darkness beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the vital
force of the man.
Why, the very metaphor itself tells us that the sleeper is not
unconscious. He is parted from the outer world, he is unaware of
externals. When Stephen knelt below the old wall, and was surrounded by
howling fanatics that slew him, one moment he was gashed with stones and
tortured, and the next 'he fell on sleep.' They might howl, and the
stones fly as they would, and he was all unaware of it. Like Jonah
sleeping in the hold, what mattered the roaring of the storm to him? But
separation from externals does not mean suspense of life or of
consciousness, and the slumberer often dreams, and is aware of himself
persistently throughout his slumber. Nay! some of his faculties are set
at liberty to work more energetically, because his connection with the
outer world is for the time suspended.
And so I say that what on the hither side is sleep, on the further side
is awaking, and that the complex whole of the condition of the sainted
dead may be described with equal truth by either metaphor; 'they sleep
in Jesus'; or, 'when I awake I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness.'
Scripture, as it seems to me, distinctly carries this limitation of the
emblem. For what does it mean when the Apostle says that to depart and
to be with Christ is far better? Surely he who thus spoke conceived that
these two things were contemporaneous, the departing and the being with
Him. And surely he who thus spoke could not have conceived that a
millennium-long parenthesis of slumberous unconsciousness was to
intervene between the moment of his decease and the moment of his
fellowship with Jesus. How could a man prefer that dormant state to the
state here, of working for and living with the Lord? Surely, being with
Him must mean that we know where we are, and who is our companion.
And what does that text mean: 'Ye are come unto the spirits of just men
made perfect,' unless it means that of these two classes of persons who
are thus regarded as brought into living fellowship, each is aware of
the other? Does perfecting of the spirit mean the smiting of the spirit
into unconsciousness? Surely not, and surely in view of such words as
these, we must recognise the fact that, however limited and imperfect
may be the present connection of the disembodied dead, who sleep in
Christ, with external things, they know themselves, they know their home
and their companion, and they know the blessedness in which they are
lapped.
But another thought which is suggested by this emblem is, as I have
already said, most certainly the idea of awaking. The pagans said, as
indeed one of their poets has it, 'Suns can sink and return, but for us,
when our brief light sinks, there is but one perpetual night of
slumber.' The Christian idea of death is, that it is transitory as a
sleep in the morning, and sure to end. As St. Augustine says somewhere,
'Wherefore are they called sleepers, but because in the day of the Lord
they will be reawakened?'
And so these are the thoughts, very imperfectly spoken, I know, which
spring like flowers from this gracious metaphor 'them that sleep'--rest
and awaking; rest and consciousness.