The representation of death most widely diffused among all nations is
that it is a sleep. The reasons for that emblem are easily found. We
always try to veil the terror and deformity of the ugly thing by the
thin robe of language. As with reverential awe, so with fear and
disgust, the tendency is to wrap their objects in the folds of metaphor.
Men prefer not to name plainly their god or their dread, but find
roundabout phrases for the one, and coaxing, flattering titles for the
other. The furies and the fates of heathenism, the supernatural beings
of modern superstition, must not be spoken of by their own appellations.
The recoil of men's hearts from the thing is testified by the aversion
of their languages to the bald name--death. And the employment of this
special euphemism of sleep is a wonderful witness to our weariness of
life, and to its endless toil and trouble. Everywhere that has seemed to
be a comforting and almost an attractive name, which has promised full
rest from all the agitations of this changeful scene. The prosperous and
the wretched alike have owned the fatigue of living, and been conscious
of a soothing expectance which became almost a hope, as they thought of
lying still at last with folded hands and shut eyes. The wearied workers
have bent over their dead, and felt that they are blest in this at all
events, that they rest from their labours; and as they saw them absolved
from all their tasks, have sought to propitiate the power that had made
this ease for them, as well as to express their sense of its merciful
aspect, by calling it not death, but sleep.
But that emblem, true and sweet as it is, is but half the truth. Taken
as the whole, as indeed men are ever tempted to take it, it is a
cheerless lie. It is truth for the senses--'the foolish senses,' who
'crown' Death, as 'Omega,' the last, 'the Lord,' because '_they_ find no
_motion_ in the dead.' Rest, cessation of consciousness of the outer
world, and of action upon it, are set forth by the figure. But even the
figure might teach us that the consciousness of life, and the vivid
exercise of thought and feeling, are not denied by it. Death is sleep.
Be it so. But does not that suggest the doubt--'in that sleep, what
dreams may come?' Do we not all know that, when the chains of slumber
bind sense, and the disturbance of the outer world is hushed, there are
faculties of our souls which work more strongly than in our waking
hours? We are all poets, 'makers' in our sleep. Memory and imagination
open their eyes when flesh closes it. We can live through years in the
dreams of a night; so swiftly can spirit move when even partially freed
from 'this muddy vesture of decay.' That very phrase, then, which at
first sight seems the opposite of the representation of our text, in
reality is preparatory to and confirmatory of it. That very
representation which has lent itself to cheerless and heathenish
thoughts of death as the cessation not only of toil but of activity, is
the basis of the deeper and truer representation, the truth for the
spirit, that death is an awaking. If, on the one hand, we have to say,
as we anticipate the approaching end of life, 'The night cometh, when no
man can work'; on the other the converse is true, 'The night is far
spent; the day is at hand.'
We shall sleep. Yes; but we shall wake too. We shall wake just because
we sleep. For flesh and all its weakness, and all its disturbing
strength, and craving importunities--for the outer world, and all its
dissipating garish shows, and all its sullen resistance to our hand--for
weariness, and fevered activity and toil against the grain of our
tastes, too great for our strength, disappointing in its results, the
end is blessed, calm sleep. And precisely because it is so, therefore
for our true selves, for heart and mind, for powers that lie dormant in
the lowest, and are not stirred into full action in the highest, souls;
for all that universe of realities which encompass us undisclosed, and
known only by faint murmurs which pierce through the opiate sleep of
life, the end shall be an awaking.
The truth which corresponds to this metaphor, and which David felt when
he said, 'I shall be satisfied when I awake,' is that the spirit,
because emancipated from the body, shall spring into greater intensity
of action, shall put forth powers that have been held down here and
shall come into contact with an order of things which here it has but
indirectly known. To our true selves and to God we shall wake. Here we
are like men asleep in some chamber that looks towards the eastern sky.
Morning by morning comes the sunrise, with the tender glory of its rosy
light and blushing heavens, and the heavy eyes are closed to it all.
Here and there some lighter sleeper, with thinner eyelids or face turned
to the sun, is half conscious of a vague brightness, and feels the
light, though he sees not the colours of the sky nor the forms of the
filmy clouds. Such souls are our saints and prophets, but most of us
sleep on unconscious. To us all the moment comes when we shall wake and
see for ourselves the bright and terrible world which we have so often
forgotten, and so often been tempted to think was itself a dream.
Brethren, see to it that that awaking be for you the beholding of what
you have loved, the finding, in the sober certainty of waking bliss, of
all the objects which have been your visions of delight in the sleep of
earth.
This life of ours hides more than it reveals. The day shows the sky as
solitary but for wandering clouds that cover its blue emptiness. But the
night peoples its waste places with stars, and fills all its abysses
with blazing glories. 'If light so much conceals, wherefore not life?'
Let us hold fast by a deeper wisdom than is born of sense; and though
men, nowadays, seem to be willing to go back to the 'eternal sleep' of
the most unspiritual heathenism, and to cast away all that Christ has
brought us concerning that world where He has been and whence He has
returned, because positive science and the anatomist's scalpel preach no
gospel of a future, let us try to feel as well as to believe that it is
life, with all its stunted capacities and idle occupation with baseless
fabrics, which is the sleep, and that for us all the end of it is--to
awake.
II. The second principle contained in our text is that death is to some
men the awaking of God.
'When Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their image.' Closely rendered,
the former clause would read simply 'in awaking,' without any specifying
of the person, which is left to be gathered from the succeeding words.
But there is no doubt that the English version fills the blank correctly
by referring the awaking to God.
The metaphor is not infrequent in the Old Testament, and, like many
others applying to the divine nature, is saved from any possibility of
misapprehension by the very boldness of its materialism. It has a
well-marked and uniform meaning. God 'awakes' when He ends an epoch of
probation and long-suffering mercy by an act or period of judgment. So
far, then, as the mere expression is concerned, there may be nothing
more meant here than the termination by a judicial act in this life, of
the transient 'prosperity of the wicked.' Any divinely-sent catastrophe
which casts the worldly rich man down from his slippery eminence would
satisfy the words. But the emphatic context seems, as already pointed
out, to require that they should be referred to that final crash which
irrevocably separates him who has 'his portion in this life,' from all
which he calls his 'goods.'
If so, then the whole period of earthly existence is regarded as the
time of God's gracious forbearance and mercy; and the time of death is
set forth as the instant when sterner elements of the divine dealings
start into greater prominence. Life here is predominantly, though not
exclusively, the field for the manifestation of patient love, not
willing that any should perish. To the godless soul, immersed in
material things, and blind to the light of God's wooing love, the
transition to that other form of existence is likewise the transition to
the field for the manifestation of the retributive energy of God's
righteousness. Here and now His judgment on the whole slumbers. The
consequences of our deeds are inherited, indeed, in many a merciful
sorrow, in many a paternal chastisement, in many a partial
exemplification of the wages of sin as death. But the harvest is not
fully grown nor ripened yet; it is not reaped in all its extent; the
bitter bread is not baked and eaten as it will have to be. Nor are men's
consciences so awakened that they connect the retribution, which does
befall them, with its causes in their own actions, as closely as they
will do when they are removed from the excitement of life and the deceit
of its dreams. 'Sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.'
For the long years of our stay here, God's seeking love lingers round
every one of us, yearning over us, besetting us behind and before,
courting us with kindnesses, lavishing on us its treasures, seeking to
win our poor love. It is sometimes said that this is a state of
probation. But that phrase suggests far too cold an idea. God does not
set us here as on a knife edge, with abysses on either side ready to
swallow us if we stumble, while He stands apart watching for our
halting, and unhelpful to our tottering feebleness. He compasses us with
His love and its gifts, He draws us to Himself, and desires that we
should stand. He offers all the help of His angels to hold us up. 'He
will not suffer thy foot to be moved; He that keepeth thee will not
slumber.' The judgment sleeps; the loving forbearance, the gracious aid
wake. Shall we not yield to His perpetual pleadings, and, moved by the
mercies of God, let His conquering love thaw our cold hearts into
streams of thankfulness and self-devotion?
But remember, that that predominantly merciful and long-suffering
character of God's present dealing affords no guarantee that there will
not come a time when His slumbering judgment will stir to waking. The
same chapter which tells us that 'He is long-suffering to us-ward, not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,'
goes on immediately to repel the inference that therefore a period of
which retribution shall be the characteristic is impossible, by the
solemn declaration, '_But_ the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in
the night.' His character remains ever the same, the principles of His
government are unalterable, but there may be variations in the
prominence given in His acts, to the several principles of the one, and
the various though harmonious phases of the other. The method may be
changed, the purpose may remain unchanged. And the Bible, which is our
only source of knowledge on the subject, tells us that the method _is_
changed, in so far as to intensify the vigour of the operation of
retributive justice after death, so that men who have been compassed
with 'the loving-kindness of the Lord,' and who die leaving worldly
things, and keeping worldly hearts, will have to confront 'the terror of
the Lord.'
The alternation of epochs of tolerance and destruction is in accordance
with the workings of God's providence here and now. For though the
characteristic of that providence as we see it is merciful forbearance,
yet we are not left without many a premonition of the mighty final 'day
of the Lord.' For long years or centuries a nation or an institution
goes on slowly departing from truth, forgetting the principles on which
it rests, or the purposes for which it exists. Patiently God pleads with
the evil-doers, lavishes gifts and warnings upon them. He holds back the
inevitable avenging as long as restoration is yet possible--and _His_
eye and heart see it to be possible long after men conclude that the
corruption is hopeless. But at last comes a period when He says, 'I have
long still holden My peace, and refrained Myself, now will I destroy';
and with a crash one more hoary iniquity disappears from the earth which
it has burdened so long. For sixty times sixty slow, throbbing seconds,
the silent hand creeps unnoticed round the dial and then, with whirr and
clang, the bell rings out, and another hour of the world's secular day
is gone. The billows of the thunder-cloud slowly gather into vague form,
and slowly deepen in lurid tints, and slowly roll across the fainting
blue; they touch--and then the fierce flash, like the swift hand on the
palace-wall of Babylon, writes its message of destruction over all the
heaven at once. We know enough from the history of men and nations since
Sodom till to-day, to recognise it as God's plan to alternate long
patience and 'sudden destruction':--
'The mills of God grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding small';
and every such instance confirms the expectation of the coming of that
great and terrible day of the Lord, whereof all epochs of convulsion and
ruin, all falls of Jerusalem, and Roman empires, Reformations, and
French Revolutions, and American wars, all private and personal
calamities which come from private wrong-doing, are but feeble
precursors. 'When Thou awakest, Thou wilt despise their image.'
Brethren, do we use aright this goodness of God which is the
characteristic of the present? Are we ready for that judgment which is
the mark of the future?