XXIV.

WHAT IS DEATH?

PREACHED ON THE DEMISE OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES, NOVEMBER, 1817.

MY DAYS ARE PAST, MY PURPOSES ARE BROKEN OFF, EVEN THE THOUGHTS OF MY HEART.-Job xvii, 11.

To consider our latter end is at once our duty and our interest; for he who will live to purpose must often think of the time when we shall cease to live. He who will apply his heart unto wisdom must continually number his days, that he may know how frail he is, and be excited by that knowledge to give the greater diligence to make his calling and election sure. The man who would die well at last must learn to do it by dying often. That which may be any day his lot should be the subject of his daily meditation; so that, when death shall actually visit him, he may not start and shrink from him as from a stranger and an enemy, but hail him as a well-known friend, as an old and familiar acquaintance, whose approach he has long expected, and for whose arrival he has been duly preparing.

In no part of Scripture shall we find sentiments more striking, or more suitable for the ground-work of such meditations, than in the book of Job. That sincere but afflicted saint, in the season of his distress, frequently believed himself to be a dying man, standing on the verge of the grave, and just about to drop into eternity. Now, the views which he expresses on such occasions are well worthy our attention. Thus, in the chapter before us, he exclaims, "My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me. My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart. . . . If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made

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my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it? They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust."

In the following discourse I propose to illustrate the patriarch's affecting and instructive account of the change which takes place at death. May I feel the subject I discuss! May I preach, on such a text especially, as a dying man to dying

men!

I. "My days," says this child of sorrow and mortality, "are past." This is the first view under which we are called to contemplate our dissolution. It is the termination of our days. I scarcely need observe, that "our days" is a phrase of the same general import with "our lives." Days compose weeks; weeks compose months; months quickly amount to years; and a few transient years complete the sum of our earthly existence. For "the days of our years" far oftener fall short of the sum of "threescore years and ten" than they exceed it: "and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." (Psalm xc, 10.)

But it will be proper to analyze human life; to consider it not so much in the gross as in the detail, and to apply the text in a somewhat minute way to the various days of which the sum total of our earthly being is composed. "It is appointed unto men once to die;" and when we die, be it observed,

1. Our days of earthly comfort and of domestic and social enjoyment will be past. He who has placed us in the present world has crowned our existence in it with many pleasures. Even in this respect we have much cause to say, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage." Though this earth be but a wilderness, if compared to the paradise it once was, yet have its inhabitants many sources of gratification and delight. The face of nature often smiles upon the beholder, and presents to him numerous objects

of agreeable as well as instructive contemplation. Our Father makes his sun to shine, his rains to descend, for our pleasure and our use. He does good to all. "He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man; that he may bring forth food out of the earth and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." (Psalm civ, 13-15.) Nor has he provided only for the gratification of every animal sense, but, what is of far greater importance, for the indulgence of every social affection and the exercise of every intellectual faculty. He has connected us with our fellow-creatures. He has placed us in the midst of families, communities, and nations of men; and, by thus uniting us to the great brotherhood of human kind, has given occasion and scope for all the charities that adorn and sweeten life, that supply its joys, and alleviate its sorrows. From the relations of parent and children, of husband and wife, of brother, and neighbor, and friend, and from the mutual offices of love which these relations imply, we experience the most generous and gratifying emotions. But, ah! how short-lived and uncertain is this earthly bliss! For scarcely have we begun to taste the sweets of existence when we find ourselves, perhaps suddenly, "wrenched from this fair scene, from all our accustomed joys, and all the lovely relatives of life." No sooner have we begun to sip the cup of enjoyment which a gracious Providence has presented to us, than it is snatched from our lips, and dashed to pieces before our eyes. No sooner does the flower open its leaves than it is nipped in the bud, or begins to wither, droops, and utterly fades. Death, relentless death, soon interrupts all our creature comforts, cuts asunder the ties which attach us to the natural and the social world, and compels us to bid farewell to all our wonted delights. Then our senses must all be locked up in inactivity. The sun will shine as usual for others, but no more for us. Nature, as to our eyes, will become one general blank. The eclipse of death will pass on the objects of our nobler and more refined affection on the venerable parent, whose counsels have so Vol. I.-26

often instructed and delighted us; on the darling child, whose engaging looks, and smiles, and prattle have so often enamored us; on the husband or the wife, the partner of our cares, the sharer of our bliss; on beloved brothers and sisters, who are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; and on friends who have been closer and dearer to us than a brother. Then we must leave behind us our Christian associates with whom we took sweet counsel, and walked to the house of God in company; our fellow-soldiers and comrades in the Christian warfare; our "companions in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ." From all these we must be separated when God shall "bring us to death, and to the house appointed for all living." Their conversation will no more instruct us, their company no more delight us. For then we may say with Job, "The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more: thine eyes are upon me, and I am not. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more." (Job vii, 8-10.)

Are these things so? Must we, who are now surrounded by friends, and crowned with worldly comforts, shortly quit them all? Will our days of domestic and social enjoyment be so soon past? What, then, is the inference to be deduced? St. Paul has told you: "This I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away." (1 Corinthians vii, 29-31.) Happy they who seek and find another and a better world, where parting shall never occur, friendship shall never be interrupted, enjoyment shall never cease, and death itself shall be dead! Happy they who place their supreme affections not on earthly but on heavenly things, and who possess a peace and felicity which the world can neither give nor take away-a felicity which outlives death and defies the grave!

2. At the awful period of our approaching death our days of grace will be past. Valuable as are the blessings of time, considered as smoothing our passage through the present world, they are poor and trivial in comparison of those influences which are designed to prepare us for eternity. While, therefore, we bless God for the mercies of this life, we should bless him above all for the means of grace and for the hope of glory. But we should remember that even these are transient and not abiding privileges. Life is the day of our visitation. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."

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All these blessings will be limited to the present life. After death is not conversion, but-the judgment. In the world of spirits, if we live and die impenitent, we shall never hear the voice of grace and mercy, but the thunders of the violated law and the accusations of a guilty conscience. Christ will not then meet us as "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," but as the angry "Lion of the tribe of Judah." It will then be too late to pray, when we have begun to weep and gnash our teeth; too late to cry for mercy, when we have begun to cry for water to cool our tongue; too late to fall at our Maker's feet, when we have fallen into hell; too late to accept the promises, when we are suffering the threatenings; too late to know the things which belong unto our peace, when they shall be, by the just judgment of God, forever hid from our eyes. "To-day," then, "if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." For I observe,

3. The days of our probation will then be passed. We are placed in the present world not merely to eat and drink, to form domestic and social connections, to provide for our families, to contemplate nature, to acquire secular knowledge, and to study arts and sciences. These are by no means the primary ends of our being. Our grand business here is to pre pare for eternity, and to make our choice between God and Satan, sin and holiness, heaven and hell. Each of us is, on earth, "an embryo angel or an infant fiend." If we happily choose the better part, and, by the diligent use of those means