XIV. THE CHRISTIAN'S VICTORY IN DEATH. PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST PETER'S, MARITZBURG, ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 15, 1866. 1 COR. XV. 57. 6 BUT THANKS BE TO GOD, WHICH GIVETH US THE VICTORY THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.' THAT which forms our chief, permanent ground for believing or looking for immortality, is our moral and spiritual nature,-that nature by which we feel we are truly brethren of Christ and children of God. Our Lord himself, indeed, has brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel.' By many of his gracious sayings he has quickened within us the hope of a life beyond the grave, and deepened and confirmed that hope in those in whose hearts it already existed. In the apostolic writings also,especially in those of St Paul, and above all in the chapter from which the text is taken,-strong arguments are used to prove the certainty of another life, or exhortations are used on the strength of those arguments : 'Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.' There are some, perhaps, for whom such authority as this is sufficient to silence every doubt and questioning. There are some, who may have never doubted at all, who receive implicitly the teaching of the Church in which they have been trained, without troubling themselves with any further questionings as to the grounds of their hope. But there are others-many others-whose minds are differently constituted,-who feel compelled, by a sacred impulse from within, to use the reasoning powers, with which their God has blessed them, upon the highest things, the things of religion, as well as the things of common life, -who cannot believe merely because 'it is written,'—who cannot, if they would, abstain from carrying out the Apostle's injunction to 'prove all things,' and so 'hold fast that which is good.' To such as these, while harassed by doubts about the question of another life, it is a comfort to fall back upon the thought, that the sure proof of it lies in the fact of their own present existence, as beings endowed with a moral and spiritual nature, with a conscience of right and wrong, with a sense of spiritual truth and beauty,—which here in this world enjoys only faint glimpses of the eternal excellences, which are its proper portion and inheritance, for which it is specially adapted, and whose divine longings after truth, and desires after perfection, can never here be satisfied. It is true, we cannot conceive what that life beyond the grave shall be. When the shades of death close over us, it may seem as if life with all its active powers-its brightness and glory-were over, as if we were limited to our three-score years and ten, and to the passing concerns of this present world. But you may have heard how one dear brother of our race, who rests now in the bosom of God, has written with wonderful force (Blanco White) : Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew This glorious canopy of light and blue? And lo! Creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Whilst flower, and leaf, and insect, stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why should we then shun death with anxious strife? But that same consciousness, which we feel, of a calling far beyond and above mere enjoyment, of occupying a sphere which extends far beyond self, beyond self in its most expanded form, is the same which makes the question of a hereafter fraught with anxiety, with fear as well as hope. As for the seeming terrors of the last moment, those physical terrors which belong to this side of it, experienced and philosophic physicians assure us that, as far as it is possible to judge, they are seeming only, that to die is to cease to suffer. And it is well that all—especially the weakly and timid—should be aware of this. To die is not generally-not often-to agonize,' as it is called in a kindred tongue. The New Testament phrase, 'to fall asleep,' expresses the act more correctly. The death-bed has been surrounded with more terrors than really belong to it,-partly through the tendency of the fancy to fill the darkness with alien forms, since, where we see nothing, we are prone to create a host of beings, dreadful because unknown, to people the shade,-but chiefly because conscience has joined with fancy to suggest that we are not fit for the world where all is true and real, naked and bared to view, because we shrink from the exposure of our very selves, which death seems to imply. Here, how many coverings wrap us round! Our place in society, our character with our friends and associates, the regards which are due to us from our dependants, from those whom we have benefited, the tenderness, perhaps the reverence, of those who know us best and yet love us,-all these and many other things, which prevent our fellow-men from seeing us as we really are, we feel to be among the passing shows of this life, and we dread the moment when the 'softening veil' shall be withdrawn, which hides us from the eyes of others and even from our own,—when we shall no longer be able to glass ourselves in the eyes of those others, but like Adam in the garden shall know that we are naked.' Nay, when we think at times even in this life of those whom we have loved and honoured, and who have now been taken from us to their rest, and try, as it were, to hold communion with them, who has not had that feeling which our great living poet expresses so truly ?— Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side? I had such reverence for his blame, Oh, if a pure and perfect mirror gave back to us a pure and perfect image of ourselves, of our hearts and lives, how would our thoughts press forward to the moment when the veil shall be lifted up, when the door shall be opened, and the light of eternity stream in upon us! This, then, the sense of sin, is the sting of death.' Terrors surround it often, and fears of the unknown, because it is unknown, unimagined, and unimaginable. But the sting, the sharpness, the bitterness, of them all is the consciousness of sin,-not of casual faults, of single transgressions merely,-but of something false within, something which falls short in us of our own standard, of what we confess to ourselves to be our imperative duty,-a 'coming short,' as the Apostle calls it, of the glory of God,' of our glorious calling as the children of God, 'sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.' In nature, all things that fail of their natural perfection, of the intention of their creation, live out their time, and then perish utterly. The unfruitful tree, the barren flower, forfeit that immortality which is proper to them, namely, to live in continuation of their species. And is personal immortality an unalienable inheritance of the fallen, depraved will,— of the will which has subjected itself to lower powers, which has become the slave of the world, the flesh, and the devil'? Not without meaning, surely, not for naught, has death been wrapt in darkness and fear. The Giver of life has ordained it so. Death cuts short our course; it stands at the end of the path, which, as we will it, is a path of drawing near to God or a path of departure from Him. It is the night-fall: and who can walk or work in the night? If we did not feel that the day-time, which God gives us to work in, is short,-at least, that it is limited, -who would begin to work at all, or when should we begin? Truly, we may well shrink from sitting in the seat of the Great Judge of all, conscious as we are of our weakness, of the limitations of our faculties, knowing how small a circle is our mind's horizon, to how minute a sphere our eyesight is confined-a sphere !-an atom, rather, in the universe of God. Still, our faith in the truthfulness of our Creator compels us to maintain that the same laws, of which we are conscious in this our little sphere, are the laws of that vast universe; and we refuse to ascribe to Him anything inconsistent with Justice and Mercy, Faithfulness and Lovingkindness, such as we know them in ourselves and others. Hence it is that the old notion of the almost universal perdition of the human race, rather, of the everlasting torments in hellfire of all but the inner circle of the Christian Church, whether described as baptized or as believers,-falls out of our creed, as inconsistent with the free light of Gospel day, the 'light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ'-yea, as blasphemy against the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. Hence it is also that we cling to the Scripture account of what God's judgment will be,-of what it is,-namely, 'to every man according to his works,'-so that not a correct belief, but a pure heart and life, is the essential to salvation. How else, indeed, would a pure love of truth be possible? How else could we hold the balance of the judgment even, and, according to the apostolic precept, before quoted, prove all things and hold fast that which is good,' if in the scale which holds the affirmation of belief the enormous weight were thrown of a self-interest extending into a never-ending future? How often have we heard the argument used, It is safer to believe too much than too little'! And yet how utterly unworthy is such an argument of men, of Christians! How alien to that 'free spirit,' that princely spirit, for which the Psalmist prayed of old,— Uphold me with Thy free Spirit!'-'Let Thy free Spirit lead me into the land of Uprightness'! No! the true sting of death is sin,-not the possibility of error concerning divine things, which death itself, if God so wills it, may at once remove. On the other hand, while a trust in God's Justice and Mercy, which are but two aspects of the same Goodness, ought to calm our minds in the face of death, whether we are contemplating it with reference to ourselves alone or to the whole race of man, and while respecting others we are forbidden— oh, how wisely forbidden !—to judge, it is clearly our duty to judge ourselves. What talents our fellow-servants may have received, we cannot tell. But surely we ought to know what have been committed to ourselves. For those we shall have to give account: our Master says so in the Gospel the Divine Spirit says so in our hearts. For each of us the hour of death is the time, when the judgment |