09 - Meditation 9
MEDITATION IX. THE LAST ENEMY.
“ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”
I CAN scarcely imagine, my brethren, that you can have passed the solemn days which have just elapsed, without having seriously examined into your own hearts, or at least reflected upon the shortness of your years, and the instability of your earthly existence. When the traveller has reached some important point in his journey, where he is obliged to stop, will he not say to himself, So far have I come on my way; how much have I yet to go? When shall I arrive at the end? And although we are naturally so little disposed to regard ourselves as “ strangers and pilgrims” upon earth; notwithstanding the force of habit which permits us to have death every day before our eyes without thinking of our own death; notwithstanding the earthliness and materiality of our thoughts; notwithstanding the devices of Satan who continually throws over our eyes a veil of deceitful illusions; not withstanding the skill with which the world multiplies its vain distractions and its noisy pleasures, in proportion as opportunities for serious reflection multiply around us; notwithstanding all this, can you have passed through the first week of a new year without saying to yourselves, This year, perhaps, may be my last; nay, it is not even certain that I shall see the end of it. When lately you enjoyed the pleasure of being united in a family circle with those you love, have you been able to shut out from your minds the reflection that, on the next occasion, it is very possible there may be an empty place there, and that place may be yours! And then has not an involuntary feeling of dread and anguish passed over your hearts? Have you not made a sudden effort to shake off a thought too serious and unwelcome 1 Would you not fain have shunned that painful impression as a man avoids a mortal enemy of his repose? I say an enemy, and is not this the name that describes the thing ’I But this name is not ours, it is from the Bible which knows perfectly the heart of man and all its impressions; it is St. Paul’s. Yes, that gloomy thing, that sinister object which an imagination shows us in the obscurity of the future, and from, which you hastily turned away your eyes because it made your heart shudder, St. Paul, in our text, calls “ an enemy,” and that enemy is death! But if, as we have just supposed, you have succeeded in putting away from you this troublesome thought, if you have even continued so far strangers to serious reflection that this thought has not come into your hearts, is there not a degree of cruelty in thus conjuring up this enemy before you, placing him under eyes, exhibiting him in all his fearful power, in all his frightful deformity, in all his appalling triumphs over your souls and over every thing that you hold most dear? Ah! it would indeed be cruelty, and indeed we would not attempt it, if in thus disturbing your repose we saw nothing but the terrible prospect of falling under the inevitable strokes of that enemy. But hear, my brethren, hear ye who fear death and perhaps tremble at the bare thought, that you may meet that enemy before the end of the year upon which we have entered! Our text, while it acknowledges that death is an enemy, while it gives it that name, speaks of its destruction: “ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Here, then, is the reason why we venture to speak of it, why we even come to invite you to contemplate it, face to face, in its most terrible aspect, to familiarize yourselves with the thought of it, and no more to shun it! This is what we intend to do in the first place on the present occasion, and we shall do it without any fear, because afterwards we can speak to you of victory and triumph over this enemy! May God be pleased to bless our meditation! May He, in his great mercy, grant that none of you may be reduced to the deplorable expedient of flying from an enemy from which you cannot escape, or of seeking in a guilty and unavailing dissipation a deceitful remedy for your ills!
God, in creating man, and establishing him as sovereign of this lower world, had ordained that every thing in nature should serve him, and liberally contribute to support and adorn his life, and to multiply his pure enjoyments. Suddenly an enemy makes an inroad upon the abode of man, and thus transforms into foes all the friendly beings that surround him, and makes them subserve the designs of death. Contemplate from that moment the history of humanity and the end of every man. Henceforth, not only shall the destroying angel have at his command the elements let loose against man, and conspiring his destruction; storms, and tempests, and floods, and earthquakes, and the thunders of heaven, and epidemical diseases which depopulate whole countries; bloody wars in which man, becoming his own enemy, lends his hand to his own ruin; all these things shall be but extraordinary means of the enemy. He shall seldom have occasion to employ them, for the slightest accident, a fall, a drop of blood diverted from its course, the very air which we breathe, the food which supports us, in a few days will accomplish his designs.
We bring with us into the world, at our birth, the instruments of his work; a secret, but ever active, power of destruction continually fights against the preserving power which God maintains in nature, to prevent it from falling into nothing; the angel of darkness deals about him his strokes blindly, and without regard to the objects of his ravages; every thing falls beneath his blows; man, the noblest work of the visible creation, is continually sinking under them; that admirable conformation of his body, every part of “which would fill us with adoring wonder, if we were attentive to it; those wondrous faculties which serve so well as organs for the understanding and for the expression of thought; that strength, activity, and beauty of youth, which it is impossible not to admire as the work of God; the venerable head of hoary age nothing is respected by it, all fall under the strokes of the enemy, and in this new work of Vandalism, all are disorganized, destroyed, reduced to ruins, and to dust: become the prey of conniption, the food of worms!...
Poor mortal! where are now those vast projects of fortune, those brilliant hopes of glory which made thy heart beat, and in the faith of which thou didst launch out into a seducing future, like the vessel which cleaves the billows at full sail? Where are those joys, those festivities which intoxicated thee by their attractions? Where is that repose which thou didst dream of in thy lusts, and which thou expectedst to attain to, when saying to thy soul, “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry!” The strokes of the enemy have brought them all to a tragical end; projects, hopes, joys, and rest, are all shut up in the narrow and dismal compass of a tomb! Where are those tender and more noble bonds which enchained our hearts to the objects of our affections, and which seemed to us imperishable from their strength, and as it were the life of our lives? Ah! would not the inexorable enemy at least bow with respect before these wants and these sufferings of our afflicted heart?... Alas, no! when have the tears of a mother over the cradle of her dying infant the lamentations of a child at the bed-side of his father, about to leave him an orphan the heart-rending grief of the husband who was soon to be left desolate or of the wife who was soon to be without support arrested for a moment his irresistible arm?
Never! never! On the contrary, it would seem (though this is not the place to inquire into the reasons of it), that the more tender mercies, the more often and the more quickly are they broken!
What is said of the Divinity himself, may be said of this formidable enemy, “ With him there is no respect of persons!” The king the rich man in his palace dies the poor man in his cottage dies the young man is cut off in the bloom of his age the old man perishes by a protracted death. Each generation of mankind flows without interruption into the grave, as a stream pours its waters into the ocean. During the fleeting hour that I am speaking to you of this enemy, three thousand victims succumb beneath his strokes ] multiply that number by days, those days by years, those years by the centuries which have passed since this enemy las taken possession of the abode of man; think of the sufferings which preceded his arrival; the tears, the anguish, the cries of grief which followed it; the sorrow which he introduces into each family; hear “ the groaning of creation, which,” to use the language of St. Paul, “ laboreth and travaileth until now,” and say if the Apostle is wrong in calling that exterminating angel which wrings this groan from the bosom of the whole human race, “an enemy.”
What adds still more to the sinister character of this enemy is the inscrutable mystery that surrounds it. The natural man, by the aid of his unassisted reason, knows neither its origin, its nature, nor the end for which it is sent.
Whence does it come? Whither does it tend?
What shall be the end of its work of destruction 1 Wisemen of the world! proud philosophers, who make man the subject of your studies say, what is death? what is the cause of it and its end? what is the remedy for that evil which preys upon humanity of which you wish to be the masters and the benefactors! To all these questions human reason gives no answer; our life is an enigma to it our death an abyss the world a mass of darkness! But further, man, as sin has made him, is in contradiction with himself. Capable, in his noble faculties, of an indefinite, intellectual, and moral developement, scarcely has he begun the work of that developement when his enemy smites him and reduces him to dust! Aspiring in his hopes and desires after an indeterminate future, scarcely has he made a few steps towards that future, when he falls and behold, he is at the end of it! Capable of loving to infinity, his love consumes like a burning fire whatever miserable aliment which he may give it on earth; then he dies without ever having known satisfaction. He feels himself immortal, and he dies! Every thing within him gives utterance continually to that cry of a deep-felt want the future! the future! immortality! and his terrible enemy immediately responds death! the grave! Thus, you see, death makes man a living contradiction a real lie! And if, from amid the darkness in which he is enslaved and imprisoned, he sighs after liberty; if he interrogates his reason and the sages of the world, if he asks them to point out to him some issue whereby he may escape out of the pit in which he is plunged, reason and the sages are silent. They are as ignorant of the remedy as of the nature of the evil. Did then the mighty and the merciful God create man thus the slave of death, and place him upon earth to water it with his tears, and afterwards to return into its bosom? Wherever we set our foot we tread upon the dust of the departed... Vile dust! art thou the noblest work of creation? the sovereign of this universe? My brethren, let us not remain in this uncertainty; we need not do so; no, we have in our hands a book which contains all the annals of our race, the complete explanation of the engine which we have pointed out. Let us open that book, and however terrible the discoveries which we may still make in it concerning the origin and the nature of our enemies, let us study it. In its very first pages we read that God created man “in his own image, and after his likeness,” that is to say, pure, free, and happy.
After each new act of God’s creating power, it is said, “ And God saw that it was good!” Man comes forth from his hand, and it is said, “ God saw that he was very good!” What a chasm between that “very good,” and the miserable creature which we have just been contemplating! Ah! his terrible enemy did not then exist, for under his strokes and with his work of destruction, what would there have been good with respect to man? “Whence, then, did that enemy come? Who gave it birth? My brethren, it is the offspring of a curse and that curse was pronounced by the Lord against sin, rebellion, and disobedience to the law: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; dust thou art, and unto dust thou shall return.” And revelation, confirming this sentence in the New Testament, declares: “ By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Such is the origin of our enemy sin. Sin hath conceived it, and the curse hath brought it into the world! What an awful discovery! What an overwhelming truth! To the misery of being subject to its strokes, man has to endure in addition, eternal remorse for having brought them down upon his own guilty head. Say not that we are not responsible if our enemy existed before us in the world! Ah! if the first sinner hath left us a deplorable heritage of corruption, where is the man that can say that he has not made an ample use of it? that he has not provoked, confirmed, and justified by his transgressions the execution of the sentence of death? To a sinless being death would not be so terrible; it would not be “ an enemy.” But “ the sting of death,” says the Apostle, (that which makes it pierce the soul with terror and anguish that which makes it really “ an enemy,”) “ the sting of death is sin.” Sin, and condemnation! such is the language of every stroke which death inflicts around us of every funeral procession that passes through our streets of every grave that is opened to receive one of our fellow-men.
Such is the inscription that is written in lugubrious characters upon the front of death, and that causes a shivering of horror to pass over our heart every time we contemplate it with our eyes! In this sense let us reject the distinction that is sometimes made between a violent and a natural death. In the divine order there is no natural death that was impossible; God could not create death; but each stroke the enemy inflicts, he only executes a sentence of death pronounced against the sinner. Overwhelming truth!... Must we follow it out?
But, at least, is the work of the enemy, whose ravages we are considering, finished? Yes, as it regards this world; but alas! it may have consequences a thousand times more dreadful hereafter! “It is appointed for men once to die,” declares the word of God, “ and after death the judgment!” The judgment of what? Of the soul that sinned of the immortal soul which may appear before God polluted, laden with the sins of a whole life, and may incur an interminable and remediless condemnation?...
Here at this thought of “ outer darkness, where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; of the worm that dieth not; of the smoke of the torment of the reprobate which ascendeth up for ever and ever,” at this tremendous thought I stop, because you all may avoid even the apprehension of it; the enemy whom we contemplate this day cannot follow us there. All that we have to establish is, that death is now no more than the summons to appear before the bar of the just Judge; there ends his work; but in achieving it he leaves us in the presence of a holy God, who shall decide upon our eternity! My brethren before we come to the second head of our discourse, let us make a passing observation which concerns us all. We are often called to bring into the pulpit truths which, though very solemn and very clearly revealed in the Word of God, yet make little or no impression upon the minds of most of our hearers. And why? because at bottom they do not really believe these truths; to them they are not realities which take a powerful hold upon their heart; they are, in their eyes, mere ideas opinions.
But, on the present occasion, this kind of unbelief is impossible; the Apostle here demands not faith “ to believe,” but only eyes “ to see:” yes, with regard to our subject, we can “ walk by sight,” by a daily experience. I preach to you of your death: which of you doubts of his death? Not one! You admit, then, every thing which we have advanced; you admit, each for himself, whatever be your age, your rank, your condition, that you have to encounter a formidable enemy, which follows you continually, and beneath whose strokes you must inevitably succumb; an enemy which shall speedily put an end to all your projects and all your hopes; an enemy which shall break the dearest and tenderest ties of your heart; which will bring mourning and tears into your families; you admit that, in consequence, you find yourselves in contradiction with your own nature, that nothing can explain this mystery but the Word of God; you admit that the Bible teaches you to regard death as a punishment, the curse of sin; you admit that death will summon you before the Most Holy One to give an account of your life; you admit, further, that for you all this may be realized in a very short time, in the course of the year, in a few days; that at all events it must infallibly be realized in a few short years... and you scarcely think of it! My beloved brethren, do you not ask yourselves, individually, with fearful anxiety: Am I prepared? am I ready to meet my enemy? am I ready to descend into the grave, and to appear before my judge? Men of the world! ere that fatal and inevitable moment arrive, you have a few days, perhaps a few years, to spend, and you employ those few days, or few years, exclusively in amassing a little gold which you shall never enjoy, a little consideration, celebrity, or prosperity which will vanish like smoke beneath the stroke of death! And you, women of the world! you employ these days, these years, in adorning a body which shall crumble into ruins; in decking a person which corruption shall make its prey, and the sepulchre consume to dust! A few of the good things of this world, a few pleasures, a few vanities, a little earthly success, a little of the incense of praise, such is the price for which you barter the time that remains to you, your immortal souls and your eternity! The enemy is at the door, and you quietly await his tremendous strokes and their frightful consequences!
But, what can we do? you will say; what can we do? Since we cannot escape him, whither shall we fly. Since death is inevitable, what remedy have you to propose to us? how miserable should we be if we could not give an answer to that question! How miserable should we be if, ministers of condemnation, we preached death to you, without having it in our power to speak to you a single word of consolation and of hope! But, my brethren, if you are serious in putting this question, hear again the Bible, and out of the depths you may send up a song of triumph! Terrible death! formidable enemy! we can meet thee face to face! “ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death!”
How shall the words of my text be accomplished? What being in the universe can help and save us in this dreadful extremity? Who will rescue us from the grasp of the enemy? Who will enter the lists in our place to combat, overcome and destroy him’?
We have seen, my brethren, that what invests death with its real terrors, what gives it “its sting,” what makes it really “ an enemy “ is *hat it is the fruit of sin, and the effect of a curse; and so long as it retains this character, it can never be destroyed; it will, on the contrary, always be “ the king of terrors.” But who will prevail to efface from its livid front this character of malediction which the Lord has impressed upon it? Who will prevail to abrogate the sentence of condemnation pronounced by the Almighty? None in heaven, or on earth, but God, God himself. And again, as he cannot contradict himself, nor deny his justice, at what price will he do it?
Oh! contemplate, under this point of view, Jesus, our Saviour and our God, moved with the tenderest compassion for our misery, leaving the glories and the felicities of heaven, coming down among us to help us, becoming man, that he might bear in our room the sentence of our condemnation, dying under that sentence which could not be abolished, and thus purchasing, by his cross, the eternal right to exercise mercy, to proclaim pardon, and to make those who before were “ children of wrath,” children of the living God! Contemplate him going down into the grave to drain even to the dregs the cup of death, and to apply even to the most secret wounds of our hearts an efficacious remedy!
Consider attentively under this point of view, those deep and lucid words of the epistle to the Hebrews: “ Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, (that is to say, human nature.) he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
O ye, who are still subject to this bondage, if ye believe in the Word of God, meditate, for your consolation, upon this deep and sublime declaration of your deliverance! In it, in it you will find the remedy for that tremendous evil whose origin and cause the Bible has disclosed. And say not, that as Jesus has fallen beneath its stroke he was but a new victim of it. Contemplate his resurrection, his bursting the bonds of death, plucking out its sting, annihilating its power, triumphing over it, and destroying our terrible enemy! Contemplate him as the representative of humanity; the head of the Church, which is his body, of which all believers are members, the first-fruits from the dead, ascending up in triumph. to glory, “leading captivity captive, and obtaining gifts for men!” Contemplate him as thus putting the seal to his work of redemption, assuring us forever of our own resurrection and triumph over death, and “ reigning until his enemies become his footstool!” But you will still say, notwithstanding all this, the enemy is not disarmed; he still inflicts his deadly strokes; the children of God, as well as others, fall beneath them. Fear not, my brethren, the triumphs of the Saviour in his members are progressive, successive, but they are certain. Observe here the change which is wrought in the nature of death by means of Christianity. We have said, after the Bible, that the Divine Saviour has “ obtained gifts for men,” and it is by dispensing these that he carries on his work; and what are these gifts? the gifts of his Spirit of power and holiness by which we are united to him as “ the branches to the vine,” so that we become partakers of his life, a life over which death hath no dominion, a heavenly life. Possessed of this imperishable life, which shall develope itself to infinity in eternity, assured of the favor, the pardon, the eternal love of his God, shall the disciple of Jesus see in death a frightful enemy which, reducing his body to dust, destroys his projects for the future, frustrates his desires, withers his hopes, dissolves for ever the dearest and the tenderest bonds, makes him a contradiction, a lie, and hurries his trembling and sinful soul before the tribunal of his God? No! no! Quite the contrary; death, delivering him from all sin and all misery, fulfils his most ardent desire, for he longs after holiness; it realizes and surpasses his most brilliant hopes, for now he is in possession of heaven; it puts the seal to all his connexions, for they are eternal like the God that formed them; it puts his soul in full possession of the love of God, and of the presence of his Saviour. Where the grace and the love of God reign, there death has no sting to wound, no curse to terrify.
O my beloved brethren, have you never had the happiness, yes, I say the happiness, to be present at the death-bed of a Christian who could say, “I know in whom I have believed?”
Ah! if you have seen that calm and peaceful resignation of a child in the arms of its father; if you have seen that Divine ray of “hope which maketh not ashamed,” break forth like life from his dying look; if you have gazed upon the image of peace resting upon that colorless brow; if you have felt that cold hand pressing yours in token of an adieu not eternal; if you have heard those trembling lips still murmuring with an expression of secret joy the name of Jesus, as him in whom all who have believed, loved, and prayed upon earth, shall soon be re-united; if you have contemplated such a scene, you have no need of further demonstrations; you must have exclaimed within yourselves, “ The last enemy is overcome, is destroyed: O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” You must have thought within yourselves, “ Is this to die?” To lay aside this gross envelope of flesh and blood, the source of so many pains, infirmities, and sins is this to die? To be released from these chains of bondage; to escape from this prison-house, thus opening to let us go, in order to be put in possession of “the glorious liberty of the children of God;” is this to die? To be delivered from the corruption of this present evil world, from this atmosphere poisoned with sin, in order to be clothed with incorruption and holiness is this to die? To leave a world where self-love reigns; where the noblest and purest affections are imperfect and defiled; to love with all the powers of the soul, without end, without measure, and yet without idolatry; is this to die? To exchange these outgoing’s of a piety still so cold, these prayers so languid, that charity so tardy, for the love of heaven and the eternal contemplation of Him who loved us, and whose likeness we shall hear is this to die? No; it is the commencement of true life. “The last enemy,” the last of all, for to that happy Christian there remain no others, “ the last enemy!” is he not vanquished “destroyed? a Some one, perhaps, carrying even to the end the objections of an unbelieving and distrustful heart, will say, that notwithstanding this, the enemy still carries off and keeps an important triumph, since our body, the work of God, moulders beneath his destroying influence.
No, no; Jesus, the resurrection and the life, will not leave him even this victory; he will wrest it from his hands and “ destroy” him.
There is a final stage in those successive triumphs; Jesus will accomplish it at the last day, when he shall come again in his glory. “ The hour cometh, when all that are in their graves shall hear his voice and come forth.”
Then shall the enemy be compelled, by the creating power of the Sovereign Judge, to deliver up into his hands the last trophy of his victory over the children of God; he shall retain no vestige of it. He shall have served, according to the designs of God, to make us pass from infirmity to glory; for the Lord “ shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” “ It is sown in corruption, it shall be raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it shall be raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it shall be raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it shall be raised a spiritual body.” Then shall commence life in all its plenitude, life in God, the life of the “new heaven and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Then, the Bible tells us, as if to mark the consummation of happiness and deliverance, then “ there shall be no more death.” Death shall be swallowed up in victory! “ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death!”
What triumph! what deliverance! what happiness to those who shall have part therein!
O, ray brethren! you who know and love Jesus, sing even now a song of deliverance to the glory of the Saviour! Say to his praise that you are “ more than conquerors through him that loved you.” Bless him, love him with all the powers of your souls. Be not ashamed of him before a world which passeth away. What do you care for the vain glory of the world? It will soon fade away beneath the stroke of death. What do you care for its favor or its disapprobation?
You follow the glorious Captain, whose triumphs we have enumerated; this, this is your glory and your happiness; there is no other.
“ And seeing that we have such promises, let us purge ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.” Let not our thoughts, our affections, or our works, cleave to the dust of a world “which lieth in wickedness,” since all that is in us, even this mortal body, is destined to share the glory and holiness of the Lord. Let us walk worthy of our vocation. The time is short; “He that cometh will come, and will not tarry.’;
Finally, be of good courage for the rest of your earthly career. Weak souls, fearful souls; “ broken reeds,” to you we would repeat, be of good courage, whilst looking to the Saviour!
He himself saith to you, “ In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world!” If trials and afflictions await you, you know the inexhaustible source of true consolation. If the great enemy which remaineth to be destroyed summon you to his last encounter; if during the course of this year you should see, and walk through “ the valley of the shadow of death,” fear no evil. You know the Conqueror who has done all. If the enemy, instead of reaching yourselves, smite around you; if he make some painful breach in the hearts of those you love, “ weep not as those that have no hope;” mourn not if they arrive at the haven of rest before you. A few more days of trial, and you also will reach it; and “ there shall be no more death.” And you, unhappy as you are guilty, who hitherto have remained strangers to the love of the Saviour, to his salvation, his triumphs, to repentance, to faith, to love, what shall we say to you? only one word. You know the terrible enemy that follows you, and shall soon overtake you; you know his work of curse and death upon the body and upon the soul, for time and eternity. Well, then, if you are not found in Jesus Christ, who alone can triumph over it, you submit to bear alone the strokes of destruction and death which shall fall upon you! Ah! we beseech you from the bottom of a heart that loves you, and ardently desires your salvation, think of it, reflect upon it before it be too late.
It will well repay you for so doing.