DEATH! Death! all around us, and yet people go on just the same, cherishing the idea that everybody is mortal but themselves! In any daily paper may be seen a long list of persons just dead, and yet it seldom enters the heads of the readers that their names may appear on that list, even on the following day! Cemeteries grow fuller and fuller every year; funerals take place by the score, and yet people like to connect the time of their own decease with a far-distant day!
Yea, the very name of Death has dropped out of polite society, and " If anything should happen to him," is substituted for" If he should die.”
Thus Satan succeeds in keeping the thought of death in the background, and in persuading souls to put off preparation till it is too late.
Even when he cannot succeed in doing this, in many cases he gains his point by inducing them to prepare in the wrong way. Oh, solemn, solemn thought! to prepare for death, to prepare for eternity, to prepare to meet God, and at the end to find out that the preparation has been of the wrong sort, and is of no avail!
Many, indeed, are the ways by which misguided men and women seek to make good their title to heaven; many are the paths which they, in all sincerity, perhaps, map out for themselves, but just as it was said in bygone times, " All roads lead to Rome," so all these ways and paths have a common termination, Death, "and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).
There is the Religious Path, for instance. How many there are that walk in it! It seems to be a favorite path with those who desire to reach heaven. We find some who followed in that path in Matt. 7:22. The day of reckoning comes, they boast of their religious deeds, their wonderful works, &c. But the Lord sums it all up under that one word, "Iniquity," and says, “Depart from me." Yes, the path of religion without Christ is a deceptive path as much as others. It ends in death, and after death the judgment!
I witnessed a sorrowful instance of this, not long ago. I had gone, with a fellow-student, to the room where the bodies which are brought to the hospital for educational purposes are placed, to see if there were any newly arrived. Several coffins were there, and advancing towards the nearest, we lifted the lid. It was a sad spectacle that presented itself to our sight. There lay the body of an aged woman, cold in death. A string of beads around her neck, and a crucifix on her breast, told only too well upon what her hopes for eternity had been founded, These symbols of a religion apart from Christ had been her resource in her dying hour.
One cannot say positively whether her spirit is in the region of bliss, or the region of woe, but certain am I, that if her religion (external symbols) was all she had to trust to, she is now awaiting the sentence of eternal doom; while if, through the Lord's mercy, she is with Him, it is in spite of that religion, and because, underneath it all, there was a glimmering of faith and trust in the blessed Savior.
Beloved reader, religion, whether it takes the form of crucifixes and rosaries, or " saying your prayers "and" doing your best," or sacrament-taking and confirmation, or reading the Bible, and Sunday-school teaching, will not save you. You may even be a great preacher, and yet be unsaved (1 Cor. 9:27). You may suffer a martyr's death, and wake up in hell! (1 Cor. 13:3.) All these things are but devices which Satan employs to keep you out of the right way. The Lord Jesus never said: "This is the way," or, "That is the door,” but "I am the way" (John 14:6), and "I am the door “(John 10:9). It is by a living Person (no longer hanging on cross or crucifix) alone that you can be saved. “If a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death” (John 8:51).
All other ways, however, end in death. “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of DEATH" (Prov. 16:25).
Another way which men imagine will lead to heaven is the Way of Philanthropy. Those who walk therein hope to obtain salvation by helping their fellow-men, relieving the poor, tending the sick, contributing to charitable institutions, or bequeathing a fortune to an hospital. Alas! alas! that men can be so deceived! Philanthropy is of no avail as a way to heaven.
Others walk in the Path of Morality. They always pay their debts, and endeavor to live up to the standard which they consider a sufficient one. They hope to remove every ground upon which God can judge them. Alas unless aroused in time they will discover when it is too late, that one sin is enough to sink them in hell forever, and that a life as holy as the life of the angels which stand in God's presence, could not put away that one sin. Scripture declares that, “It is the BLOOD that maketh an atonement for the soul “(Lev. 17:11), and that “Without shedding of BLOOD is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). Religious exercises, philanthropic deeds, and a moral life, are not “blood." There is absolutely no virtue in them to atone for one sin. But there is One in whom is plenteous virtue (Luke 6:19), and whose blood can cleanse the soul from all sin (1 John 1:7).
Others, again, do not seek any way to heaven.
They do not think about the future. Eternity, heaven, hell, and judgment, are not realities to them. But they cannot quite shut their eyes to the fact that death is all around them. They may seek for pleasure, fame, or riches, but “the end of those things is death" (Rom. 6:21). They may interest themselves in politics, and try to improve the world which has yet to answer for crucifying the Son of God, but death comes at last. Men may cry, “Liberals forever!" just as the minions of Nebuchadnezzar said, "O king, live forever!" But that monarch's life came to an end, and so will theirs. "Great Babylon," which Nebuchadnezzar built, and in which he gloried, has crumbled to dust, and so will the things in which men pride themselves now. They themselves will soon be forgotten forever. “For what is your life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away " (James 4:14). Let me tell you of two or three persons whom death recently overtook, not in any unusual way, but as a warning to those who are not prepared.
No. 1 was a young man whose every prospect seemed fair and bright. Eminently successful in everything he put his hand to, he went through his medical career with honor, and was appointed to an important post in— Hospital. Many were the congratulations of his friends and fellow students as they separated for their summer vacation. On my return to the hospital after four or five weeks, the first thing which met my sight was an announcement that his funeral would take place the following day!
No. 2 was a porter on the railway. He had started out one morning just as usual, in good health and spirits. That afternoon I saw his lifeless body being carried to the mortuary.
No. 3 was a lady who was going on a journey.
On reaching London, she took a cab, but before reaching her destination she was in eternity. A sudden death was her lot.
My reader, to you, would a sudden death mean sudden glory, or sudden woe?
Awful as death is in itself to those who are unsaved, there is something worse. There is the “resurrection of damnation" (John 5:29). There is the "second death" (Rev. 21:8). As I was standing in a room this morning, surrounded by twenty corpses and scores of dissevered limbs, the thought seemed appalling that the God who had created them will one day reconstitute them, and raise them up, those who are saved, to share in His glory at the coming of the One who saved them; those who died without Christ, to share in the dread sentence of condemnation when the great white throne of Rev. 20:11 is set up. But so it will be!
Take your choice, my friend, as to when you rise again! If you come now to the Savior, as a guilty sinner, pleading the value of His blood, He will receive you, and save you, and (if you should die) raise you up when He returns for His own, an event which may take place any day (1 Thess. 4:14-17; 1 Cor. 15:52; Phil. 3:20, 21). If you go on in your present state of carelessness and indifference, if not open rejection of Christ, you will be left in your grave till the thousand years of millennial blessing shall have rolled by (Rev. 20:5).
Then you will be summoned from your resting-place, by the voice which now pleads with you so lovingly, but which then will be most terrible; in company with all your fellow-unbelievers you will have to stand at the bar of One who is now a gracious Savior, but who then will be a dread Judge; you will have to hear the sentence of doom from One who now invites you to "Come," but who then will bid you depart. And as eternity is ushered in, with all its untold blessing and happiness for the redeemed, you will be consigned to the lake of fire forever and ever.
Terrible, terrible thought! Hell will be peopled, not only by demons, but by men and women who once had salvation within their very grasp. Yes, within their very grasp, but having failed to grasp it, they will be left to gnash their teeth in awful remorse for an eternity as endless as the existence of God.
E. V. G.