From a Gospel Address.
WE preach the coming of the Lord often―we have the bright, the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord to receive us to Himself; but there is another side of the picture too. Do you know that we are all dying men and women? It is only a question of days, or months, or years, and then if the Lord delays His coming you must die, I must die there is not one who can stand up and claim exemption. “For by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” You know you have sinned, and the soul that sins must die. Have you ever looked it in the face? Over every man, woman, and child in this city this sentence of death hangs. Have you ever weighed in the light of eternity the vanity of the moment of your stay upon earth? What is our life? It is even a vapor.
Oh, dear reader, death is an awful calamity to the unconverted man. I should be afraid to die if I did not know Christ as my Saviour. For death is a reality, and after death there is the judgment, and then the sentence, and then―the lake of fire. You may seem to have health and strength, but the seeds of mortality are in you The Lord give you to face the truth, and then there is the blessed remedy.
Whoever you are, I can tell you, on the authority of God’s own Word, Christ died for all. But what did He bring out of the grave? He brought life and incorruptibility out of it That is what Christ has done!
Has He not triumphed? Has He not gotten the victory? He has. He has broken every barrier down, and now, to a Christian, to die is gain What gain! For the only link the believer has with a groaning creation is the body, and when death comes it is only to break the last link and to set me free. For He gives the victory. He sets me free. He gives everything for time and for eternity. He has done everything. The Saviour lived, the Saviour died, and then there is that cloudless morning of resurrection.
I ask you, my reader, has death any fear? Has the grave any quiver of dread for you? Or is death only a cloudless passing into His own bright presence? For the Christian the brightest moment is the moment that he passes away to be forever with the Lord.
You would not like to die without Christ, would you? You would not dare to. If you knew assuredly that this would be your last night on earth―and it may be―if you knew your head would never again be raised from the pillow in life, would you dare to lay your head tranquilly on your pillow without knowing that you had Christ?
I will tell you one thing―I would not dare to die without Christ and I will tell you more― I would not care to live without Him either. And if you knew you would be saved next week―and there is no warrant in Scripture for knowing any such thing―you would have lost what eternity could never recover to you: a week’s walking with, a week’s enjoyment of, the Son of God! For salvation is not merely being rescued from hell at last; salvation is learning to know the Son of God, and walking with Him, being made like Him now. E. P. C.