THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER

(Continued from last issue)

THE Christian will be wakingly alive to all this and more, if his disorder be such as can admit of reflection. Blessed be God, however, whether he can thus reflect or not; yet, being a Christian, his state is equally safe with God through his gracious Redeemer. Whatever be the frame, the promise is sure, the covenant of God is ordered in all things and sure, and sure and faithful is God himself to perform it. It is comfortable, and indeed desirable, to have pleasant foretastes and feelings of grace and glory, under the pain or decay of the body; for they are no otherwise material to the true believer’s security for heaven. If he hath not these perceptions during the short time of his sickness, he will have them abundantly after it, if it end in his dissolution; or, if it do not thus end, the want of them is a loud admonition to make his calling and election sure, in the days that may yet be appointed him.

If we cannot think of Christ, through the power of disease, O what a happiness is it to be assured that Christ thinks constantly and effectually of us! He “maketh all our bed in our sickness;” that is, he turns the whole frame of our condition in it for our best advantage.

O Lord, leave me not, poor and helpless sinner that I am, in my most healthful state; leave me not, especially, I beseech thee, in the low, the languid, the distressing circumstances of infirmity and disease! Jesus, Master, thou art said to have borne our sicknesses, because thou barest the sins which occasioned them; take, take away from my conscience the guilt which brought disease, and then the worst part of its misery shall likewise be done away. And when, through my feebleness or disorder, I cannot act faith upon thy love, ? catch my drooping spirit, carry me as one of thine own lambs in thy bosom, enfold me in thy gracious arms, and let my soul wholly commit itself, and give up its all, in quiet resignation to thee! If thou raise me from my sickness, grant that it may be for the setting forth of thy glory among men: if thou take me by sickness from this world, ? thou Hope and Life of my soul, receive me to thyself for my everlasting happiness, and present me as another monument of sovereign grace, before the great assembly of saints and angels in thy kingdom of heaven!

CHAPTER XLV

“On Death”

It is an awful and a solemn thing to die; and I am sometimes amazed at myself, that, seeing it is not only awful but sure, I can be so void of reflection or recollection, as I frequently am, concerning it.

Some talk bravely about death, and of encountering it with great natural courage, or upon high philosophical principles. These may indeed defy or meet the sting; but they can neither soften nor take it away. For a sinner to bully death with no spiritual life in his soul, and no everlasting life in reversion, is the act of a desperate madman, who laughs at a horrible precipice before him, and rushes down headlong to destruction.

O eternity! eternity! It is fearful indeed to burst the bonds of life, and to break forth into the boundless and unalterable regions of eternity! Nature, in its senses, cannot bear the shocking reflection, which death affords, either of being an everlasting nothing, as atheists talk, or of enduring everlasting misery as sin deserves. It is grace only which can inspire the heart with a hope full of joy and immortality, that, when this brittle transitory life is past the soul shall possess a being, happy and long as the days of heaven.

Through Jesus Christ alone is death disarmed. When the Saviour speaks peace and salvation through his cross and righteousness, this last great enemy is no more the king of terrors. He gives up his fearful sting, and destroys nothing about the Christian but sin, and the means of sin.

O how sweet is the smile of that Christian, who, dying in the body, feels himself just upon living for ever! “He is not sick unto death, but unto life,” indeed. He quite his cares, his sorrows, his infirmities, and all that could distress or distract his spirit here, and looks calmly into the state before him, where he can meet with nothing but concord and joy, in the society of the redeemed and of his Saviour. He is weaned from the earth, and therefore can part with it easily; he is fitted for heaven, and therefore longs for it earnestly. He cannot but desire that which is congenial with his own renewed mind; and this can only truly and perfectly be found in the regions of glory.

They who afflict themselves (said a primitive Christian writer) about the loss of this life, are like the infants unborn, who, if they could speak, might bewail an expulsion from the womb at the approaching time of their birth; foolishly considering it not as the means, but as the end of being. Men, in their natural state, may indeed deplore their removal from this world, for which only they desire to live; but the renewed Christian is privileged to have a more glorious hope of a life everlastingly pure like God’s, and of a habitation wide and beautiful as the temple of heaven.

Lord, when I shall quit this clay, I know not, nor do I desire to know. It will be sufficient for me, if thou sustain me by thy grace now, and if I am divinely assured that I shall be for ever with thee in thee world to come. ? that this invincible “joy of the Lord may indeed be my strength,” when I lie down upon the bed of languishing and death, waiting from moment to moment for Christ, and for my dismission to be with him.

Soon this body shall turn to the dust, from whence it was framed; but nothing can extinguish the life of my spirit, which hath no relation to earth, which cannot subsist by matter and form, and which, in its faculties of will, understanding, love, and perception, is of kin to a brighter world. And O how reviving the thought! I am not only of kin to angels and heavenly spirits by the very nature of my soul; but I am doubly related to them and to my God, by being born again and renewed after his blessed image or likeness, through Jesus Christ. I am made by this, a child and an heir of an everlasting inheritance. All that death, then, can do to me is, to tell me that I am of age, and to lead me forth from these chambers of darkness to celebrate my birth-day in the palace of glory. There is in this view (what hath often been tasted) a kind of luxury in dying. In such a blessed, such an animating sense of death, I ought to say, that he deserves quite another name; or, rather, to exult with the prophet and apostle, “O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory?”

Whence then, at times, is the shuddering reluctance I feel at the prospect of dying? Surely it is because my faith and hope are not so lively as they are privileged to be; it is because I do not so steadily trust in the truth of those things, which my mind apprehends, and which I profess to be waiting for. Earth is too real, and heaven too unreal; or I could not thus hesitate, or tremblingly stand on the bank of the brook which keeps me from the fruition of my God. The struggle of my heart would not be for longer and longer continuance here, if my spirit were as firmly persuaded, as it should be, of my inheritance and mansion in glory.

Thou blessed Saviour of poor sinners like me, on thee, and on thee alone, my eyes are fixed! In the solemn last hour of my pilgrimage below, O let my eyes of faith be yet more steadily and more ardently fixed upon thee! And do thou, in the tender compassion of thy heart, which can sympathize with all thy people’s woes, look down in my departing moments upon me. Soothe the pangs of death with thy rich consolation and care. Let me then see thee by precious faith, who to carnal sense art invisible; ready, willing, glad to receive my soul; and let me pour it forth, in an ecstacy of praise and desire, as into the bosom of everlasting love! O my God, thus to die, would not be dying; but only departing to live and to be happy for ever!

So true are thy precious words, O my Jesus, that “whosoever liveth and believeth in thee, shall never die:” no, “he shall never perish, but is passed from death unto life, and shall life for evermore.” Glory be to thee for this rich, this invaluable promise! Lord, I believe; O help mine unbelief!

CHAPTER XLVI

The Recollection of This Second Part in Prayer to God

Enable me, O Lord my God! to examine myself, the state of my soul, and the reality and growth of my experience, seriously, deeply, and constantly. I am still clothed with a corrupt nature, and therefore am always inclined to favor myself; and nothing but thy grace can give me a faithful distrust of my own condition and attainments, or a holy watchfulness over all that passeth within me.

As I have received Christ Jesus my Lord, so I know it is my interest, privilege, happiness, and duty to walk, to live, to grow, and to press forward in him. O keep me from spiritual sloth, or, as it may better be called, from carnal security, that I may run, with the loins of my mind always girt and disentangled, and with increasing faith and patience, the blessed race which thou hast set before me. Give zeal for every duty, wisdom and strength rightly to perform it, and a humble holy resignation of heart to leave all the success to thee.

Make me wise to discern the motions within my soul, and to trace out from whence they proceed. O let me not be deceived by the will or the cunning artifice of the flesh, whenever it would mingle in holy things; but let my spirit be thine own sacred temple, where I may find thee indeed, working in me, enlightening and enlivening me for all thy service and glory, and drawing me, with a single eye, and a simple heart, to seek not myself, not my own pride, profit, or pleasure, but all I want, and all I can rightly have, in thee, and in thee alone. Draw me nearer and nearer to this just and perfect rule of action, to this sweet and blessed spiritual life; so that I may be able indeed to say, and with the increasing confidence of truth, “I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I live in the flesh, is not after the flesh, but by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself freely for me.” O let this be my humble and secret path of life, which none can know but whom thou teachest, and which, for its narrowness, none can walk in but whom thou supportest by thy hand.

Thou knowest, O my God, that I am in the world, surrounded by temptations, opposed by men, attacked by devils, weakened by infirmities, and exposed by a corrupt nature to all manner of evils. Without are fightings; within are fears. How shall I get safely on to the end; or, rather, how shall I get on at all, unless thou art with me ? I plead then thine own promise of truth, that thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, and at last receive me to glory.

Keep me, while I am in the world, from the envious, proud, hateful, dangerous, and unhappy spirit, which aboundeth in it. Let me have constant proof that indeed I am thine, by having thy life manifest in my mortal body, controlling and subduing it in all things to thy righteous will. So shall even the world own, that I have been with Jesus, and if it hate me, upon that account, as it hated him, O welcome be it, and let me account it as one of my brightest evidences and greatest honors.

In all the circumstances and conditions of my outward life, O help me to look for thy special blessing, without which nothing can succeed in itself, without which every thing may lead me astray. Help me to bear losses and crosses as thy dispensations intended only for my good; and give me wisdom and grace to see thine intention, and to get the good thou meanest by them. If one of thine hands be laid hard upon me, let the other support and bear me up with the more firmness and stability. Restrain all the murmuring and rebellion of my carnal nature against thy holy will, and lead my spirit, by all visitations, to nearer fellowship and sweeter communion with thee. So shall my earthly sorrows be turned into spiritual joys, and all the calamities which can befall me here, shall become urging and successful remembrancers to prepare me for that decaying mansion, “where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.”

And when sickness and death shall come, as come they must in a very little while at the longest, O stand by me, my dear and only Lord, in my drooping and needful moments. Make all my bed in my sickness, and overcome the sorrows of nature by the lively joys of thy grace. Receiving my spirit, which I commit unto thee, as thine only; for truly I am thine entirely, thine by purchase, thine by grace, thine by promise, thine by the immutable oath of all thine holy attributes. Carry, O carry me to the regions of peace, to the church and general assembly of the first-born, to the blissful city of God, and to thine own habitation, O Jesus, my Lord, my Life, my only Redeemer! Whom have I in heaven itself but thee; and what can I desire, throughout all the universe of thy works, in comparison of thee? My heart and my flesh may fail, yea, they shall and must fail; but thou, even thou, art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever!

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