June 25

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.—Acts 7:59.

THIS prayer of Stephen, the dying saint, contains this most important truth. The spirit of man doth survive the body; it dieth not with it. It is not annihilated; it is not resolved into the essence of some common element of souls, where it loseth its specific form and name. It was still the spirit of Stephen that was received by Christ. It sleepeth not. To confute the dream of those that talk of the sleeping of souls, or any lethargic, unintelligent, or inactive state, of so excellent, capacious, and active a nature, were but to dispute with sleeping men. When we say it is immortal, we mean not that it, or any creature, hath in itself a self-supporting or self-preserving sufficiency; or that they are necessary beings, and not contingent; or primitive beings, and not derived from another by creation. We know that all the world would turn to nothing in a moment if God did but withdraw his preserving and upholding influence, and but suspend that will that doth continue them. He need not exert any positive will or act for their destruction or annihilation. It is by a positive, efficient act of will that he createth; and by a mere cessation of the act of his preserving will he can annihilate. I mean not by any change in him, but by willing the continuance of the creature but till such a period; but yet he that will perpetuate the spirit of man, hath given it a nature, as he hath done to the angels, fit to be perpetuated; a nature not guilty of composition and elementary materiality, which might subject it to corruption. So that as there is an aptitude in iron, or silver, or gold to continue longer than grass, or flowers, or flesh; and a reason of its duration may be given from the nature of the thing, from that aptitude in subordination to the will of God; so there is such an aptitude in the nature of the soul to be immortal, which God maketh use of to the accomplishment of his will for its actual perpetuity.

The heathenish Socinians, that deny the immortality of the soul,—yea worse than heathenish, for most heathens do maintain it, must deny it to Christ himself, as well as to his members; for he used the like recommendation of his soul to his Father when he was on the cross, as Stephen doth here to him. If, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," be words that prove not the surviving of the spirit of Stephen; then, "Father into thy hands I commend my spirit," will not prove the surviving of the spirit of Christ. And, then, what do these infidels make of Christ, who also deny his deity; and consequently, make him nothing but a corpse, when his body was in the grave? How then did he make good his promise to the penitent malefactor? "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." But he that said, "Because I live, ye shall live also," did live in the spirit, while he was put to death in the flesh; and receiveth the spirits of his servants unto eternal life, while their flesh is rotting in the grave. This very text is so clear for this, if there were no other, it might end the controversy with all that believe the holy Scriptures.

I confess there is a sleep of souls, a metaphorical sleep in sin and in security, or else the drowsy opinions of these infidels had never found entertainment in the world; a sleep so deep that the voice of God, in the threatenings of his word, and the alarm of his judgments and the thunder of his warnings, by his most serious ministers, prevail not to awaken the most. So dead a sleep possesseth the most of the ungodly world, that they can quietly sin in the sight of God, at the entrance upon eternity, at the doors of hell, and the calls of God do not awaken them: so dead a sleep, that Scripture justly calls them dead. And minis-

16\* ters may well call them dead, for alas! it is not our voice that can awake them, for they are as dead to us. We draw back the curtains to let in the light, and show them that judgment is at hand, and use those true and terrible arguments from wrath and hell, which we are afraid should too much frighten many tender hearers, and yet they sleep on; and our loudest calls, our tears, and our entreaties can not awaken them. We cry to them in the name of the Lord, "Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." This moral sleep and death of souls, which is the forerunner of everlasting death in misery, we can not deny. But after death even this shall cease; and God will awaken them with his vengeance, that would not be awakened by his grace. Then, sinner, sleep under the thoughts of sin and God's displeasure if thou canst. There is no sleeping soul in hell; there are none that are past feeling. The mortal stroke that layeth thy flesh to sleep in the dust, lets out a guilty soul into a world where there is no sleeping.