August 13

I know that thou wilt bring me to death. - Job 30:23.

WE not only know that we shall die, but we know much more: we know a number of things pertaining to it too. For instance, we know that we shall die, whatever be our character or our condition. We know that “in this war there is no discharge;” that “this is the way of all the earth.” Enoch, indeed, “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him;” and Elias ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire; and at the last day there will be multitudes who “will not sleep, but be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” But these are all miracles; these are all exceptions to the general rule: we do not look for any thing like this. “The living,” therefore, whether they are old or young, rich or poor, whether they are in palaces or poor-houses, whether they are sinners or whether they are Christians, each of them can individually say, “I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.”

And as we know that we shall die, so we know also that death cannot be far off. There is now and then an individual who reaches a century; but he is noticed and spoken of as a prodigy. “The days of our years are threescore years and ten:” this is the general average of human life now, and it is a very favourable one; numbers more die on one side of it than on the other. Yes, we know that but for the will of God our death may be very near. There is not a week, a day, an hour, or a moment, in which we may not die. We know the perilousness of the situation in which we live; we know the truth of Dr. Watt’s remark:-

“Dangers stand thick through all the ground.

To push us to the tomb;

And fierce diseases wait around

To hurry mortals home.”

We know the brittleness of the human frame; that the body is constituted of a multiplicity of delicate organs and vessels, the destruction of any one of which may bring on the dissolution of the whole. A philosopher once said, with regard to those who sailed, that they were always within three or four inches of death. It is but a narrow partition, wherever we are, between us and the eternal world. As we know we shall die, so we know that we shall only die once. “It is appointed unto men once to die;” and what can be only done once ought to be done very well; and we know also that when “the dust shall return to the dust as it was, the spirit shall return to God who gave it;” and that after death will be the judgment.

There are persons who affect not to believe this, for we must distinguish between profession and belief in a thousand cases. We must remember, too, that no man can be sure-perfectly sure-that there will be no hereafter. A man may wish to be considered a brute, but he cannot prove that he is one; he may live like the brutes that perish, and wish to die like them and be no more, but he cannot. He can never be sure of this; he cannot be free from some misgiving, some fears, some doubts, in this case. And if it be supposed that now and then there is an individual who has entirely subdued his reason, and conquered his conscience, and forced God “to give him up to strong delusion to believe a lie,” yet their number among us is very few.

We, however, know that we shall die, and also that death is not annihilation; that it is not the extinction of existence, but only the change from one mode of it to another; that it is only a transition from a mortal to an eternal state, and from a state of action and probation to a state of decision and retribution.