March 4

In the year king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. - Isaiah 6:1.

KINGS, as well as meaner men, die, and all their greatness is enshrined in the tomb. Vanity and meanness are inscribed upon every thing human. Death is always a very important and affecting event in life; but by the frequency of the occurrence it has become very familiar, and loses much of its influence; and there are few things that excite so little attention. This was noticed and lamented so early as Job’s days, by Eliphaz, who said, “They are destroyed from morning to evening; they perish forever without any regarding it.” Yet surely this insensibility” cannot be universal; surely death hath some kind of power to arrest the attention of the most thoughtless. And what does it say? “The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it.”

We see the universality of the ravages of death; that death is the “way of all the earth;” that “in this warfare there is no discharge.” And should not the living, who know that they shall die, bring home the inevitable destination to themselves, individually reflect, and say, “I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living”? It is the end of all men, and all men ought to lay it to heart. We see how little human greatness is. There is in human grandeur a comparative reality, and it has its uses and its claims in the present state; and nature and providence conduce to the production of it, and the Scripture commands us to respect it always,-to render “honour to whom honour is due, and fear to whom fear.” But these often regard the office rather than the men. “I said ye are gods, but ye shall all die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returns to the earth: in that very day bis thoughts perish.”

Why, then, should those in the superior ranks of life despise others? And why should others ever envy them? Is their strength the strength of stones? Are their bones brass? Are they not made of the same clay with others? Are they not subjected to the same infirmities, exposed to the same accidents and diseases? Are they not inheritors of the same mortality? And are they not hastening to say “to corruption, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother and sister”? Ah! says one,-

“Whene’er I feel my virtues fail,

And my ambitious thoughts prevail,

I’ll take a turn among the tombs,

And see whereto all glory comes.”

“Ah!” says David, “I have seen the wicked great in power, spreading himself like a green bay-tree: he passed, and was not; I sought him, but he could not be found.” Ah! what must death be to the great without religion? When Dr. Johnson was walking over the pleasure-grounds of Garrick, he said to him, “Ah, Davy, these are the things that make men unwilling to die!” Yes; what can make a man willing to resign the highest seat of power, and indulgence, and dignity? Suffering may indeed make him willing to depart, if he believes that there is no after-state; otherwise conscience, if it be alive, and if it be awake, must tell him that his present sufferings are only the beginnings of sorrow. It is only hope, a good hope through grace, therefore, that can effectually do it. This, indeed, can more than reconcile the possessor to the loss; this turns the loss even to a gain; and what, then, is a palace to “a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”?

What is an earthly crown compared with the “crown of glory that fadeth not away”? Therefore David, who was a very mighty monarch himself, who had risen surprisingly in life, who had so much to leave behind him more than any other man in his day, was more than willing to resign it; he prayed to be delivered from men of the world, who had their portion in this life; “for,” said he, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.”