Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 946
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, June 19, 1870
“Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” 1 Timothy 4:8.
WE endeavored, this morning to prove the profitableness of godliness as to the life which now is, and to discriminate as to what the promise of this life really is. We tried to prove that “the promise” of the life that now is—its real and highest beauty and excellence—consists in peace of mind, peace with God, contentment, and happiness of spirit. And while we pointed out that godliness did not ensure wealth, or health, or even a good name—for all these, even to godly men, might not be granted—yet we showed that the great end of our being, that for which we live and were created, that which will best make it worth while to have existed, shall certainly be ours if we are godly.
We did not think it an unimportant matter to expound the bearing of true religion upon this present state. But I trust we did not exaggerate that view so as to keep those in countenance who dream that this world is the main consideration—and that the wisest man is he who makes it the be-all and the end-all of his existence.
Beloved Friends, there is another life beyond this fleeting existence. This fact was dimly guessed by heathens. Strange as their mythology might be, and singular as were their speculations us to the regions of bliss and woe, even barbarous nations have had some glimmering light concerning a region beyond the river of death. Hardly yet have we been able to discover a people with no idea of an after-state. Man has scarcely ever been befooled into the belief that death is the finis of the volume of his existence.
Few, indeed, have been so lost to natural light as to have forgotten that man is something more than the dog which follows at his heel. That which was dimly guessed by the heathen was more fully worked out by the bolder and clearer minds among philosophers. They saw something about man that made him more than either ox or horse. They marked the moral government of God in the world, and as they saw the wicked prosper, and the righteous afflicted, they said, “There must be another state in which the GREAT AND JUST ONE will rectify all these wrongs—reward the righteous, and condemn the wicked.”
They thought it proved that there would be another life. They could not, however, speak with confidence. For reason, however right her inferences, does not content the heart, or give “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” That is reserved for faith. The best light of heathens was but twilight. Yet was there so much light in their obscurity that they looked beyond the stream of death and thought they saw shades as of creatures that had once been here and could not die. What was thus surmised and suspected by the great thinkers of antiquity has been brought to light in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He has declared to us that we shall live again, that there will be a Judgment and a Resurrection both of the righteous and of the wicked, and that there will be awarded to the righteous a reward that shall know no end, while the wicked shall be driven into a banishment to which there shall be no close. We are not left, now, to speculate nor to rely upon unaided reason. We have been told upon the authority of God, sometimes by the lips of Prophets, at other times by the lips of His own dear Son, or by His inspired Apostles, that there is a world to come, a world of terrors to the ungodly, but a world of promised blessing to the righteous.
My dear Hearer, if it is so, what will the world to come be to you? Will you inherit its promise? You may easily answer that question by another. Have you godliness? If you have, you have the promise of the life that is to come. Are you ungodly? Do you live without God? Are you without faith in God, without love to God, without reverence to God? Are you without the pardon which God presents to believers in Christ Jesus? Then you are without hope, and the world to come has nothing for you but a fearful looking for ofjudgment and of fiery indignation which will devour you.
I. GODLINESS CONCERNING THE LIFE TO COME POSSESSES A PROMISE UNIQUE AND UNRIVALLED. I say a unique promise, for, observe—infidelity makes no promise of a life to come. It is the express business of infidelity to deny that there is such a life, and to blot out all the comfort which can be promised concerning it. Man is like a pris-
oner shut up in his cell, a cell all dark and cheerless unless there is a window through which he can gaze upon a glorious landscape.
Infidelity comes like a demon into the cell, and with desperate hands blocks up the window, that man may sit forever in the dark, or at best may have the boasted light of a farthing rush-light called free-thinking. All that infidelity can tell him is that he will die like a dog. Fine prospect for a man who feels eternity pulsing within his spirit! I know I shall not die like the beast that perishes. And let who will propound the theory, my soul sickens and turns with disgust from it. Nor would it be possible by the most specious arguments so to pervert the instincts of my nature as to convince me that I shall thus die, and that my soul, like the flame of an out-burnt candle, shall be quenched in utter annihilation.