Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1373
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 9, 1877
“When a few years are come, then I shall go the way from where I shall not return.” Job 16:22.
THE season of the year may well remind us of our mortality. The corn, which a few weeks ago was green and vigorous, has now, for the most part, yielded to the sickle. Many flowers which adorned our gardens have exchanged their bloom for ripening seed. The year has commenced to die—its glory and prime have gone. The dews of evening are heavy and the mists linger in the morning, for the summer heat is declining. The leaves are just upon the turn and the fall of the year is close at hand. These are Creation’s warnings, reminding us that the Lord has set a harvest for us and that we all fade as a leaf.
Nature has her prophets as well as Revelation and Autumn in his rugged garb is one of them. He has now come to us with this solemn message, “The harvest is passed and the summer is ended; prepare to meet your God!” In addition to the warnings of Nature, we have lately been saluted by voices from Divine Providence. Loud calls have come to us, of late, from almost every part of our Church work. Death is come up into our windows and is entered into our palaces. Death, who seldom comes into the Orphanage, has forced his cruel hand into our nest of young ones and has taken from there the widow’s child.
A funeral has left our gates and little boys have gathered around a grave to see one like themselves laid in the silent earth. Death has set his axe, also, against the College and has cut down one of our growing trees, upon which there were abundant tokens of future fruitfulness. Our brother Winter had sharpened his sword for the conflict and was just about to leave us for actual service, when, in a few days his strength departed and he was not. Death has come, also, among the ministers who were once our students and were our crown of rejoicing as laborers for the Lord.
One of the ablest and best of them has put a whole town in mourning, for he has been taken Home at an early age, when he had already become foremost for usefulness. Middlesborough mourns our brother Priter with no common sorrow. Beyond all this, almost every day we have reports of this one and that one in the membership and in the congregation going home. These dying ones are God’s voices to us and I should be unworthy of addressing you if I did not, first, hear them in the silence of my own soul and then endeavor to interpret them for you.
All these things bring to my mind the language of our text, “When a few years are come, then I shall go the way from where I shall not return.” Will they not have the same effect upon you? He that has ears to hear let him hear! My subject is one upon which it would be quite impossible to say anything new, since death is neither novel nor uncommon, for from the days of Abel until now it has honeycombed the earth with graves. Nor need I seek out elegancies of speech, for these would be incongruous with such a theme.
When we speak of eternal things, the less attempt we make at fluent language the better—such solemn topics are most powerful when suffered to have their own natural voice and speak for themselves. Begone all trifling thoughts! Let the mind put off all joyous apparel and wear, awhile, the shroud. Instead of rising with gaiety, let the imagination bow with solemnity, for now we have to do with the dying chamber, the grave and the Judgment Throne. The blast of the archangel’s trumpet is ringing in our ears and we are to anticipate the day in which we shall receive our final sentence from the Judge of all the earth!
Solemnity, therefore, should possess our minds. Let us shut out the present world and become familiar with the world to come. Very simple and self-evident will be the considerations which I shall set before you. But if you are already moved to a solemn frame of mind, you will be prepared to derive profit from them. May God the Holy Spirit bless the Word and by its means prepare us for our last day of which the text speaks so plainly.
First, then, let us realize our inevitable journey—“I shall go the way from where I shall not return.” Secondly, let us contemplate its nearness—“When a few years are come.” Thirdly, let us consider our non-return from the journey— “From where I shall not return.” And then we shall close, in the fourth place, by enquiring where we are going. We are going from where we shall not return, but to what place are we bound? Is it endless bliss or ceaseless woe?
I. First, then, let us REALIZE OUR INEVITABLE JOURNEY. I desire that these words may be earnestly taken up in a personal manner by each of us. The language is in the singular number. “I shall go the way from where I shall not return.” Let us apply it, each one, to himself. The fact that all men are mortal has little power over our minds, for we always make a tacit exception and put off the evil day for ourselves. We acknowledge ourselves to be mortal, but do not expect to die just now. Even the aged look forward to a continuance of life and the consumptive dream of possible recovery.