Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1572
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, December 12, 1880
“The righteousness of Your testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding and I shall live.” Psalm 119:144.
YESTERDAY afternoon I was the subject of a somewhat singular circumstance. An esteemed friend and relative came over to my house, evidently laboring under great disturbance of mind and having enquiries to make of a very important order. I was, at the time, walking in the garden, so that I did not see him and he appeared to have great difficulty in mentioning the subject of his concern to my wife. At last it came out that he had seen a gentleman who had informed him that it was generally rumored that I had been taken ill with heart disease and had died in a very short time. My friend came to the point by cautious degrees and asked at length if I was seriously ill. “No,” was the joyful reply of my beloved, “he is much the same as usual.”
Then it was clear I was not dead and the great fear was removed. The question was put, “Would you like to see him?” But my kind friend was perfectly satisfied and was too full of joy to wish to linger—he would go back and answer with certainty the many enquiries which continued to be made at the Tabernacle. How the report originated, I am quite at a loss to tell. It has evoked much kindness, but it is rather odd to feel called upon to assure your friends that you are yet alive! I can but show myself and ask my friends to see for themselves if I look like a dead man! When the peculiarity of the position had given place to other thoughts, it struck me in a solemn manner that the report might have been true and my death will assuredly be a fact one day unless our Lord should come speedily.
Only sparing mercy from God’s right hand has prevented it being true at this moment. We do not realize our mortality unless we are startled into a recognition of it. We believe others to be mortal and are not much surprised when they fall, but we have a secret notion that no axe will, for the present, be laid at our root. Yet reason would lead a man to ask, “It happens to many, to die suddenly, why should it not happen to me?” I regard the incident as a call to me to stand ready to depart at any time. Let it be a warning to you, also, to set your houses in order, for in a moment Death may surprise you!
A practical lesson may be gathered from the very natural scene which followed my friend’s departure. I came in from my walk and found myself suddenly seized by my wife with both hands—grasping the front of my coat she turned me round and looked at me steadily with a most tender gaze, declaring that she must take a double look at me and hold me before her eyes to be quite sure that her husband was yet alive to her unutterable joy. This special outpouring of thankfulness might have been lost had it not been for the rumor and, so far, it is well. May all of you be moved to the same feeling towards your dear ones whenever they come home at night alive! What would you do without them?
What desolation would it cause in the house if a messenger hurriedly rushed into your house with the news of their sudden death? How we ought to love those who are spared to us and to praise God to think they are still alive. Suppose they were suddenly removed—have we valued them rightly? Try and act towards them as you would act if you knew that they would die today. If husband or wife had died, what a sorrow it would be if an unkind word had been spoken, or a difference had arisen just before the last look! What a painful cause for future regret! Let your affection to those about you gush forth freely as you reflect that God has spared them to you.
Bless God, good woman, that you are a wife and not a widow! Bless God, Christian man, that you sit side by side with your dear spouse and have not to go weeping to her grave. What a blank! What a darkness! What a gloom would come over your household if either of the parents should be suddenly taken away! Therefore, praise God and be thankful and let us try to live towards one another and towards our Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus in such a way as we should wish to have done if they were suddenly to be taken. Pray for your pastor the more earnestly because you might, this
morning, have missed him from your midst—and he will try and preach more earnestly to you because you may be gone before he will have another opportunity of addressing you.
Let us continue knit together in love as long as we live, for the tie which now binds us together may soon be snapped. Out of a painful rumor may thus come a great blessing to families and congregations if it shall cause an increase of mutual love and an outpouring of united gratitude for sparing mercies! So much for a lesson as to this mortal life. By this incident I was further led to turn a heart-glance upon myself and to say, “I wonder whether there is any question as to whether I am alive in the higher sense?” That I am alive as to my natural life is clear enough—but is my spiritual life equally evidenced? This is a very necessary enquiry, for it is easy enough to make a fair show in the flesh and yet to be alienated from the life of God.