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LECTURE XX.

THE DEATH OF DEATH.

PAIN and death will be annihilated in the world to come. They were not inmates of Eden. They are intruders on earth. They will be exiles in the Paradise that is to be, for

"God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."-REVELATION

xxi. 4.

I HAVE already explained the prophecy: "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." I showed how actual it must be, because God has said it: "There shall be no more sorrow, nor crying."

I will now try to show how equally certain is the prophecy or rather the promise: "There shall be no more pain, nor death." But what I would endeavour first of all to show is, that pain and death in consequence of sin are not only penalties attached to it, but that they have become necessary and expedient, and are so far merciful in a fallen and a sinful world. Of course pain and death were not originally meant to be; and undeniably their introduction into our orb and their action in our economy are the products and the direct results of sin. But while so introduced, we shall find by a careful analysis of their action that both of them have received into them gleams of beneficence and love; and whilst we hear in the words, "In the day thou eatest thou shalt die," the sentence of the Judge, we can hear ringing in it the under-tone of the loving-kindness and the sympathy of a Father also.

Let me show that pain, the sister of death, introduced with death in consequence of sin, is overruled to be by God's interposing goodness a ministry of beneficence in our existing economy. What is pain? The telegraphic despatch sent to the mind intimating that some part of our physical economy is in peril, and that it is time to pay attention to it. It is the warning voice to take heed, to see if something be not wrong, and to take the steps that lead to its reparation. A gifted writer and hard student said to one of his friends in the language he thought of great joy, and he hoped on the part of his friend it would be met by corresponding congratulation: "I have at last got rid of all my headaches." The answer of his friend was this: "I am sorry for you; you have got rid of the safety-valves— prepare for an explosion;" as much as to say that these headaches were the evidence of too intense application; and if the application or the study continued, and the safety-valves were closed, or the headaches did not give despatches intimating that the application was too intense, he might prepare for destruction, that is death. Children play so boisterously, and roughly, and recklessly and it is always the sign of health when they do so that if they were not warned by the sense of pain most children would kill themselves in childhood. But the sense of pain tells them, You must not run so fast, you must not push so hard, you must not wrestle so violently; and thus the pain that sin introduced is turned by God into a warning ministry of beneficence conducive to the safety and the protection of human life. A mote floats on the sunbeam, touches the sensitive eye; instinctively that sense of pain makes the eyelid close without your thinking of it, and the eye is protected from greater injury; and thus what sin introduced is made a ministry of beneficence, or the means of protecting and preserving that life which if no warning was given would be every hour in jeopardy. There is a very precious lesson taught us in connection with pain those who have never felt the intensest pain-I speak not from experience but from informa

tion-have never, it is supposed, experienced the intensest pleasure. Archdeacon Paley, one of the most acute and admirable writers, speaking on this very subject, makes the following sensible and just remark: "Pain is seldom violent and long continued; and its pauses and its intermissions become positive pleasure. It has the power of shedding a satisfaction and ease. which I believe few enjoy. A man resting from a fit of gout is for the time in possession of feelings which in undisturbed health he never could enjoy. I am far from being sure that man is not a gainer by suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a couple of hours in the course of every twentyfour." That seems a very hard saying, and yet I suspect there is some truth in it. "Two very common observations," says the Archdeacon, "favour this opinion: one is, that remission of pain calls forth from those who experience it stronger expressions of satisfaction and gratitude towards the author of relief; and the second is, that the spirits of sick men do not sink in proportion to the acuteness of their suffering, but rather appear to be invigorated and sustained not by the pain, but by the high degree of comfort which they derive on the cessation of the pain." Now we see in this God's goodness surviving the fall, and breaking out where it had been wholly forfeited. Thus pain, the offspring of the sin of man, is so tenderly touched and overruled by God that it becomes in one aspect of its ministry a source of positive and peculiar pleasure. But then, a day comes when there will be no more pain because no more peril. Pleasures that never pall; joys that have no satiety; blessings no longer in the bosom of a curse, will be the everlasting enjoyment; there shall be fulness of joy and pleasures that are for evermore. But it is most interesting to notice (and we are apt to overlook these things) that even in the curse there is embosomed a benediction; and that God never smites in his anger without administering corresponding, and softening, and remedial joys in his mercy, sympathy, and love.

Let us look at the eldest daughter of sin, namely, death. "There shall be no more death." You say, naturally, surely it would be a blessing to us if people did not now die. I am not sure of that. If the millennium were come it would indeed be a blessing, and it will then be a fact, an everlasting fact, for there shall be no more death. But death, the offspring of sin, is in this world, and among a sinful population, a most expedient if not a necessary thing. Suppose, for instance, an avaricious man living for ever, and hoarding for ever; absorbing as a vortex, never giving forth like a fountain; he would become a monster and a calamity on the earth. We have all read of a remarkable will case, where the testator left a will to the effect that his vast estates should be vested in trustees, with directions to accumulate for a hundred years. But what was dis

covered by financiers? That in a little time it would absorb the whole floating capital of the realm. And the House of Lords not many years ago interfered and violently broke the will, to avoid a monetary and financial catastrophe. Now suppose that this man instead of dying should have lived; suppose he should have lived for hundreds of years; if he had adhered to the purport embodied in his will in the course of a short time he would have absorbed, in the language of the statesmen who discussed the subject, the whole floating capital of the realm. Death was therefore necessary; it broke up the trust, and the monopoly of one became the property of thousands. What does that show? That death is expedient, as long as there are passions in the human heart and sinners in our world. In our existing economy death is the great ally of peace. The grave is a real Peace Society. Suppose Napoleon the First had lived to the present day; the nations would have still lived in awe of him; his very name, as said in that magnificent poem written by a poetess who has recently gone to her rest, Mrs. Barrett Browning: "Crowned and buried, his name shook the old casements of the world." Suppose that this great scourge of the nations still lived, the nations would have been

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kept in a state of ceaseless fever, providing for war, neglecting and overlooking the great demands and necessities of internal progress. But death interposed; the conqueror of Austerlitz became a chained eagle on the desert rock of St. Helena; death finished his ambition and the fears of the world together; and now the certainty of death binds over the nations to keep the peace, and helps to convince them that the penalty of its infraction is their life here and possibly their happiness hereafter. We thus see that death, the offspring and the introduction of sin, in our present world and in our present condition, is expedient. We have a striking historic proof of the justice of what I am now stating in the antediluvian age. When men lived to a thousand years; when, for instance, Adam was able to speak with Methuselah, and Methuselah with Noah, so that these three men could embrace 2000 years, what do we find was the condition of society? "The whole earth was filled with violence," and "the wickedness of man was great upon the earth." And what became necessary God sent the scourging flood from the heights of the sky and out of the depths of the earth, and swept off the world the guilty and the blaspheming generation; and to show that the length of human life had been found to be a calamity, he shortened man's life to the period of a hundred and twenty years, which it ought still to be, and if man perhaps were as careful as he ought to be might in many cases still be-the normal length of human life-a hundred and twenty years. There is no record of life being shortened since; and the reason that it is shorter may be that man is more reckless, and careless, and thoughtless than he ought to be. Although it is remarkable that as medicine and medical skill and science advance its length advances also, for the insurance offices will tell you that during the last forty years man's life on the whole has lengthened-including of course lives saved that used to be lost-some six or eight years; showing that there is more in one's own management and care than some are disposed to admit. Thus death is expedient in a fallen world. Everlasting

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