The Water of Life, and Other Sermons - Charles Kingsley 4 стр.

Surely, if that miracle meant anything, if these words meant anything, it meant this: that those who die in the fear of God, and in the faith of Christ, do not really taste death; that to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; that they pass at once, and instantly, into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings, unchanged,purified doubtless from earthly stains, but still the same living, thinking, active beings which they were here on earth.  I say, active.  The Bible says nothing about their sleeping till the Day of Judgment, as some have fancied.  Rest they may; rest they will, if they need rest.  But what is the true rest?  Not idleness, but peace of mind.  To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care,this is the true rest.  Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of allknowing ones duty, and yet not being able to do it.  That is true rest; the rest of God, who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles each day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them.  Perfect rest, in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of His elect.

I hope that this is so.  I trust that this is so.  I think our Lords great words can mean nothing less than this.  And if it be so, what comfort for us who must die?  What comfort for us who have seen others die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our bodythe mere shell and husk of ussuch a change as comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly.  Where is the sting of death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do service to men or God?  Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far from the grave holding us down, it frees us from the very thing which holds us down,the mortal body?

Death is not death, then, if it kills no part of us, save that which hindered us from perfect life.  Death is not death, if it raises us in a moment from darkness into light, from weakness into strength, from sinfulness into holiness.  Death is not death, if it brings us nearer to Christ, who is the fount of life.  Death is not death, if it perfects our faith by sight, and lets us behold Him in whom we have believed.  Death is not death, if it gives us to those whom we have loved and lost, for whom we have lived, for whom we long to live again.  Death is not death, if it joins the child to the mother who is gone before.  Death is not death, if it takes away from that mother for ever all a mothers anxieties, a mothers fears, and lets her see, in the gracious countenance of her Saviour, a sure and certain pledge that those whom she has left behind are safe, safe with Christ and in Christ, through all the chances and dangers of his mortal life.  Death is not death, if it rids us of doubt and fear, of chance and change, of space and time, and all which space and time bring forth, and then destroy.  Death is not death; for Christ has conquered death, for Himself, and for those who trust in Him.  And to those who say, You were born in time, and in time you must die, as all other creatures do; Time is your king and lord, as he has been of all the old worlds before this, and of all the races of beasts, whose bones and shells lie fossil in the rocks of a thousand generations; then we can answer them, in the words of the wise man, and in the name of Christ who conquered death:

SERMON IV

THE WAGES OF SIN

What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.  But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.  For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is a glorious text, if we will only believe it simply, and take it as it stands.

But if in place of St. Pauls words we put quite different words of our own, and sayBy the wages of sin is death, St. Paul means that the punishment of sin is eternal life in torture, then we say something which may be true, but which is not what St. Paul is speaking of here.  For wages are not punishment, and death is not eternal life in torture, any more than in happiness.

That, one would think, was clear.  It is our duty to take St. Pauls words, if we really believe them to be inspired, simply as they stand; and if we do not quite understand them, to explain them by St. Pauls own words about these matters in other parts of his writings.

St. Paul was an inspired Apostle.  Let him speak for himself.  Surely he knew best what he wished to say, and how to say it.

Now St. Pauls opinions about death and eternal life are very clear; for he speaks of them often, and at great length.

He considered that the great enemy of God and man, the last enemy Christ would destroy, was death; and that, after death was destroyed, the end would come, when God would be all in all.  Then came the question, which has puzzled men in all agesHow death came into the world.  St. Paul answers, By sin.  He says, as the author of the third chapter of Genesis says, that Adam became subject to death by his fall.  By one man, he says, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.  And thus, he says, death reigned even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adams transgression.

That he is speaking of bodily death is clear, because he is always putting it in contrast to the resurrection to life,not merely to a spiritual resurrection from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; but to the resurrection of the body,to our Lords being raised from the dead, that He might die no more.

Then he speaks of eternal life.  He always speaks of it as an actual life, in a spiritual body, into which our mortal bodies are to be changed.  Nothing can be clearer from what he says in 1 Cor. xv., that he means an actual rising again of our bodies from bodily death; an actual change in them; an actual life in them for ever.

But he says, again and again,As sin caused the death of the body, so righteousness is to cause its life.

When ye were the servants of sin, he says to the Romans, what fruit had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death.  But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.  For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

When ye were the servants of sin, he says to the Romans, what fruit had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death.  But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.  For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is St. Pauls opinion.  And we shall do well to believe it, and to learn from it, this day, and all days.

The wages of sin and the end of sin is death.  Not the punishment of sin; but something much worse.  The wages of sin, and the end of sin.

And how is that worse news?  My friends, every sinner knows so well in his heart that it is worse news, more terrible news, for him, that he tries to persuade himself that death is only the arbitrary punishment of his sin; or, quite as often, that the punishment of his sin is not even death, but eternal torment in the next life.

And why?  Because, as long as he can believe that death, or hell, are only punishments arbitrarily fixed by God against his sins, he can hope that God will let him off the punishment.  Die, he knows he must, because all men die; and so he makes up his mind to that: but being sent to hell after he dies, is so very terrible a punishment, that he cannot believe that God will be so hard on him as that.  No; he will get off, and be forgiven at last somehow, for surely God will not condemn him to hell.  And so he finds it very convenient and comfortable to believe in hell, just because he does not believe that he is going there, whoever else may be.

But, it is a very terrible, heartrending thought, for a man to find out that what he will receive is not punishment, but wages; not punishment but the end of the very road which he is travelling on.  That the wages of sin, and the end of sin, to which it must lead, are death; that every time he sins he is earning those wages, deserving them, meriting them, and therefore receiving them by the just laws of the world of God.  That does torment him, that does terrify him, if he will look steadfastly at the broad plain factYou need not dream of being let off, respited, reprieved, pardoned in any way.  The thing cannot be done.  It is contrary to the laws of God and of Gods universe.  It is as impossible as that fire should not burn, or water run up hill.  It is not a question of arbitrary punishment, which may be arbitrarily remitted; but of wages, which you needs must take, weekly, daily, and hourly; and those wages are death: a question of travelling on a certain road, whereon, if you travel it long enough, you must come to the end of it; and the end is death.  Your sins are killing you by inches; all day long they are sowing in you the seeds of disease and death.  Every sin which you commit with your body shortens your bodily life.  Every sin you commit with your mind, every act of stupidity, folly, wilful ignorance, helps to destroy your mind, and leave you dull, silly, devoid of right reason.  Every sin you commit with your spirit, each sin of passion and temper, envy and malice, pride and vanity, injustice and cruelty, extravagance and self-indulgence, helps to destroy your spiritual life, and leave you bad, more and more unable to do the right and avoid the wrong, more and more unable to discern right from wrong; and that last is spiritual death, the eternal death of your moral being.  There are three parts in youbody, mind, and spirit; and every sin you commit helps to kill one of these three, and, in many cases, to kill all three together.

So, sinner, dream not of escaping punishment at the last.  You are being punished now, for you are punishing yourself; and you will continue to be punished for ever, for you will be punishing yourself for ever, as long as you go on doing wrong, and breaking the laws which God has appointed for body, mind and spirit.  You can see that a drunkard is killing himself, body and mind, by drink.  You see that he knows that, poor wretch, as well as you.  He knows that every time he gets drunk he is cutting so much off his life; and yet he cannot help it.  He knows that drink is poison, and yet he goes back to his poison.

Then know, habitual sinner, that you are like that drunkard.  That every bad habit in which you indulge is shortening the life of some of your faculties, and that God Himself cannot save you from the doom which you are earning, deserving, and working out for yourself every day and every hour.

Oh how men hate that message!the message that the true wrath of God, necessary, inevitable, is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men.  How they writhe under it!  How they shut their ears to it, and cry to their preachers, No!  Tell us of any wrath of God but that!  Tell us rather of the torments of the damned, of a frowning God, of absolute decrees to destruction, of the reprobation of millions before they are born; any doctrine, however fearful and horrible: because we dont quite believe it, but only think that we ought to believe it.  Yes, tell us anything rather than that news, which cuts at the root of all our pride, of all our comfort, and all our superstitionthe news that we cannot escape the consequences of our own actions; that there are no back stairs up which we may be smuggled into heaven; that as we sow, so we shall reap; that we are filled with the fruits of our own devices; every man his own poisoner, every man his own executioner, every man his own suicide; that hell begins in this life, and death begins before we die:do not say that: because we cannot help believing it; for our own consciousness and our own experience tell us it is true.  No wonder that the preacher who tells men that is hated, is called a Rationalist, a Pantheist, a heretic, and what not, just because he does set forth such a living God, such a justice of God, such a wrath of God as would make the sinner tremble, if he believed in it, not merely once in a way, when he hears a stirring sermon about the endless torments: but all day long, going out and coming in, lying on his bed and walking by the way, always haunted by the shadow of himself, knowing that he is bearing about in him the perpetually growing death of sin.

And still more painful would this message be to the sinner, if he had any kindly feeling for others; and, thank God, there are few who have not that.  For St. Pauls message to him is, that the wages of his sin is death, not merely to himself, but to othersto his family and children above all.  So St. Paul declares in what he says of his doctrine of original or birth sin, by which, as the Article says, every man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth against the spirit.

St. Pauls doctrine is simple and explicit.  Death, he says, reigned over Adams children, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adams transgression; agreeing with Moses, who declares God to be one who visits the sins of the fathers on the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him.  But how the sinner will shrink from this messageand shrink the more, the more feeling he is, the less he is wrapped up in selfishness.  Yes, that message gives us such a view of the sinfulness of sin as none other can.  It tells us why God hates sin with so unextinguishable a hatred, just because He is a God of Love.  It is not that mans sin injures God, insults God, as the heathen fancy.  Who is God, that man can stir Him up to pride, or wound or disturb His everlasting calm, His self-sufficient perfectness?  God is tempted of no man, says St. James.  No.  God hates sin.  He loves all, and sin harms all; and the sinner may be a torment and a curse, not only to himself, not only to those around him, but to children yet unborn.