your dying-day. Ah, Christians! what is your whole life—but a day to
[10.] Tenthly and lastly, Consider this—that the Lord will not
leave you—but be with you in that dying hour. "Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you
are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me," says the
psalmist, Psalm 23:4. Just so, the apostle, Heb. 13:5, "Keep your lives
free from the love of money and be content with what you have,
because God has said—Never will I leave you; never will I forsake
you." There are five negatives in the Greek, to assure God's people
that he will never forsake them; five times in Scripture is this
precious promise renewed, that we may press it until we have
pressed the sweetness out of it. Though God may seem to leave you,
you may be confident he will never forsake you. Why should that
man be afraid of death, who may be always confident of the presence
of the Lord of life? [Maximilian the emperor was so delighted with
that sentence, "If God is with us—who shall be against us?" that he
caused it to be written upon the walls in most of the rooms of his
palace.]
3. The next use shall be to stir you all up to prepare and fit you for
your dying-day. Ah, Christians! what is your whole life—but a day to
fit for the hour of death? What is your great business in this world—
but to prepare and fit for the eternal world? It was a sad speech of
Caesar Borgia, who being on his deathbed said, "When I lived, I
provided for everything but death! Now I must die, and am
unprovided to die." Ah, Christians! you have need every day to pray
with Moses, "Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply
our hearts to wisdom," Psalm 90:12; and to follow the counsel of the
prophet Jeremiah, "Give glory to the Lord your God before he brings
the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You
hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to
deep gloom," Jer. 13:16.
Old age is the dark mountain which makes a broad way narrow,
and a plain way cragged. It is a high point of heavenly wisdom to
consider our latter end: "Oh, that they were wise, that that
understood this, that they would consider their latter end!" Deut.
23:19. Jerusalem paid dearly for forgetting her latter end.
Jerusalem's filthiness was in her skirts, because she remembered not
her latter end, therefore she was dreadfully brought down.
To provoke you to prepare and fit for a dying-day, consider
seriously these following things—
(1.) He who prepares not for his dying-day, runs the hazard of
losing his immortal soul. Though true repentance is never too late—
yet late repentance is seldom true. "He who is not ready to repent
today, will be less ready tomorrow; his understanding will be more
dark, his heart more hard, his will more crooked, his affections more
distempered, his conscience more benumbed," etc. Bede tells a story
of a certain great man who was admonished in his sickness to repent,
who answered, "That he would not repent now, for if he should
recover, his companions would laugh at him;" but, growing sicker
and sicker, he then told them it was too late to repent— "For now,"
said he, "I am judged and condemned." It is the greatest wisdom in
the world to do that every day, which a man would do on a dying-
day, and to be afraid to live in such a state, as a man would be afraid
to die in. Ah, souls! you are afraid to die in such and such sins; and
will you not be afraid to live in those sins?
(2.) Again, The certainty of death, should cause you to prepare for
death. When we would affirm anything to be infallibly true, we say,
"As sure as death." "It is appointed," says the apostle, "unto men
once to die—but after this the judgment!" Heb. 9:27. [Psalm 89:48;
Job 30:23; Eccles. 12:5.] "Once," implies two things—
[1.] A certainty — it shall be;
[2.] A singularity — it will be but once.
"What man lives—who shall not see death?" says the psalmist;
that is, no man lives and shall not see death. In Job the grave is
called "the house appointed for all the living." The learned call death,
"our long home," where men must abide for a long time, even until
the resurrection. To live without fear of death—is to die living! To
labor not to die—is labor in vain. Death has for its motto, "I yield to
none!" It is decreed that all must die. Every man's death-day is his
doom's-day.
The Jews have a saying: "In the graveyard are to be seen skulls of
all sizes;" that is, death comes on the young as well as the old; the lot
is fallen upon all, and therefore all must die. All men are made of one
mold and matter, "Dust you are, and unto dust you shall return,"
Gen. 3:19. "All have sinned, are fallen short of the glory of God,"
Romans 3:23; and therefore death must pass upon all.
(3.) The uncertainty of the time of your death, should cause you
with open mouth to be in a constant readiness and preparedness for
death. No man knows when he shall die, nor what kind of death he
shall die—whether a natural or a violent death. Augustus died in a
compliment, Tiberius died in a deception, Galba died with a
sentence, Vespasian died with a jest! Zeuxes died laughing at the
picture of an old woman, which he drew with his own hand!
Sophocles was choked with the pit in a grape! Diodorus the logician
died for shame that he could not answer a silly question propounded
at the dinner table! Joannes Masius preaching upon the raising of
the woman of Naomi's son from the dead, within three hours after,
died himself! Felix, Earl of Wurtemburgh, sitting at supper with
many of his friends, some at the table fell into discourse about
Luther, and the people's general receiving of his doctrine, upon
which the Earl swore a great oath, "that before he died he would ride
up to the spurs in the blood of Lutherans;" but the very same night
God stretched out his hand so against him, that he choked to death
on his own blood! Bibulus, a Roman general, while riding in triumph
in all his glory—a tile fell from a house in the street, and beat out his
brains!
(4.) Consider, in the last place—That it is a solemn thing to die.
Death is a solemn parting of two near friends—soul and body.
Remember, all other preparations are to no purpose, if a man is not
prepared to die. What will it avail a man to prepare this and that for
his children, kindred, or friends, etc., when he has made no
preparations for his soul, for his eternal well-being? As death leaves
you—so judgment shall find you! As the judgment finds you—so shall
eternity keep you! If death takes you before you expect it, and are
prepared for it, it will be the more terrible to you; it will cause your
countenance to be changed, your thoughts to be troubled, your loins
to be loosed, and your knees to be dashed one against another. [He
who prepares for his body and friends—but neglects his soul, is like
him who prepares for his slave—but neglects his wife.] Oh the hell of
horrors and terrors which attend those souls who have their greatest
work to do when they come to die! Therefore, as you love your souls
—and as you would be happy in death—and everlastingly blessed
after death—prepare for death! [When I was young, says Seneca the
heathen, I then studied the art of living well; when old age came
upon me, I then studied the are of dying well.]
See that you build upon nothing below Christ! See that you have a
real interest in Christ; see that you die daily to sin, to the world, and
to your own righteousness. See that conscience is always waking,