A Preacher of the Old School.

 
MANY preachers are giving up the old ideas about the fall and total depravity of man. People are not often plainly told now that they are guilty sinners before a holy God. The sermons of our forefathers― who used to press this so constantly upon their hearers―are looked upon in many quarters as relics of the dark ages, only fit for the old curiosity shop. There is, however, one preacher left of the old school, and he speaks to-day as loudly and as clearly as ever. He is not a popular preacher, though the world is his parish, and he travels over every part of the globe, and speaks in every language under the sun. He visits the poor; he calls upon the rich; you may meet him in the workhouse, or find him moving in the very highest circles of society. He preaches to both churchmen and dissenters, to people of every religion and of no religion, and, whatever text he may have, the substance of his sermon is always the same.
He is an eloquent preacher; he often stirs feelings which no other preacher could reach, and brings tears into eyes that are little used to weep. He addresses himself to the intellect, the conscience, and the heart of his hearers. His arguments none have been able to refute; there is no conscience on earth that has not at some time quailed in his presence; nor is there any heart that has remained wholly unmoved by the force of his weighty appeals. Most people hate him, but in one way or another he makes everybody hear him.
He is neither refined nor polite. Indeed, he often interrupts the public arrangements, and breaks in rudely upon the private enjoyments of life. He lurks about the doors of the theater and the ballroom; his shadow falls sometimes on the card table; he is often in the neighborhood of the public-house; he frequents the shop, the office, and the mill; he has a master-key which gives him access to the most secluded chamber; he appears in the midst of legislators and of fashionable religious assemblies; neither the villa, the mansion, or the palace daunt him by their greatness; and no court or alley is mean enough to escape his notice. His name is Death.
You have heard many sermons from the old preacher. You cannot take up a newspaper without finding that he has a corner in it. Every tombstone serves him for a pulpit. You often see his congregations passing to and from the grave-yard. Every scrap of mourning is a memento of one of his visits. Nay, he has often addressed himself to you personally. The sudden departure of that neighbor―the solemn parting with that dear parent―the loss of that valued friend―the awful gap that was left in your heart when that fondly loved wife, that idolized child, was taken―have all been loud and solemn appeals from the old preacher. Some day very soon he may have you for his text, and in your bereaved family circle, and by your grave side he may be preaching to others. Let your heart turn to God this moment to thank Him that you are still in the land of the living―that you have not ere now died in your sins!
You may get rid of the Bible. You may disprove―to your own satisfaction―its histories; you may ridicule its teachings; you may despise its warnings; you may reject the Saviour of whom it speaks. Yes! the day may come when the rising tide of infidelity will cover Great Britain to such an extent that it will be as difficult to find a house with a Bible, as it is today, through God’s great mercy to us, to find a house without one.
You can get away from the preachers of the Gospel. You are not compelled to go to either church, chapel, or mission room; and you can cross over to the other side of the street if there is an open-air meeting. It is in your power to burn this, and every other such tract that comes into your possession. Yea! the time may come when infidelity and priestcraft will combine to make the preaching of Christ by lip or pen a criminal offense.
But if you get rid of God’s Word and of God’s servants, what will you do with the old preacher of whom I have spoken? Have you some plan to superannuate him―to put him on the retired list? Will you compel him by force to suspend his itinerations? Or do you hope that a few more years of scientific culture and modern thought will have such an effect upon him that his doctrines and practice will be quite changed? It is true that most preachers are more or less affected by the spirit and opinions of the age they live in, but this old preacher has gone on in perfect indifference to the changing events and opinions of the whole world for nearly six thousand years. All histories―both sacred and profane―give the same account of him, and all experience confirms it, so that it is against reason to expect that he will change in his old age.
Dying men and women, consider the prospect that is before you. Your little day will soon be passed. Your pleasures will have an end. Your occupations will be laid aside. Your wealth and honors will be worthless to you in the solemn hour when your body is reduced to a few handfuls of dust. After all, you “must needs die.”
Consider this matter, I pray you. Must there not be a cause for this? Is it by mere accident that a creature with such powers and capacities should come to so ignominious an end? There is but one answer to these questions, and as long as the old preacher goes on his rounds he will continue to proclaim it. Listen “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.”
Yes! the conclusion is forced upon us―there must be something wrong. We cannot think of fourteen hundred millions of graves being dug every thirty years on this planet of ours, as one whole generation after another passes down to the gates of death, without having the thought that there is something fearfully wrong.
THE FALL OF MAN
is no mere theological dogma, but a fearful reality, to which the world’s history, and the stern, sad facts of our own experience, bear terrible witness. Sin is not simply an ugly word in the Bible or on preachers’ lips; it is a dark, foul reality, which blights and curses the world by its presence. Nor is there any exception to the scope of its ravages. “Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” My reader is implicated in this matter. There is a great difference between the careless spectator in a court of justice, and the criminal in the dock whose life is at stake. The latter is your position. You have sinned; upon you the sentence of death has passed; and very soon it will be said of you, as it was said of nine old men in Genesis 5― “he died.”
When will you die? Do not think this a foolish question. You count your money; you reckon your profits; you calculate your dividends; surely it is quite as important to number your days! How will you find out? Turn up the life assurance tables. Yes! that is the average. A person of your age has the probability of living so many years. But let us consider a moment! That is an average, is it not? Which means that some live longer and others a good many years shorter. Some have died very suddenly, too―just about your age. It is possible, is it not, that you may die very soon? A young man went to a divinity professor and asked him how long before death a man ought to be prepared for it. The reply was, “About five minutes.” The young man turned away with relief, making up his mind to see life, sow his wild oats, enjoy the pleasures of the world, and then turn to God at the end of his days. “Stop,” said the professor; “when are you going to die?” “I cannot tell,” replied the young man. “Then you had better be prepared for death now; you may not have five minutes to live.”
How will you die? The first Napoleon, when life was passing away, insisted that his boots should be put on; he would die, like a soldier, in his boots. We were lately told in the newspapers how a great ecclesiastical dignity died in the splendid robes of his religious office. Queen Elizabeth died crying, “Millions of money for a moment of time!” How will you die?
Sad, sad indeed, if that word comes true of you which was thrice repeated of some very respectable people a long time ago: ― “YE SHALL DIE IN YOUR SINS.” One second after your death, it will be a matter of no consequence to you whether you died in a palace or in a cellar. Little will you care whether you have a national funeral in Westminster Abbey, or your poor body is tossed by unceremonious hands into a pauper’s grave. But your whole eternity will hang upon the state in which you die. If sin works such havoc, and sins have such fearful consequences in this world, what must they entail in the next? Men reap as they sow in this world, but God does not definitively execute judgment upon sins in this life. “After death the judgment.” In this world you can, in a sense, avoid God. Many live “without God in the world.” But death dissolves all connection with the things of time by which God can be excluded, and beyond death you must have to do with God.
The dying infidel, Colonel Charteris, said: “I would give £30,000 to have it proved to my satisfaction that there is no such place as hell.” His conscience was waking up to proclaim in that solemn hour that sins must be followed by the judgment of God. Where death leaves you, judgment will find you; and the issue of that judgment will be final, and for eternity.
How will you die? The Holy Ghost has written a short but solemn epitaph in Hebrews 10:2020By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; (Hebrews 10:20). God forbid that it should ever be true of my reader! Here it is: ―
“DIED WITHOUT MERCY.”
An innocent man might plead for justice, but the sinner’s only hope is mercy. The guilty one can only escape by the door of mercy. If the offender does not receive the due reward of his deeds, it must be on the ground of mercy. The transgressor can only be pardoned at the mercy-seat. Hence the penitent’s cry is, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” he is conscious that nothing but mercy will do for him. Your only chance is mercy. Oh! how sad, how complete, how irretrievable will be your ruin, if you die “without mercy.”
“THESE ALL DIED IN FAITH.”
Yea! though the dear men thus spoken of lived in a dispensation of comparative darkness,―though they had not a love-provided Saviour, or a fully-finished atoning work to rest upon,―yet, in the star-light of types, symbols, and promises, they trod the path of faith, which is now lighted up for us by the glory which shines in the face of the seated Saviour on the throne of God, and, as they lived, so they died “IN FAITH.”
God has not been indifferent to the ruin of His creature, whose sin has brought death upon him. There is no denying the fact “that the wages of sin is death;” but it is equally true that “the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)). “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him” (1 John 4:99In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)). The holy Son of God has
DIED IN LOVE
upon the cross. Yea, God commends His love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. The old preacher never spoke so loudly, or in such solemn tones, as when Jesus went to Calvary. Divine love would bless the sinner, but divine holiness could not make light of the sin. The full penalty of guilt―the wages of sin in all its dark and dread reality―passed upon the sinless Substitute. He took our place in death and judgment, that we might have His life, and His place of acceptance and favor before God.
“Oh! for this love, let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break;
And, all harmonious, human tongues
The Saviour’s praises speak!”
You may die unsaved; you will not die unloved. The Son of God is for you: Christ died for you: eternal life may be yours. The love of God―the work of Christ―the Spirit’s striving―all urge you to turn from the world and its delusions which end in death, to the Son of God whose soul-assuring words are: ― “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24)).
Love’s pleading voice echoes every solemn warning of the old preacher; but adds, in compassionate tenderness, the gracious inquiry, “Why will ye die?” It is true that you can never regain the paradise of Eden, or reach that tree whose fruit would give perpetuity to your present life on earth. All that is connected with the first creation―now ruined by sin―must pass away. But the love of God has revealed a fairer and brighter scene than Eden; a more glorious paradise than that of man’s innocence has been opened up by the death of Jesus. The joys of heaven, the endless festivities of the Father’s house, the love of the Father’s heart, and eternal glory in companionship with the Son of God, may all be yours.
Nor are the Christian’s blessings all in the future. He is brought to God now, and knows God as the source of all his blessing; he has the Holy Ghost; he walks, by the Spirit, in fellowship with the Father and the Son, and tastes thus of heaven’s delights before he gets there; death casts no shadow on his blessings, for they are wrapped up in One who is alive from the dead, and connected with a scene where death can never come; in spirit he lives already on the other side of death; in short, he has passed “from death unto life.”
Then, if he “falls asleep” and is “absent from the body,” it is to be “present with the Lord.” Death is no loss to the child of God, but an infinite gain. It frees him from the presence of sin, and from a body which groans under the bondage of corruption, and he departs to be “with Christ, which is far better.”