The Wicked Man's Life, Funeral, and Epitaph
A Sermon
(No. 200)
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 13, 1858, by the
REV. C.H. SPURGEON
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens
"And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place
of the holy and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done:
this is also vanity."–Ecclesiastes 8:10.
IT IS QUITE CERTAIN that there are immense benefits attending our
present mode of burial in extra mural cemeteries. It was high time that
the dead should be removed from the midst of the living–that we should
not worship in the midst of corpses, and sit in the Lord's house on the
Sabbath, breathing the noxious effluvia of decaying bodies. But when we
have said this, we must remember that there are some advantages which
we have lost by the removal of the dead, and more especially by the
wholesale mode of burial which now seems very likely to become general.
We are not so often met by the array of dead. In the midst of our
crowded cities we sometimes see the sable hearse bearing the relics of
men to their last homes, but the funeral ceremonies are now mostly
confined to those sweet sleeping places beyond our walks, where rest
the bodies of those who are very dear to us. Now, I believe the sight
of a funeral is a very healthful thing for the soul. Whatever harm may
come to the body by walking through the vault and the catacomb, the
soul can there find much food for contemplation, and much excitement
for thought. In the great villages, where some of us were wont to
dwell, we remember how when the funeral came now and then, the tolling
of the bell preached to all the villagers a better sermon than they had
heard in the church for many a day, and we recollect, how as children,
we used to cluster around the grave, and look at that which was not so
frequent an occurrence in the midst of a rare and spare population; and
we remember the solemn thoughts which used to arise even in our young
hearts when we heard the words uttered, "Earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust." The solemn falling of the few grains of ashes
upon the coffin-lid was the sowing of good seed in our hearts. And
afterwards, when we have in our childish play climbed over those
nettle-bound graves, and seated ourselves upon those mossgrown
tombstones, we have had many a lesson preached to us by the dull cold
tongue of death, more eloquent than aught we have heard from the lip of
living man and more likely to abide with us in after years, but now we
see little of death. We have fulfilled Abraham's wish beyond what he
desired–we "bury the dead out of our sight;" it is rarely that we see
them, and a stranger passing through our streets might say, "Do these
live always? for I see no funerals amongst the millions of this city, I
see no signs of death."
We shall this morning want you, first of all, to walk with a living
man; it is said of him that he did "come and go from the place of the
holy:" next, I shall want you to attend his funeral, and then, in
conclusion I shall ask you to assist in writing his epitaph–"and they
were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this also is
vanity."
I. In the first place, HERE IS SOME GOOD COMPANY FOR YOU; some with
whom you may walk to the house of God, for it is said of them, that
they did come and go from the place of the holy. By this, I think we
may understand the place where the righteous meet to worship God. God's
house may be called "the place of the holy." Still, if we confine
ourselves strictly to the Hebrew, and to the connection, it appears
that by the "place of the holy" is intended the judgment-seat the place
where the magistrate dispenses justice; and alas! there be some wicked
who and go even to the place of judgment, to judge their fellow
sinners. And we may with equal propriety consider it in a third sense
to represent the pulpit which should be "the place of the holy but we
have seen the wicked come and go even from the pulpit, though God had
never commanded them to declare his, statutes.
In the first place we will take this as representing the house of God.
What a sight it is to see the great crowds coming up to the sanctuary
of the Lord. I am sure, as we saw the multitudes coming up to the house
of God, there must have been a peculiar thrill of joy pass through our
hearts. It reminds us of the ancient gathering in Zion's temple when
thither the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, to worship at the
sanctuary of God. Oh! it is a noble sight when with joy and gladness we
see the young and the old, the gray-headed and the children, all of
them pressing forward in one eager throng to worship the Lord of Hosts,
and listen to the voice of his sacred oracle. But your pleasure must
have a great deal of alloy if you stop for a moment and dissect the
congregation. Pull the goodly mass in sunder: in a heap it sparkles
like gold;, pull aside the threads, and alas! you will see that there
are some not made of the precious metal, for "we have seen the wicked
come and go from the place of the holy." Gathered in this throng this
morning we have here men who almost profane the spot in which they are
found. Last night's revel has left its impress upon their countenances.
We have others who will, ere this day is closed, be cursing God in the
house of Satan. There be many to be found here who have during this
week been spending their time in lying, cheating, and swindling in the
midst of their business. I doubt not there are some here who have taken
every advantage that was possible of their fellow men, and if they have
not come within the clutches of the law it certainly has not been their
fault. We have too, I doubt not, in such a multitude–yea, I may speak
with confidence–we have men here who have, during the past week, and
at other times defiled themselves with sins that we will not mention,
for it were a shame for us to speak of the things which are done of
them in secret. Little do we know when we look here from this
pulpit–it looks like one great field of flowers, fair to look
upon–how many a root of deadly henbane and noxious nightshade groweth
here, and though you all look fair and goodly, yet "I have seen the
wicked come and go from the place of the holy."
Shall we just take the wicked man's arm and walk with him to the house
of God? When he begins to go, if he be one who has neglected going in
his childhood, which perhaps is not extremely likely, when he begins to
go even in his childhood, or whenever you choose to mention, you will
notice that he is not often affected by the sound of the ministry. He
goes up to the chapel with flippancy and mirth. He goeth to it as he
would to a theater or any other place of amusement, as a means of
passing away his Sabbath and killing time. Merrily he trippeth in
there, but I have seen the wicked man when he went away look far
differently from what he did when he entered. His plumes had been
trailed in the dust. As he walks home there is no more flippancy and
lightness, for he says, "Surely the Lord God has been in that place and
I have been compelled to tremble. I went to scoff but I am obliged, in
coming away, to confess that there is a power in religion, and the
services of God s house are not all dulness after all." Perhaps you
have hoped good of this man. But, alas! he forgot it all, and cast away
all his impressions. And he came again the next Sunday, and that time
he felt again. Again the arrow of the Lord seemed to stick fast in his
heart. But, alas! it was like the rushing of water. There was a mark
for a moment, but his heart was soon healed, he felt not the blow; and
as for persuading him to salvation, he we, like the deaf adder, "charm
we never so wisely," he would not regard us so as to turn from his
ways. And I have seen him come and go till years have rolled over his
head, and he has still filled his seat, and the minister is still
preaching, but in his case preaching in vain. Still are the tears of
mercy flowing for him; still are the thunders of justice launched
against him; but he abideth just as he was. In him there is no change
except this, that now he groweth hard and callous. You do not now hear
him say that he trembles under the Word–not he. He is like a horse
that hath been in the battle, he feareth not the noise of the drum nor
the rolling of the smoke, and careth not for the din of the cannon. He
cometh up, he heareth a faithfill warning, and he saith, "What of it?
this is for the wicked." He heareth an affectionate invitation, and he
saith, "Go thy way, when I have a more convenient season I will send
for thee." And so he comes and goes up to the house of God and back
again. Like the door upon its hinges he turns into the sanctuary
to-day, and out of it to-morrow. "He comes and goes from the place of
the holy." It may be, however, he goes even further. Almost persuaded
to be a Christian by some sermon from a Paul, he trembles at his feet.
He thinks he really repents; he unites himself with the Christian
church: he makes a profession of religion; but, alas! his heart has
never been changed. The sow is washed, but it is the sow still. The dog
has been driven from its vomit, but its doggish nature is there the
same. The Ethiopian is clothed in a white garment, but he hath not
changed his skin. The leopard hath been covered all over, but he hath
not washed his spots away. He is the same as ever he was. He goes to
the baptismal pool a black sinner, and he comes out of it the same. He
goes to the table of the Lord a deceiver; he eats the bread and drinks
the wine, and he returns the same. Sacrament after Sacrament passes
away. The Holy Eucharist is broken in his presence, he receives it, but
he comes and he goes, for he receives it not in the love of it. He is a
stranger to vital godliness, and as a wicked man "he comes and he goes
from the place of the holy."
But is it not a marvellous thing that men should be able to do this? I
have sometimes heard a preacher so earnestly put the matter of
salvation before men, that I have said, "Surely they must see this." I
have heard him plead as though he pleaded for his own life, and I have
said, "Surely they must feel this." And I have turned round, and I have
seen the handkerchief used to brush away the tear, and I have said,
"Good must follow this." You have brought your own friends under the
sound of the Word, and you have prayed the whole sermon through that
the arrow may reach the white and penetrate the center of the mark, and
you said to yourself, "What an appropriate discourse." Still you kept
on praying, and you were pleased to see that there was some emotion.
You said "Oh, it will touch his heart at last." But is it not strange
that, though wooed by love divine, man will not melt; though thundered
at by Sinai's own terrific thunderbolts they will not tremble; yea,
though Christ himself incarnate in the flesh should preach again, yet
would they not regard him, and mayhap would treat him to-day as their
parent did but yesterday, when they dragged him out of the city and
would have cast him headlong from the summit of the mount on which the
city was builded. I have seen the wicked come and go from the place of
the holy till his conscience was seared, as with a hot iron. I have
seen him come and go from the place of the holy till he had become
harder than the nether millstone, till he was past feeling, given up
"to work all manner of uncleanness with greediness."
But now we are going to change our journey. Instead of going to the
house of God we will go another way. I have seen the wicked go to the
place of the holy, that is to the judgment bench. We have had glaring
instances even in the criminal calendar of men who have been seen
sitting on a judgment bench one day, and in a short time they have been
standing at the dock themselves. I have wondered what must be the
peculiar feelings of a man who officiates as a judge, knowing that he
who judges has been a law-breaker himself. A wicked man, a greedy,
lustful, drunken man–you know such are to be discovered among petty
magistrates. We have known these sit and condemn the drunkard, when,
had the world known how they went to bed the night before, they would
have said of them, "thou that judgest another doest the same things
thyself." There have been instances known of men who have condemned a
poor wretch for shooting a rabbit or stealing a few pheasants' eggs, or
some enormous crime like that, and they themselves have been robbing
the coffers of the bank, embezzling funds to an immense extent, and
cheating everybody. How singular they must feel. One would think it
must be a very strange emotion that passes over a man when he executes
the law upon one which he knows ought to be executed upon himself. And
yet, I have seen the wicked come and go from the holy place, until he
came to think that his sins were no sins, that the poor must be
severely upbraided for their iniquities, that what he called the lower
classes must be kept in check, not thinking that there are none so low
as those who condemn others whilst they do the same things themselves
speaking about checks and barriers, when neither check nor barrier were
of any use to himself, talking of curbing others and of judging
righteous judgment, when had righteous judgment been carried out to the
letter, he would himself have been the prisoner, and not have been
honored with a commission from government. Ah! is it not a sight that
we may well look at, when we see justice perverted and the law turned
upside down by men who "come and go from the place of the holy."
But the third case is worse still. "I have seen the wicked come and go
from the place of the holy"–that is, the pulpit. If there be a place
under high heaven more holy than another, it is the pulpit whence the
gospel is preached. This is the Thermophylae of Christendom; here must
the great battle be fought between Christ's church and the invading
hosts of a wicked world. This is the last vestige of anything sacred
that is left to us. We have no altars now; Christ is our altar: but we
have a pulpit still left, a place which, when a man entereth, he might
well put off his shoes from his feet, for the place whereon he standeth
is holy. Consecrated by a Saviour's presence, established by the
clearness and the force of an apostle's eloquence, maintained and
upheld by the faithfulness and fervor of a succession of Evangelists
who, like stars, have marked the era in which they lived, and stamped
it with their names, the pulpit is handed down to those of us who
occupy it now with a prestige of everything that is great and holy. Yet
I have seen the wicked come and go from it. Alas! if there be a sinner
that is hardened, it is the man that sins and occupies his pulpit. We
have heard of such a man living in the commission of the foulest sins,
and at length has been discovered; and yet such is the filthiness of
mankind, that when he began to preach to the people again, they
clustered round the beast for the mere sake of hearing what he would
say to them. We have known cases, too, where men, when convicted to
their own forehead, have unblushingly persevered in proclaiming a
gospel which their lives denied. And perhaps these are the hardest of
all sinners to deal with!. But if the garment be once defiled, away
with all thoughts of the pulpit then. He must be clean who ministers at
the altar. Every saint must be holy, but he, holiest of all, who seeks
to serve his God. Yet, we must mourn to say it, the church of God every
now and then has had a sun that was black instead of white, and a moon
that was as a clot of blood, instead of being full of fairness and
beauty. Happy the church when God gives her holy ministers; but unhappy
the church where wicked men preside. I know ministers to this day,
however, who know more about fishing rods than they do about chapters
in the Bible; more about fox-hounds than about hunting after men's
souls; who understand a great deal more of the spring and the net than
they do of the net for catching souls, or earnest exhortations for men
to flee from the wrath to come. We know such even now: still uproarious
at a farmer's dinner, still the very loudest to give the toast and
clash the glass, still mightiest among the mighty found, of the gay,
the wild, and the dissolute. Pity on the church that still allows it!
Happy the day when all such persons shall be purged from the pulpit;
then shall it stand forth "clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and
terrible as an army with banners." "I have seen the wicked come and go
from the place of the holy."
II. And now WE ARE GOING TO HIS FUNERAL. I shall want you to attend it.
You need not be particular about having on a hat band, or being arrayed
in garments of mourning It does not signify for the wretch we are going
to bury. There is no need for any very great outward signs of mourning,
for he will be forgotten even in the city where he hath done this:
therefore we need not particularly mourn for him. Let us first go to
the funeral and look at the outward ceremonial. We will suppose one or
two cases.
There is a man who has come and gone from the place of the holy. He has
made a very blazing profession. He has been a county magistrate. Now,
do you see what a stir is made about his poor bones? There is the
hearse covered with plumes, and there follows a long string of
carriages. The country people stare to see such a long train of
carriages coming to follow one poor worm to its resting-place. What
pomp! what grandeur! See how the place of worship is hung with black.
There seems to be intense mourning made over this man. Will you just
think of it for a minute, and who are they mourning for? A hypocrite!
Whom is all this pomp for? For one who was a wicked man, a man who made
a pretension of religion, a man who judged others, and who ought to
have been condemned himself. All this pomp for putrid clay; and what is
it more or better than that? When such a man dies, ought he not to be
buried with the burial of an ass? Let him be drawn and dragged from the
gates of the city. What has he to do with pomp? At the head of the
mournful cavalcade is Beelzebub, leading the procession, and, looking
back with twinkling eye, and leer of malicious joy, says, "Here is fine
pomp to conduct a soul to hell with!" Ah! plumes and hearse for the man
who is being conducted to his last abode in Tophet! A string of
carriages to do honor to the man whom God hath cursed in life and
cursed in death, for the hope of the hypocrite is evermore an accursed
one. And a bell is ringing, and the clergyman is reading the funeral
service, and is burying the man "in sure and certain hope." Oh! what a
laugh rings up from somewhere a little lower down than the grave! "In
sure and certain hope," says Satan, "ha! ha! your sure and certain hope
is folly indeed. Trust to a bubble, and hope to fly to the stars; trust
to the wild winds, that they shall conduct you safely to heaven, but
trust to such a hope as that, and thou art a madman indeed." Oh! if we
judged rightly, when a hypocrite died, we should do him no honor. If
men could but see a little deeper than the skin, and read the thoughts
of the heart, they would not patronize this great, black lie, and lead
a long string of carriages through the streets; they would say, "No,
the man was good for nothing, he was the outward skin without the life,
he professed to be what he was not, he lived the scornful life of a
deceiver; let him have the burial of Jeconiah; let him not have a
funeral at all; let him be cast away as loathsome carrion, for that is
all he is." Ah! when a godly man dies, ye may make lamentation over
him, ye may well carry him with solemn pomp unto his grave, for there
is an odour in his bones, there is a sweet savor about him that even
God delighteth in, for "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death
of his saints." But the gilded hypocrite, the varnished deceiver, the
well accoutred wolf in sheeps' clothing–away with pomp for him! Why
should men bewail him? They do not do it, why should they pretend to do
so, then, and give the outward semblance of a grief, where they feel
none?
But possibly I may have seen the wicked man buried in a more quiet way.
He is taken quietly to his tomb with as little pomp as possible, and he
is with all decency and solemnity interred in the grave. And now listen
to the minister. If he is a man of God, when he buries such a man as he
ought to be buried, you do not hear a solitary word about the character
of the deceased; you hear nothing at all about any hopes of everlasting
life. He is put into his grave. The minister well remembers how he did
"come and go from the place of the holy," he recollects full well how
he used to sit in the gallery and listen to his discourse. And there is
one who weeps; and the minister stands there and weeps too, to think
how all his labor has been lost, and one of his hearers has been
destroyed, and that without hope. But note how cautiously he speaks,
even to the wife. He would give her all the hope he could, poor widow
as she is, and he speaks very gentle. She says, "I hope my husband is
in heaven." He holds his tongue; he is very silent; if he is of a
sympathetic nature he will be quiet. And when he speaks about the
deceased in his next Sunday's sermon, if he mentions him at all he
refers to him as a doubtful case, he uses him rather as a beacon than
as an example, and bids other men beware how they presume to waste
their opportunities, and let the golden hours of their Sabbath-day roll
by disregarded. "I have seen the wicked buried who have come and gone
from the place of the holy." As for the pompous funeral, that was
ludicrous. A man might almost laugh to see the folly of honoring the
man who deserved to be dishonored, but as for the still and silent and
truthful funeral, how sad it is! But brethren, after all, we ought to
judge ourselves very much in the light of our funerals. That is the way
we judge other things. Look at your fields to-morrow. There is the
flaunting poppy, and there by the hedge-rows are many flowers that lift
their heads to the sun. Judging them by their leaf you might prefer
them to the sober coloured wheat. But wait until the funeral. Then the
poppy shall be gathered and the weeds shall be bound up in a bundle to
be burned–gathered into a heap in the field to be consumed, to be made
into manure for the soil. But see the funeral of the wheat. What a
magnificent funeral has the wheat-sheaf "Harvest home" is shouted as it
is carried to the garner, for it is a precious thing. Even so let each
of us so live, as considering that we must die. Oh! I would desire to
live that when I leave this mortal state, men may say, "There is one
gone who sought to make the world better. However rough his efforts
might have been, he was an honest man; he sought to serve God, and
there lies he that feared not the face of man." I would have every
Christian seek to win such a funeral as this–a funeral like Stephen's:
"And devout men carried him to his sepulcher, and made great
lamentation over him." I remember the funeral of one pastor–I attended
it. Many ministers of the gospel walked behind the coffin to attend
their brother, and pay honor to him. And then came a ton of the church,
every one of whom wept as if they had lost a father. And I remember the
solemn sermon that was preached in the chapel all hung with black, when
all of us wept because a great man had fallen that day in Israel. We
felt that a prince had been taken from us and we all said, like
Elijah's servant, "My father, my father, the horses of Israel and the
chariots thereof." But I have seen the wicked buried that have come and
gone from the place of the holy, and I saw nothing of this sort. I saw
a flickering kind of sorrow, like the dying of a wick that is almost
consumed. I saw that those who paid a decent respect to the corpse did
it for the widow's sake, and for the sake of them that were left
behind; but if they could have dealt with the corpse as their nature
seemed to dictate, they ought to have dealt with the man when living,
they would have said, "Let him be buried at the dead of night; let him
have some unhallowed corner in the churchyard where the nettle long has
grown; let the frog croak o'er his tomb; let the owl make her
resting-place o'er his sepulcher, and let her hoot all night long, for
hooted he well deserves to be; let no laurel and no cypress grow upon
his grave, and let no rose twine itself as a sweet bower around the
place where he sleeps; let no cowslip and no lily of the valley deck
the grass that covereth him; there let him lie; let not the green sward
grow, but let the place be accursed where sleeps the hypocrite, for he
deserves it, and even so let it be." "I have seen the wicked buried who
have come and gone from the place of the holy."
But there is a sad thing yet to come. We must look a little deeper than
the mere ceremonial of the burial and we shall see that there is a
great deal more in some people's coffins besides their corpses. When
old Robert Flockart was buried a few weeks ago in Edinburgh, he was
buried as I think a Christian minister should be, for his old Bible and
hymn book were placed upon the top of the coffin. Had he been a
soldier, I suppose he would have had his sword put there; but he had
been a Christian soldier, and so they buried with him his Bible and
hymn book as his trophies. It was well that such a trophy should be on
that coffin; but there is a great deal, as I have said, inside some
people's coffins. If we had eyes to see invisible things, and we could
break the lid of the hypocrite's coffin, we should see a great deal
there. There lie all his hopes. The wicked man may come and go from the
place of the holy, but he has no hope of being saved. He thought,
because he had attended the place of the holy regularly, therefore he
was safe for another world. There lie his hopes, and they are to be
buried with him. Of all the frightful things that a man can look upon,
the face of a dead hope is the most horrible. A dead child is a pang
indeed to a mother's heart; a dead wife or a dead husband, to the heart
of the bereaved must be sorrowful indeed; but a coffin full of dead
hopes–did you ever see such a load of misery carried to the grave as
that? Wrapt in the same shroud, there lie all his dead pretensions.
When he was here he made a pretension of being respectable; there lies
his respect, he shall be a hissing and a reproach for ever. He made a
pretension of being sanctified, but the mask is off now, and he stands
in all his native blackness. He made pretensions about being God's
elect, but his election is discovered now to be a rejection. He thought
himself to be clothed in the Saviour's righteousness, but he finds that
he justified himself: Christ had never given him his imputed
righteousness. And so he sleeps. The tongue that prattled once so
pleasantly concerning godliness is now silent. That hypocritical eye
that once flashed with the pretended fire of joy–it is all now dark,
dark. That brain that thought of inventions to deceive–the worm shall
feed on it. And that heart of his that once throbbed beneath ribs that
were scarcely thick enough to hide the transparency of his hypocrisy
shall now be devoured by demons. There are dead pretensions inside that
rotting skeleton, and dead hopes too. But there is one thing that
sleeps with him in his coffin that he had set his heart upon. He had
set his heart upon being known after he was gone. He thought surely
after he had departed this life, he would be handed down to posterity
and be remembered. Now read the text–"And they were forgotten in the
city where they had so done." There is his hope of fame. Every man
likes to live a little longer than his life–Englishmen especially–for
there is scarcely to be found a rock in all England up which even a
goat might scarcely climb where there may not be discovered the
initials of the names of men, who never had any other mode of attaining
to fame, and therefore thought they would inscribe their names there.
Go where you will, you find men attempting to be known; and this is the
reason why many people write in newspapers, else they never would be
known. A hundred little inventions we all of us have for keeping our
names going after we are dead. But with the wicked man it is all in
vain; he shall be forgotten. He has done nothing to make anybody
remember him. Ask the poor; "Do you remember So-and-so?" "Hard master,
sir, very. He always cut us down to the last sixpence; and we do not
wish to recollect him." Their children won't hear his name; they will
forget him entirely. Ask the church, "Do you remember So-and-so? he was
a member." "Well," says one, "I remember him certainly, his name was on
the books, but we never had his heart. He used to come and go, but I
never could talk with him. There was nothing spiritual in him. There
was a great deal of sounding bell-metal and brass, but no gold. I never
could discover that he had the "root of the matter in him." No one
thinks of him, and he will soon be forgotten. The chapel grows old,
there comes up another congregation, and somehow or other they talk
about the odd deacons that used to be there, who were good and holy men
and about the old lady, that used to be so eminently useful in visiting
the sick, about the young man who rose out of that church, who was so
useful in the cause of God; but you never hear mention made of his
name; he is quite forgotten. When he died his name was struck out of
the books, he was reported as being dead, and all remembrance of him
died with him. I have often noticed how soon wicked things die when the
man dies who originated them. Look at Voltaire's philosophy; with all
the noise it made in his time–where is it now? There is just a little
of it lingering, but it seems to have gone. And there was Tom Paine,
who did his best to write his name in letters of damnation, and one
would think he might have been remembered. But who cares for him now?
Except amongst a few, here and there, his name has passed away. And all
the names of error, and heresy, and schism, where do they go? You hear
about St. Austin to this day, but you never hear about the heretics he
attacked. Everybody knows about Athanasius, and how he stood up for the
divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ; but we have almost forgotten the
life of Arius, and scarcely ever think of those men who aided and
abetted him in his folly. Bad men die out quickly, for the world feels
it is a good thing to be rid of them; they are not worth remembering.
But the death of a good man, the man who was sincerely a Christian–how
different is that! And when you see the body of a saint, if he has
served God with all his might, how sweet it is to look upon him–ah,
and to look upon his coffin too, or upon his tomb in after years! Go
into Bunhill-fields, and stand by the memorial of John Bunyan, and you
will say, "Ah! there lies the head that contained the brain which
thought out that wondrous dream of the Pilgrim's Progress from the City
of Destruction to the Better land. There lies the finger that wrote
those wondrous lines which depict the story of him who came at last to
the land Beulah, and waded through the flood, and entered into the
celestial city. And there are the eyelids which he once spoke of, when
he said, "If I lie in prison until the moss grows on my eyelids, I will
never make a promise to withhold from preaching." And there is that
bold eye that penetrated the judge, when he said, "If you will let me
out of prison to-day, I will preach again to-morrow, by the help of
God." And there lies that loving hand that was ever ready to receive
into communion all them that loved the Lord Jesus Christ: I love the
hand that wrote the book, "Water Baptism no Bar to Christian
Communion." I love him for that sake alone, and if he had written
nothing else but that, I would say, "John Bunyan, be honored for ever."
And there lies the foot that carried him up Snow Hill to go and make
peace between a father and a son, in that cold day, which cost him his
life. Peace to his ashes Wait, O John Bunyan, till thy Master sends his
angel to blow the trumpet and methinks, when the archangel sounds it,
he will almost think of thee, and this shall be a part of his joy, that
honest John Bunyan, the greatest of all Englishmen, shall rise from his
tomb at the blowing of that great trump. You cannot say so of the
wicked. What is a wicked man's body but a rotten piece of noisomeness?
Put it away, and thank God there are worms to eat such a thing up, and
thank him still more, that there is a worm called Time, to eat up the
evil influence and the accursed memory, which such a man leaves behind
him. All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is
done."
III. We are to WRITE HIS EPITAPH, and his epitaph is contained in these
short words: "this also is vanity" And now in a few words I will
endeavor to show that it is vanity for a man to come and go from the
house of God, and yet have no true religion. If I made up my mind to
hate God, to sin against him, and to be lost at last, I would do it
thoroughly, out and out. If I had determined to be damned, and had
calculated the chances, and made up my mind that it would be better to
be cast away for ever, I know there is one thing I would not do, I
would not go to the house of God. Why, if I made up my mind to be lost,
what is the good of going there to be teared about it? Because, if the
man is faithful, he will prick my conscience and wake me up. If I am
determined and have made up my mind to be lost, let me go to hell as
easily as I can, what need is there that my conscience should be
pricked, and this great stone laid in my way to keep me from going
there? Besides, I hold that, for a man who has no love for the house of
God, regularly to attend because he thinks it is respectable, is just
one of the most pitiful kinds of drudgery that can be met with. If I
did not love the house of God, I would not go there. If it were not a
delight to me to be found in the sanctuary of God, singing of his
praise, and hearing of his word, I would stop away. To be seen going to
chapel twice on the Sabbath, sitting as God's people sit, rising when
they rise, and singing about what you do not feel; hearing that which
pricks your conscience, and listening to the reading of promises that
do not belong to you; hearing about heaven, that is not yours, being
frightened with hell, which is to be yours for ever–why, the man is
just a born fool that goes to the house of God, except he has got an
interest in it. We may commend him for going; it is a respectable
thing, perhaps, and right that it should be so but I submit it is an
intolerable drudgery to go always to the house of God, if you have made
up your mind to be lost. Now, on this man's tomb must be written at
last–"there was a men who would not serve God, but who had not courage
enough to stand out against God. There is a man so silly that he
pretended to be religious, and so wicked that he was a hypocrite to his
pretensions." Why, although you must deplore a wicked man's wickedness
as a fearful crime, yet there is some kind of respect to be paid to the
man who is downright honest in it; but not an atom of respect to the
man who wants to be a cant and a hypocrite. He wishes, if he can, just
to save his neck at last; just as he thinks, to do enough to let him
get off free when he comes to lay a-dying; enough to keep his
conscience quiet, enough to look respectable; enough as he thinks, when
he dies to give him a little chance of entering heaven, though it be,
as it were, neck or nothing. Ah, poor thing! Well may we write over
him, "This also is vanity!" But, sir, you will be more laughed at for
your pretensions than if you had made none. Having professed to be
religious, and having pretended to carry it out, you shall have more
scorn than if you had came out in your right colors, and have said,
"Who is the Lord, that I should fear him? Who is Jehovah, that I should
obey his voice?" And now, are there any here who are so wicked as to
choose eternal wrath? Have I any here so besotted as to choose
destruction? Yes, yes, many; for if to-day, my hearer, thou art
choosing sin; if thou art choosing self-righteousness, if thou art
choosing pride, or lust, or the pleasures of this world, remember, thou
art choosing damnation, for the two things cannot but go together. Sin
is the guilt, and hell is the bread beneath it. If you choose sin, you
have virtually chosen perdition. Think of this, I beseech you.
"O Lord! do thou the sinner turn!
Now rouse him from his senseless state;
O let him not thy counsel spurn,
Nor rue his fatal choice too late."
May the Lord lead you to Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and
the life! And when ye are buried, may ye be buried with the righteous,
and may your last end be like his!
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