Chapter 6
It is quite certain that there are immense benefits in our present mode of burying the dead outside of church grounds. It is 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 odor of decaying bodies. We must remember, though, that there are some advantages that we have lost by the removal of the dead from our immediate proximity, and more especially by the wholesale mode of burial which now seems very likely to become common. We are no longer commonly met by the display of the dead. In the midst of our crowded cities, we sometimes see the black hearse carrying the bodies of the dead to their final resting places, but funeral ceremonies and the places where the bodies of those who are very dear to us rest are now mostly confined to those places outside of our daily view.
I believe the sight of a funeral is a very healthy thing for the soul. Whatever harm that could possibly come to the body by walking through the vault and the catacomb, the soul can find much food for contemplation and much excitement for thought. In the great villages, where some of us used 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 weeks. We remember, as children, how we used to gather around the grave and look at that which was not so frequent an occurrence in the midst of such a small population. 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. Afterwards, when we, in our childish play, climbed over those nettle-bound graves and sat upon those moss-grown tombstones, we had many lessons preached to us by the dull, cold tongue of death, more eloquent than anything we had heard from the lips of living men, and more likely to stay with us for years to come. Now, however, we see little of death. We have fulfilled Abraham’s wish beyond what he desired – we bury the dead out of our sight. I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight (Genesis 23:4). It is seldom that we see them, and a stranger passing through our streets might say, “Do these people live forever? I see no funerals among the millions of this city, and I see no signs of death.”
Will we just take the wicked man’s arm and walk with him to the house of God? When he begins to go, especially if he has not gone to church as a youth, you will notice that whenever he does begin to go, he is not often affected by the sound of the ministry. He goes up to the chapel with lack of respect and lack of seriousness. He approaches it as he would a theater or any other place of amusement – as a means of passing away the Lord’s Day and killing time.
He walks cheerfully into the church, but I have seen the wicked man look very different when he went away than when he entered. He walks home, and his lack of respect and lack of seriousness are gone. He says, “Surely the Lord God was in that place, and I have been forced to tremble. I went to scoff, but as I left, I was compelled to confess that there is a power in Christianity, and the services of God’s house are not all dullness after all.”
Perhaps you have hoped that spiritual good would come to this man, but sadly, he forgot it all and cast away those thoughts that were working on his soul. He came again the next Sunday, and that time he felt it again. Again, the arrow of the Lord seemed to stick securely in his heart, but it was like the rushing of water. There was a mark for a moment, but his heart was soon healed and he no longer felt the blow. As for persuading him to salvation, he was like the deaf adder: Their poison is like the poison of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder that stops her ear, which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely (Psalm 58:4-5). No matter what was said, he would not regard the truth and would not turn from his ways.
I have seen him come and go until he has become an old man, and he has still filled his seat at church. The minister is still preaching, but in his case, preaching in vain. The tears of mercy are still flowing for him and the thunders of justice are still launched against him, but he remains just as he was. There is no change in him except that he has grown hard and callous. You no longer hear him say that he trembles under the Word. He is like a horse that has been in the battle. He does not fear the noise of the drum or the rolling of the smoke, and he is not afraid of the blast of the cannon. He shows up and he hears a faithful warning and says, “What of it? This is for the wicked.” He hears an affectionate invitation and he says, “Go away. When it is a more convenient time, I will send for you.” So he comes and goes up to the house of God and back again. Like the door upon its hinges, he turns in to the sanctuary today and out of it tomorrow. He comes and goes from the place of the holy.
It may be, however, that he takes it even further. Almost persuaded to be a Christian by some sermon from someone like Paul, he trembles at his feet. He thinks he really repents, and he unites himself with the Christian church. He makes a profession of faith, but his heart has never been changed. The sow is washed, but it is still a sow. The dog has been driven from its vomit, but its doggish nature is still the same. It has happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog returns unto his own vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire (2 Peter 2:22). The Ethiopian is clothed in a white garment, but he has not changed his skin. The leopard has been completely covered, but he has not washed his spots away. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? (Jeremiah 13:23).
The man is the same as he ever was. He goes to the baptismal pool a blind 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. The bread of the Lord’s Supper is broken in his presence. He receives it, but he comes and he goes the same, because he does not receive it in the love of it. He is a stranger to true godliness, and as a wicked man, he comes and he goes from the place of the holy.
Is it not an unbelievable thing that people are be able to do this? I have sometimes heard preachers so earnestly present the matter of salvation before the people that I have said, “Surely, they must see this.” I have heard them plead as though they pleaded for their own lives and I have said, “Surely, they must feel this.” I have turned around and I have seen the people wiping away tears and I have said, “Good must come from this. These people will be saved.”
You have brought your own friends to hear the Word, and you have prayed through the whole sermon that the arrow might reach and penetrate the center of the mark, and you said to yourself, “What an appropriate message.” You kept on praying and were pleased to see that there was some emotion. You said, “Oh, it will touch his heart at last!” But isn’t it strange that, though pursued by love divine, the heart of man will not melt? Even though they are thundered at by Sinai’s own terrific thunderbolts, they will not tremble. Even if Christ Himself, incarnate in the flesh, preached again, they would still not believe Him. They might even treat Him today as their ancestors did so long ago, when they dragged Him out of the city and would have thrown Him headlong from the summit of the mount on which the city was built.
I have seen the wicked come and go from the place of the holy until his conscience was seared as with a hot iron. I have seen him come and go from the place of the holy until his heart was harder than a lower millstone, until he was past feeling, and he gave himself over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness (Ephesians 4:19).
Now we are going to change our course. Instead of going to the house of God, we will go a different route. 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 justice system, of people who have been seen sitting as a judge one day, and in a short time they have been standing on the other side of that bench, as prisoners themselves.
I have wondered what the distinct feelings of a man must be who officiates as a judge, knowing that he who judges has been a lawbreaker himself. A wicked person, a greedy, lustful, drunken person – you know such will be found among some judges. We have known that these people sit and condemn the drunkard, when if the world had known how they went to bed the night before, they would have said of them, “You who judge another do the same things yourself.” Therefore, thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for in that which thou dost judge another, thou dost condemn thyself; for thou that judgest others doest the same things (Romans 2:1).
There have been instances of judges who have condemned a common fellow for shooting a rabbit or stealing a few pheasant eggs, or some crime like that, while they themselves have been robbing the coffers of the bank, embezzling funds to an extreme extent, and cheating people. It must be a very strange emotion that passes over someone when he executes the law upon one person that he knows ought to be executed upon himself.
I have seen the wicked come and go from the holy place until he thinks that his sins are not really sins. He believes that the poor must be severely punished for their iniquities, that what he calls the lower classes must be kept in check, not thinking that there are none so low as those who condemn others while they do the same things themselves. He speaks about checks and restraints, when neither check nor restraint were of any use to him. He talks of cracking down on others and of judging righteously, but if righteous judgment had been carried out to the letter, he would have been the prisoner instead of being honored with a commission from the government.
I have seen the wicked man buried in a quiet way. He is taken quietly to his tomb with as little pomp as possible, and with all decency and solemnity he is interred in the grave. Now, listen to the minister. If he is a man of God, when he buries such a person as he ought to be buried, you do not hear a single word about the character of the deceased. You hear nothing at all about any hope of everlasting life. He is just put into his grave. The minister remembers well how he came and went from church. He remembers well how he used to sit in the pew and listen to his sermon. There is one who weeps, and the minister stands there and weeps, too, thinking how all his labor has been lost and how one of his hearers has been lost eternally and is now without hope.
Note how cautiously he speaks, even to the wife. He would like to give her all the hope he can, poor widow as she is, and he speaks very gently. She says, “I hope my husband is in heaven.” He holds his tongue. He stays silent. If he is of a sympathetic nature, he will be quiet. 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 as a warning rather than as an example, and urges others to consider how they carelessly waste their opportunities and disregard the golden hours of their Sabbath day.
Then I also saw that the wicked who were buried came into remembrance more than those who had frequented the holy place (Ecclesiastes 8:10). As for the pompous funeral, that was ridiculous. We might almost laugh to see the foolishness of honoring someone who deserved to be dishonored, but as for the still and silent and truthful funeral, how sad it is! After all, we should judge ourselves in the light of our funerals. That is the way we judge other things.
Look at your fields tomorrow. There is a flaunting flower, and there by the hedgerows are many flowers that lift their heads to the sun. Judging them by their leaf, you might prefer them to the sober-colored wheat. But wait until the funeral, when the flower is gathered and the weeds are bound up in a bundle to be burned. They are gathered into a heap in the field to be consumed, to be made into manure for the soil. But the wheat sheaf has a magnificent funeral. “The harvest has come!” is shouted as the wheat is carried to the storage building, for it is a precious thing.
Let each of us live in such a way that we are constantly considering that we must die. I desire to live so that when I leave this earthly condition, people will say, “There goes one 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 who feared not the face of man.” My desire would be to have every Christian seek to deserve a funeral like Stephen’s: And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him (Acts 8:2).
Everyone seems to want to live a little longer than his life. There is scarcely a rock to be found in all of England, up which even a goat might barely climb, where there cannot be discovered the initials of the names of people who never had any other method of attaining to fame, so they thought they would inscribe their names there. Go where you will, and you find people attempting to be known. This is the reason why many people write in newspapers, or else they would never be known. We have a hundred little inventions for keeping our names going after we are dead; but with the wicked, it is all in vain. He will be forgotten. He has done nothing to make anybody remember him.
Ask the poor, “Do you remember So-and-so?”
“He was very difficult to work for. He was not kind, and he always cut us down to the last cent, and we do not wish to remember him.”
Their children will not 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 certainly remember him. His name was on the books as being a member, 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. He loved to talk about work and sports and politics, but not of the Scriptures and of Jesus. There was a great deal of sounding-bell metal and brass, but no gold. I never could discover that he had the foundation of Christ in him.”
No one thinks about him, and he will soon be forgotten. The chapel grows old, and there another congregation arises, but they talk about the good and holy men who used to be deacons there, about the old lady who used to be so eminently useful in visiting the sick, and about the young man who rose out of that church and was so useful in the cause of God; but you never hear mention made of his name, for 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. There was Tom Paine, who did his best to write his name in letters of damnation. One would think he might have been remembered, but who cares about him now? Except among a few here and there, his name has passed away. All the names of error, heresy, and schism, where do they go? You hear about Augustine to this day, but you never hear about the heretics he attacked. Everybody should know 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 barely 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.