X. If we go on with the figure, we shall see how naturally it accommodates itself to the prospect of the resurrection; and in this the value of it chiefly consists. The season of Sleep agrees with the state of Death; for they that sleep, sleep in the night, when the earth is involved in darkness. When the sun goes down, men are called away from the labours of the body: darkness prevails over the earth, and the hurry and noise of business subsides by degrees into that silent season, which is properly called the dead of the night. Sleep is then almost as common as Death, and the dark hemisphere of the earth is like the region of the departed. But the order of the night, with respect to its situation between the past day and the next morning, is the thing we are to insist upon. After the labour of the day, we lie down to sleep; rest in our beds during the continuance of the night, and awake to rise up again at the return of the morning. Such too is the order of the Sleep of Death for when the business of life is over, we die; rest in our graves during the continuance of the intermediate state, and rise again from them in the morning of the resurrection. This order of things is regularly applied in the expressions of the Scripture. The day is put for the season of life-" Work while it is day;" the night is Death-"The night cometh when no man can work*;" and the morning signifies the resurrection in these words of the Psalmist"The righteous shall have dominion over them in the morning," that is, in the morning of the resurrection; till which, we have no expectation that the saints shall reign, and the righteous be set above the wicked; neither is there any other morning that has John ix. 4. respect to the grave; therefore commentators arc clear as to the sense of the passage. XI. From the order of nature thus understood and applied, we may find support against the fear of Death. Sleep itself, and the times in which we sleep and wake, all conspire to assist the understanding, and give us a comfortable prospect of our future vic tory over the powers of darkness. The man who should affirm at noon-day that the sun will not go down at night, might deservedly be laughed to scorn. And he would deserve as little regard, who in the midst of life should deny that he is hasting toward his death. So again; when the night is come, how senseless would it be to affirm, that there will be no morning; yet such is the stupidity of the infidel, who denies that death will be followed by a resurrection. The course of nature being obvious to sense, is depended upon by all; but that of redemption, being an object of faith, is judged improbable, though the goodness of Almighty God is at least as much engaged to fulfil the latter as the former; and it is as certain that the sun of righteousness shall illuminate the regions of death, as that the sun of the next morning shall dispel the darkness of the night: Nay, it is more certain; because we have a divine promise for the one, and nothing but probability for the other. XII. The knowledge of the heathen extended only so far as his senses would carry him; and therefore he sorrowed without hope, and through fear of death was all his life-time subject to bondage*. The christian may express his triumph in the words of the Prophet; "rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I Heb. ii. 15. "fall I shall arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, When man's short day hath once declined, How black and dismal is this prospect! a day short and cloudy, perhaps stormy and tempestuous, succeeded by an everlasting night! this gloomy principle operated differently on different persons, according to their several dispositions and circumstances. Some were driven into professed libertinism, giving themselves up to the Atheistic maxim, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The poet on this principle admonishes us never to defer any thing that is agreeable, but to snatch the fleeting moments and apply them as fast as possible to the purposes of pleasure and debauchery, such as is not fit to be named: Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam, Jam te premet NOx, &c. Others being disappointed of pleasure, and harrassed with the common evils of life, and foreseeing no future light, added to their ignorance impatience, and to impatience suicide, the natural offspring of infidelity and disappointment. But, God be thanked, we * Mic. vii. 8. are not under this cloud of ignorance; we are not oppressed with the terrors of perpetual darkness: we are assured, that although heaviness may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning. Our faith is taught to penetrate beyond the regions of darkness to a more glorious light, with which all the afflictions of this present time are not worthy to be compared. Nothing terrible should be apprehended from that night, which will at length deliver us up to the great day of Eternity. What can support us under the loss of our friends, but this consideration? No man is afflicted when his friend goes to sleep, because he expects to meet him again when he is awake. And why can we not follow him to the grave with the like assurance ? St. Paul instructed his Thessalonians, "concerning "them which are asleep, not to sorrow as others "which have no hope*;" not to be overcome with the despair of heathens, while they entertained the faith of Christians: as if he had said, " your bre"thren who are departed being only fallen asleep, it "would ill become you to lament them as if they "were dead and had perished." Such hopeless lamentation is as contrary to our profession as to theirs; so that when we lose a friend, we should support ourselves upon such a trying occasion with this comfortable reflection-He is not dead, but sleepeth. XIII. It may be some discouragement, when we consider that the Sleep of Death is so much longer and deeper than that of our natural rest. But no man is sensible of the length of that sleep from which he awakes in the morning: he has no sense of the progression of time, and seems to have slept but a moment: The interval betwixt death and the resurrec 1 Thess. iv. 13. tion may seem equally short. Adam and his lastdeparted son may perceive no difference; and a thousand years may possibly appear to them as it does to God, even as one day. Neither ought we to apprehend any difficulty from the depth and soundness of the Sleep of Death. It is observed that no noise so soon awakens a man as that of an human voice; especially if that voice calls upon him by his proper name. Now the Scripture hath given us to understand, that we shall be called up by an human voice, even that of the Son of man: "for the hour is "coming, and now is, when they that are in the ર graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth*." We cannot determine whether this voice shall call upon us by name; though it is not improbable; for when Peter raised the disciple at Joppa, he said, "Tabitha arise;" and when Christ called upon his dead friend, he said, "Lazarus come forth." But whatever may become of this conjecture, the conclusion will remain certain, that it is as easy for the Son of man to call the dead from their graves, as for us to awaken a person out of Sleep. XIV. It is a matter of infinite importance to us how we are likely to rest in our last Sleep: for which purpose these few directions are necessary to be observed, and are proper to the subject. Let it be remembered then, that as they who spend the day in idleness, and the evening in riot and excess, never rest well in the night: so they whose hearts are overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, will hereafter be disturbed with the fearful watchings of a distempered mind, and annoyed with the fumes of a guilty conscience: they will be * John v. 28. |
