30. POSTHUMOUS USEFULNESS
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Dr. Doddridge has a chapter showing that we ought to glorify God in our death. And reason would show that we should try so to live as to be useful even after death.
The Scriptures say of Abel: "He, being dead, yet speaks." This was said of a man nearly four thousand years after his time. This should encourage us to zeal in our Master's service. Such cases are not rare, nor are they confined to olden times.
God shall never cease to own His people and their pious labors. Their prayers, examples, sayings, and writings exert an influence long after they bid farewell to earth. However long ago genuine supplications and intercessions for the cause of Christ may have been offered, they are still sweet odors before God.
Many have suggested that Saul of Tarsus was probably converted and saved in answer to the last prayer of the first martyr, Stephen. There is as sweet a savor in the prayer of the psalmist, "O send out Your light and Your truth," as in the day it was first offered. And a good life, how does God delight in it. He never forgets it.
In His book of remembrance it is all delineated, even down to the giving of a cup of cold water. So a good song, or saying, or book may be blessed long after its pious author has slept the sleep of death.
Their virtue ever depended on the truth they taught, and the spirit they breathed—and not at all on the natural life of him who wrote them. Blessed be God for all the bright hopes which His people are warranted to cherish for usefulness in this world after death, as well as for the glory, honor and immortality in the world that is to come.
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