The London Missionary Society

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Thirty years ago I was honored to lift up my voice in this pulpit, to advocate, on a similar occasion to the present, the cause for the furtherance of which we are now assembled. Since that day what changes have come over both the preacher and his audience, over the church and the world, over the Missionary Society and its supporters! A whole generation of the human race, numbering eight hundred million immortal beings, in one ceaseless stream, has been flowing into eternity; and of all that vast multitude, how few were prepared for the awful transition!

In looking round upon those galleries, where, on that former occasion to which I have alluded, sat in dignity and honor the fathers and founders of the Missionary Society, surrounded by their junior brethren, looking up to them with veneration and esteem, I search in vain for a solitary representative of that illustrious band. The grave which swallows up all that is mortal, and heaven which attracts to itself all that is holy upon earth, have received them out of our sight, leaving us to echo the appeal of the Jewish seer—"Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?" This question shall be the subject of our morning's meditation.

"Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?" Zechariah 1:5

It would be both ungrateful and unjust, if we, who are now blessed to carry on the operations of this institution, did not occasionally visit the tombs and do honor to the memory of the men by whom it was founded. Their epitaphs are sermons; by which "they, being dead, yet speak to us." I owe them much, and seize this as a befitting opportunity to acknowledge my obligations, and the subject which I have selected for this occasion is appropriate on another ground. The ravages of death among our ministers have been, of late, unusually frequent. Great and precious names have been expunged from the muster-roll of the living, to be registered among the congregation of the dead. Since the last anniversary, Hamilton, and Payne, and Russell, men who were dear to us all, and especially to those who hold by the theology of the olden time, have fallen in the high places of the field, and lie among the slain. Let it not be imagined that the theme I have chosen is too gloomy for such an occasion as the present. I do but forcefully address the troops over the bodies of the slain; and snatching the flag from the hands of fallen standard-bearers, who had grasped them in death—I deliver them to their successors, with the charge, "Onwards to battle, and to victory!"

I. I shall consider the mortality of the instruments which God employs for carrying on his cause in the world, not excepting the most valuable and important of them. "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?"

At the time this was spoken, not only had the patriarchs of antiquity—but the prophets of after times, the evangelical Isaiah, the plaintive Jeremiah, the vehement Ezekiel, all been gathered to the tomb. As it was then, so has it been in every age since; and so is it now. There is no exemption from the stroke of mortality for the most valuable instruments of God's service. No official dignity, no eminent talents, no distinguished success, exempt their possessor from the customary lot of humanity. In common with all others, they have sinned, and are under the law of death.

Their death subserves the Divine purposes, and the interests of men, as well as their lives. In consequence of the publicity of their character, their decease is a still more impressive comment upon the evil nature of sin. Their death-knell tolls out a more solemn warning than that of private individuals; while their vacant pulpits, hung with sable by their mourning churches have, in the silence of death, a power of impression which their loftiest eloquence never reached. From their death-bed a testimony is borne to the truths of the Gospel and the excellence of religion, more emphatic and commanding than the most argumentative or the most impassioned of their sermons. They finish their ministry, not only at the grave's mouth, where they set the seal of death upon their message—but within the very precincts of the heavenly glory, some rays of which illuminate their wasted form, and help them to exhibit the reality of that sublime and beautiful couplet,

"A mortal paleness on my cheek,
But glory in my soul."

The certainty of their death, together with the uncertainty of the time of its approach, supply them with an incentive to increased and an ever-increasing diligence in the work of their ministry. Their tomb, in their imagination, confronts their pulpit, the very clock which ever looks them in the face reminds them, not only of the measure of their sermon—but of their ever-shortening life; while the Bible out of which they address the people speaks to them each Sabbath morning as they take their place in the sanctuary, and says with sepulchral tones, "Time is short!

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work, nor device, nor wisdom, nor knowledge in the grave, where you are going!" While to the hearer also comes the monition, that the preacher to whom he is listening with rapture, or with listlessness, is a doomed man, and is uttering the words of life from lips which must soon be closed in the silence of the tomb, and speaks a dying man to dying men!

The removal of ministers makes way for a greater variety of gifts and graces to be exercised in the ministry itself; and thus that irrepressible love of novelty which seems to be one of the instincts of our nature is provided for. If death takes from us the useful, so it does the useless; and who among us, whatever be his gifts, could hope to extend his power to interest and please, much beyond the term of half a century?

The withdrawment of men of matured age, rich experience, and ripe wisdom must of course be considered, whenever it occurs, an occasion of sorrow and lamentation. But some compensation for their loss is made by the bringing forward of younger men, with all the ardor of youthful years, and all the energy of more optimistic temperaments. And the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, are conspicuously manifested in continually repairing the losses which his cause sustains by the death of eminent men.

Still it is proper in our younger brethren, to unite self-distrust with courage, and to pass respectfully over the graves of veterans, who, whatever may have been their faults, were lacking neither in zeal nor in valor, and who, when at last they sunk, fell not without scars nor altogether without laurels. Let those who come forward, approach with as much humility as eagerness; and let it be their prayer that a double portion of the spirit of their ascended predecessors may rest upon them, and not their boast that it will. If the fathers had not the wisdom of Solomon; let the sons guard against the rashness, the follies, and the mischiefs of Rehoboam.

But there are reflections connected with the mortality of ministers still more instructive and encouraging than these. How glorious does our Lord Jesus Christ appear in carrying on his cause, not only in spite of—but in the very midst of, and even by, the ravages of death! It is a bright manifestation of his power, to work by such feeble, fallible, mortal creatures as we are—it is a still brighter display of his wisdom and power to make even their death subserve his cause. What consternation is felt in an army, and the fear reaches even the general's heart, when officer after officer falls in battle! A panic has sometimes, from this cause, spread through the army, which the commander could not stop, and the battle has been lost. And even in our own case, the death of eminent missionaries, eloquent preachers, wise pastors, and gifted authors is deeply felt, especially if it be somewhat sudden and unexpected, to be a severe shock, which shoots through every part of the body to which he belongs, like a momentary pang of personal anguish, surprise, and terror.

We are bereft, and are ready for a moment to feel as if the sun had set, and not merely a star; and even the very throne of the great Governor of the universe is hidden for a season behind the tomb of one of his own servants, or else the tear that stands in the eye of faith is so large a drop as to dim our spiritual vision and prevent us from seeing it. But we are soon roused from our distrustful sorrows by the voice which spoke to John in Patmos—"Behold I am he that lives, and was dead; and I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of death and of Hades." This, in the history of our Society, we have often found to be not only our best—but our only consolation. When the taunting foe exclaimed, "Vanderkemp is dead, Morrison is gone, Williams is slain!" recovering from the stupor, and wiping away our tears, we exclaimed, "Yes, but Jesus lives!" In that one consideration are contained all the resources, hopes, and triumphs of our cause.

Many have fallen, many are falling, all will fall—but Jesus lives! Could we call from the invisible world, and assemble in this place this morning, all the fathers and founders of our Society, all the directors, all the ministers, and all the missionaries who have died since the commencement of our enterprise, could we see at one view what we have lost, and all we have lost—how we would be appalled at the number and extent of our sacrifices, and be ready to exclaim, "Oh, what could we not do, if we had all these with us again!" My brethren, add to these the fathers and the prophets of the older economy; let these be reinforced by the glorious company of the apostles, and the mighty host be swollen by the noble army of martyrs, this, even all this, would be a feebler round of confidence, or of hope, than that single voice which now bursts over this assembly from the throne of Jehovah Jesus—"I am alive for evermore; and all power is given unto me in heaven and earth." Christians, be this the watch-word and the war-cry with which, amidst the weakness of the living, and the ravages of death, you go forward in this great conflict– "Jesus lives!"

There is much in this view of our subject at once to encourage the timid—and to repress the vain. We do not deny that some measure of importance attaches to every individual member of the church of Christ. Everyone can do something for God, and is bound to do what he can. God has made no ciphers; though men, by a false humility or indolence, make ciphers of themselves. They do nothing, because they attempt nothing; and they attempt nothing, because they think they are nothing—and this self-despising is likely, except we take care, to be fostered in an age of great societies like ours. Individual power, individual opportunity, individual obligation—are likely to be lost sight of. It is the duty of everyone to study these three things—his capacities, his opportunities, and his responsibility. And were the whole church of God to enter deeply, conscientiously, and practically into this investigation, and each individual member were to carry in sincerity to God that prayer of the apostle, "Lord, what will you have me to do?" and wait for an answer to this prayer, the sun of the millennial day would soon rise upon our dark world.

The subject which we are now considering is, on the other hand, as humbling to the vain—as it is encouraging to the timid. Christ can do much by the weakest instrument; and he can do altogether without the strongest. "It is a piece of divine royalty and magnificence," said John Howe, "that when he has prepared and polished a mighty instrument, so as to be capable of some great service, he can lay it aside without loss, and do as well without it." He that could do without apostles and prophets, after he had removed them by death, can dispense with us. We are none of us the axles of his chariot-wheels.

This should check the inflation of some proud men's minds, and repress that overweening conceit by which they destroy in part their own usefulness. It would surprise and mortify many, could they come out of their graves ten years after they had entered them, and still retained the ideas they once entertained of their own importance—to see how well the world goes on without them! If the death of ordinary individuals be but as the casting of a pebble from the seashore into the ocean, which is neither missed from the one nor sensibly gained by the other; the death of the more extraordinary ones is but as the sinking of a larger rock into the abyss beneath—it makes at the time a rumbling noise and a great splash; but the wave which it raises soon subsides into a ripple, the ripple itself as soon sinks to a placid level, the tide flows, ships pass, commerce goes on, and shore and ocean appear just as they did before the disruption!

Ah! my brethren, let us seek to have our record in heaven, where it will be engraved in characters which will stand forever on the Rock of Ages! For it will soon be effaced here on earth, where it is only as a footprint upon the sand, which the next wave will speedily and entirely obliterate forever!

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