The Nature and Process of Spiritual Life 2
Back to SERMONS Samuel Davies
And now, how melancholy was your situation! You were "shut up unto the faith;" Galatians 3:23; there was no other possible way of escape—and yet, alas! you could not take this way! Now you were ready to cry, "I am cut off—my strength and my hope are perished from the Lord!" But, blessed be God—he did not leave you in this condition. Man's extremity of distress—is God's opportunity for relief and salvation! And so you found it. Now the process of preparatory operations has come to a result. Now it is time for God to work, for nature has done her utmost, and has been found utterly insufficient! Now it is proper that a divine, supernatural principle should be infused, for all the principles of nature have failed, and the proud sinner is obliged to own it, and stand still, and see the salvation of God.
In this situation you wanted nothing but such a divine principle to make you living Christians indeed. These preparatives were like the taking away the stone from the sepulchre of Lazarus, which was a prelude of that almighty voice which called him from the dead. Now you appear to me like the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision in one stage of the operation. "So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them!" Ezekiel 37:8. This was all that was lacking to making them living men.
In like manner you, at this time, had the external appearance of Christians—but you had no divine supernatural life in you; you were but the fair carcasses of Christians; your religion had a body completely formed—but it had no soul in it; and had the holy Spirit now given up his work—you would have continued dead still!
But now the important crisis-point has come, when he who stood over the grave of Lazarus, and pronounced the life-restoring mandate, "Lazarus, come forth!" When he who breathed into Adam the breath of life, and made him a living soul; I say, now the crisis-point has come, when he will implant the principles of life in your souls. Suddenly you feel the amazing change, and find that you are acting from principles entirely new to you; for now your hearts, which were accustomed to chafe and withdraw from God—rise to him with the strongest aspirations! Now the way of salvation through Christ, which you could never relish before, appears all amiable and glorious, and captivates your whole souls! Holiness now has lovely and powerful charms, which captivate you to the most willing obedience, notwithstanding your former disgust to it! And though once you were enamoured with sin, and disliked it only because you could not indulge it with impunity—it now appears to you a mere mass of corruption and deformity, an abominable thing, which you hate above all other things on earth or in hell!
At this juncture you were animated with a new life in every faculty of your souls, and hereupon you felt the instincts, the appetites, the sympathies and antipathies of a new life, a divine life; justly styled by the apostle the life of God—the life of God in the soul of man. The pulse of sacred passions began to beat towards spiritual objects; the vital warmth of divine love spread itself through your whole frame. You breathed out your desires and prayers before God; like a new-born infant you began to cry after him, and at times you have learned to lisp his name with filial endearment, and cry "Abba Father". You hungered and thirsted after righteousness. And as every kind of life must have its proper nourishment, so your spiritual life fed upon Christ, the living bread, and the sincere milk of his Word.
You also felt a new set of sensations; divine things now made deep and tender impressions upon you; the great realities of religion and eternity now affected you in a manner unknown before; you likewise found your souls actuated with life and vigour in the service of God, and in the duties you owed to mankind. This strange alteration no doubt filled you with surprise and amazement, something like that of Adam when he found himself spring into life, out of his eternal non-existence. With these new sensations, everything appeared to you in a quite different light, and you could not but wonder that you had never perceived them in that manner before!
Thus, my dear brethren, when you were even dead in sin—God quickened you together with Christ. It is true, the principle of life might be very weak at first, like the life of a new-born infant, or a foetus just animated in the womb. Nay, it may be but very weakstill, and at times may languish, and seem just expiring in the agonies of death; but, blessed be the quickening Spirit of Christ, since the happy hour of your resurrection, you have never been, and you never will be to all eternity—what you once were, "dead in transgressions and sins."
Should I give you your own history since that time—it would be to this purpose, and you will discern many symptoms of life in it. You have often known what sickness of soul is, as well as of body; and sometimes it has risen to such a height, as to endanger your spiritual life. The seeds of sin, which still lurk in your constitution, like the principles of death, or a deadly poison circulating through your veins—have often struggled for the mastery, and cast you into languishing or violent spiritual disorders. Then was the divine life oppressed, and you could not freely draw the breath of prayer and pious desires; you lost the appetite for the Word of God, and what you received did not digest well and turn to kindly nourishment; the pulse of sacred passions beat faint and irregular, the vital life decayed, and you felt a death-like cold creeping upon you and benumbing you.
Sometimes you have been afflicted, perhaps, with convulsions of violent and outrageous passions, with the dropsy of insatiable desires after earthly things, with the lethargy of carnal security, or the fever of lust! At other times you have felt an universal disorder through your whole frame, and you hardly knew what ailed you—only you were sure that your souls were not well. But perhaps your most common disorder that seizes you—is a kind of consumption, a lowness of spirits, a languor and weakness, the lack of appetite for your spiritual food, or perhaps a nausea and disgust towards it.
You also live in a country very unwholesome to living souls; you dwell among the dead, and catch contagion from the conversation of those around you, and this heightens the disorder! And further, that old serpent the devil, labours to infect you with his deadly poison, and increase the peccant state by his temptations! At such times you can hardly feel any workings of spiritual life in you, and you fear you are entirely dead! But examine strictly, and you will discover some vital symptoms, even in this bad state of soul; for does not your new nature exert itself to work off the disorder? Are not your spirits in a ferment, and do you not feel yourselves in exquisite pain, or at least greatly uneasy? Give all the world to a sick man, and he despises it all: "Oh, give me my health!" says he, "or you give me nothing!" So it is with you; nothing can content you while your souls are thus out of order.
Do you not long for their recovery, that you may go about your business again; I mean that you may engage in the service of God with all the vigour of health? And do you not apply to Christ as your only physician in this condition? And oh! what an healing balm is his blood! O! what a reviving cordial is his love! and how kindly does his Spirit purge off the corrupt humours, and subdue the principles of sin and death!
Has not experience taught you the meaning of the apostle, when he says, Christ is our life: "I live—yet not I—but Christ lives in me," Galatians 2:20. Do you not perceive that Christ is your vital head, and that you revive or languish—just as he communicates or withholds his gracious influence? And have you not been taught in the same way, what is the meaning of that expression so often repeated, "The just shall live by faith." Hab. 2:4. Do you not find that faith is, as it were, the grand artery by which you derive life from Christ, and by which it is circulated through your whole frame; and that when faith languishes, then you weaken, pine away, and perhaps fall into a swoon, as though you were quite dead?
Are you not careful of the health of your souls? You endeavour to keep them warm with the love of God; you shun those sickly regions as far as you can—where the example and conversation of the wicked spread their deadly infection; and you love to dwell among living souls, and breathe in their wholesome air. Upon the whole, it is evident, notwithstanding your frequent indispositions, you have some life within you; life takes occasion to manifest itself—even from your disorders. It is a plain symptom of spiritual life—that you have something within you, that makes such a vigorous resistance against the principles of sin and death, and throws your whole frame into a ferment, until it has wrought off the distemper. In short, you have the sensations, the sympathies and antipathies, the pleasures and pains—of living souls!
And is it so indeed? Then from this moment, begin to rejoice and bless the Lord, who raised you to spiritual life. Oh, let the hearts he has quickened, beat with his love; let the lips he has opened, when quivering in death, speak his praise; and devote that life to him which he has given you, and which he still supports!
Consider what a divine and noble kind of life he has given you. It is a capacity and aptitude for the most exalted and divineservices and enjoyments. Now you have a relish for the Supreme Good as your happiness, the only proper food for your immortal souls; and he will not allow you to hunger and thirst in vain—but will satisfy the appetites he has implanted in your nature! You have some spirit and life in his service, and are not like the dead souls around you, who are all alive toward other objects—but absolutely dead towards him! You have also noble and exalted sensations; you are capable of a set of pleasures of a more refined and sublime nature, than what are relished by grovelling sinners! From your inmost souls you detest and nauseate whatever is vile, base, and abominable; and you can feast on what is pure, amiable, excellent, and worthy of your love. Your vitiated taste fortrash and poison—is cured; and you now feed upon heavenly bread, upon food agreeable to the constitution of your spiritual nature. And hence you may infer your fitness for the heavenly world, that region of perfect spiritual vitality.
You have a disposition for its enjoyments and services, and this is the grand preparative. God will not encumber the heaven of his glory—with dead souls; nor infect the pure healthful air of paradise—with the poison of their corruption! But the everlasting doors are always open for living souls, and not one of them shall ever be excluded! Nay, the life of heaven is already within you! The life that reigns with immortal health and vigour above—is the very same with that which beats in your breasts! Only there it is arrived to maturity and perfection, and here it is in its rudiments and weakness.
Your physical life, which was hardly perceivable in the womb—is the very same now—only now it has come to maturity. Thus you are now angels in embryo, the foetus (might I be allowed the expression) of glorified immortals! And when you are born out of the womb of time—into the eternal world, this feeble spark of spiritual life will kindle and blaze, and render you as active and vigorous as "the en rapt seraph who adores and burns!" Then you will fear no more weakness, no more languors, no more qualms of indisposition! The poison of temptation, and the contagion of bad example cannot reach you there! And the inward seeds of sickness and death will be purged entirely out of your soul! You will be totally removed out of the sickly country—and breathe a pure reviving air, the natural element of your living souls.
There you will find the fountain, yes, whole rivers of the waters of life, of which you will drink in large draughts forever and ever, and which will invigorate you with immortal life and health! Oh, how happy are you—in this single gift of spiritual life! This is a life that cannot perish, even in the ruins of the world!
What though you must before long—yield your mortal bodies and physical life to death and rottenness? Your most important life is immortal, and subject to no such dissolution; and therefore be courageous in the name of the Lord, and bid defiance to all the calamities of life, and all the terrors of death; for "your life is hid with Christ in God; and when Christ, who is our life, shall appear—then shall you also appear with him in glory!" Col. 3:3, 4.
I would willingly go on in this strain, and leave the pulpit with a relish of these delightful truths upon my spirit; but, alas! I must turn my address to another set of people in this assembly. But "where is the Lord God of Elijah," who restored the Shunamite's son to life by means of that prophet? I am going to call to the dead, and I know that they will not hear, unless God attends my feeble voice with his almighty power. I would pray over you like Elijah over the dead child, "Oh Lord my God, I pray you, let this sinner's life come into him again!" 1 Kings 17:21.
Are not the living and the dead promiscuously blended in this assembly? Here is a dead soul, there another, and there another—all over this meeting-house! And here and there are a few living souls thinly scattered among them!
Have you ever been carried through such a preparatory process as I have described? or if you are uncertain about this, as some may be, who are animated with spiritual life.
Inquire—have you the feelings, the appetites and aversions, the pleasing and the painful sensations of living souls? Methinks conscience breaks its silence in some of you, whether you will or not, and cries, "Oh no! There is not a spark of life in this breast." Well, my poor deceased friends, (for so I may call you,) I hope you will seriously attend to what I am going seriously to say to you. I have no bad design upon you—but only to restore you to life. And though your case is really discouraging—yet I hope it is not quite desperate. The principles of nature, reason, self-love, joy and fear—are still alive in you; and you are capable of some application to divine things. And, as I told you, it is upon the principles of nature, that God is accustomed to work, to prepare the soul for the infusion of a supernatural life. And these I would now work upon, in hopes you are not armored against considerations of the greatest weight and energy; I earnestly beg you would lay to heart such things as these:
Can you content yourselves with an physical life—the life of beasts, with reason—just to render you a more ingenious and self-tormenting kind of brutes; more artful in gratifying your sordid appetites—and yet still uneasy for lack of an unknown something; a care that the brute world, being destitute of reason, are unmolested with?
Oh! have you no ambition to be animated with a divine immortal life, the life of God? Can you be contented with a mere temporallife—when your souls must exist forever? That infinite world beyond the grave is filled with nothing but the terrors to you—if you are destitute of spiritual life. And oh! can you bear the thought of residing among its grim and ghastly terrors forever? Are you contented to be cut off from God—and to be banished forever from all the joys of his presence? You cannot be admitted to heaven, without spiritual life. Hell is the sepulchre for dead souls—and there you must be sent, if you still continue dead. And does not this thought affect you?
Consider, also: NOW is the only time in which you can be restored to life. And oh! will you let it pass by without improvement? Shall all the means that have been used for your revival be in vain? Or the strivings of the Spirit, the alarms of your own consciences, the blessings and chastisements of Providence, the persuasions, tears, and lamentations of your living friends—Oh! shall all these be in vain? Can you bear the thought? Surely, not! Therefore, oh heave and struggle to burst the chains of death! Cry mightily to God to quicken you. Use all the means of vivification, and avoid every deadly and contagious thing!
I know not, my brethren, how this thought will affect us at parting today—that we have left behind us many a dead soul. But suppose we should leave as many bodies here behind us—as there are dead souls among us! Suppose every sinner destitute of spiritual life should now be struck dead before us—oh how would this floor be overlaid with dead corpses! How few of us would escape! What bitter lamentations and tears would be among us! One would lose a husband or a wife, another a friend or a neighbour. And have we hearts to mourn, and tears to shed over such an event as this? Have we no compassion for dead souls? Are there none to mourn over them? Sinners, if you will still continue dead, there are some here today who part with you with this wish, "Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears—that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" And oh, that our mournings may reach the Lord of life, and that you might be quickened from your death in transgressions and sins! Amen and amen.
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