This Very Year You are Going to Die! 2
Back to SERMONS Samuel Davies
And what a wretched state will this be! for a man to be self-condemned! to disapprove of his whole past conduct! to be pleased with nothing in himself—but heartily, though with horror, to concur in the condemning sentence of the Supreme Judge—to esteem himself a fool, a sinner, a base, sordid wretch; an enemy to himself, and the whole universe; a self-destroyer, an outcast from all happiness, and from the society of all happy beings; a vile, odious, useless, miserable, despairing creature forever! O miserable situation! Does it not alarm you to think you may be so near to it?
If you should die in your sins this year—then you will be deprived forever of all the means of salvation. All these are confined to the present life, and have no place in the world of eternal punishment. There the thunders of the divine law roar; but the gentle voice of the gospel never sounds. There the LION of the tribe of Judah tears the prey; but never exhibits himself as a LAMB that was slain, an atonement for sin, and the Savior of the guilty. There conscience exerts its power, not to excite the medicinal anguish of kindly repentance—but the hopeless horrors of everlasting despair! There Jehovah works—but not to enable the sinner to work out his own salvation—but to touch all the springs of painful sensation, and open all the sources of misery in the criminal. There mercy no more distributes her bounties—but justice reigns in her dreadful rigors! There the sanctifying Spirit no more communicates his purifying, all-healing influences—but sin, the great Apollyon, diffuses its deadly poison!
In a word, when you leave this earthly state of trial, all the discipline of the present state, all your advantages for salvation, all the means of grace, and all the encouragements of hope—will be forever removed out of your reach; and consequently all possibility of your salvation will cease forever; for when the necessary means are taken away—the end becomes utterly impossible.
Therefore, if you should die this year—then all your hopes of heaven will vanish forever!
No more happiness for you! You have received your portion in this life—a few years of fleeting, sordid, unsatisfactory happiness! And an entire eternity of misery; permanent, exquisite, consummate misery—follows!
No more honor for you—but shame and everlasting contempt!
No more amusements for you—but only the blackness of darkness forever! Only intense poring upon your hopeless wretchedness! Only tormenting recollections of your past folly and madness of voluntarily rushing into the infernal pit!
No agreeable companions!
No sympathizing friends!
No relaxation!
No pleasing hobbies!
No encouraging prospects!
No comforting hopes!
No token of love!
No gift of grace from the Father of mercy!
No hope in the future!
No relief from the past!
No refuge, no escape—into the gulf of annihilation!
ABOVE you—an angry omnipotent God—and a lost heaven!
BEHIND you—a misspent life, and opportunities of salvation irrecoverably lost!
WITHIN you—a guilty, remorseful conscience—an implacable self-tormentor!
AROUND you—malignant, enraged fiends, mutual tormentors!
BEFORE you—an eternity of hopeless misery, extending infinitely!
Oh tremendous doom!
Who can bear the thought?
And is it possible that this doom should be so near to any of US? Where is the unhappy creature, that we may all drop our tears over him? Where is he? Rather, where is he not? An impenitent sinner is almost everywhere to be found; and that is the wretched creature who stands every moment upon the slippery brink of this horrible precipice! And this year, nay, this hour, for what mortals or angels know, he may be thrown down, engulfed and lost forever!
And is this a safe situation for you, thoughtless, foolhardy mortals!
Does it befit you in such a situation—to be cheerful, merry, and mirthful?
Does it befit you in such a situation—to be busy, restless, and laborious in the pursuits of this transitory life?
Does it befit you in such a situation—to dread nothing but the disasters and calamities of the present state?
Does it befit you in such a situation—to spin out your eternal schemes of grandeur, riches, or pleasures—in hopes to accomplish them within the narrow, uncertain limits of time allotted you?
Alas! before another year has run its hasty round, the world and all that it contains, all its pursuits and enjoyments, all its cares and sorrows—may be as insignificant to you as the grandeur of Caesar, or the riches of the world before the flood.
If you die this year, then . . .
earthly riches or poverty,
liberty or slavery,
honor or disgrace,
joy or sorrow,
sickness or health—
will be as little your concern—as the dust that shall cover your coffin!
Does it not rather befit you to turn your thoughts to another inquiry, "Is it possible for me to escape this impending danger? Where, how, whence may I obtain deliverance?" If you are not desirous seriously to attend to this inquiry—then it will be to no purpose for me to solve it; to you it will appear as a solemn trifle, or an impertinent fantasy. But if you will lay it to heart; if you will, as it were, give me your word that you will pay a proper regard to it, I shall enter upon the SOLUTION with the utmost alacrity!
I assure you, then, in the first place—that your case is not yet desperate, unless you choose to make it so; that is, unless you choose to persist in carelessness and impenitence, as you have hitherto done. If you now begin to think seriously upon your condition, to break off from your sins, and attend in good earnest upon the means appointed for your salvation—then there is hope concerning you! Yes, miserable sinners! there is hope that this year, which now finds you in so deplorable a state—will introduce you into another state, under the blessing of God—safe from all danger, and entitled to everlasting happiness!
I presume you all know well, the external means you should use for your salvation, that I need not particularly direct you to them. You all know that prayer; reading and hearing the Word of God; meditation upon divine things, sincere conference with such as have been taught by experience to direct you in this difficult work; you all know, I say, that these are the means instituted for your conversion; and if you had right views of things and a just temper towards them—you would hardly need instruction or the least persuasion to make use of them! But to give you such views, and inspire you with such a temper, this is the difficulty. Oh! that I knew how to undertake it with success! I can only give you such directions as appear to me proper and beneficial; but it is the almighty power of God alone, that can give them force and efficacy.
You must learn to think, to think seriously and solemnly upon your danger, and the necessity of a speedy escape. You must retire from the crowd, from talk, business, and amusement, and converse with yourselves alone in pensive solitude. You must learn to think seriously upon the most melancholy and alarming subjects: your present guilt and depravity, and your dreadful doom so near at hand, if you continue in your present condition.
The mind, fond of ease, and impatient of such mortifying and painful thoughts, will recoil, and fly off, and seek for refuge in every trifle! But you must arrest and confine it to these disagreeable subjects; you must force upon it this necessary discomfort—just as you may sometimes take bitter medicines, when your health requires it. There is not any moroseness in this advice; no ill-natured design upon your pleasure and happiness. On the other hand, it is intended to procure you more pleasure and happiness than you can possibly obtain any other way! It is intended to prevent many sorrowful days and years, nay, a complete eternity of misery!
The alternative proposed to you, is not . . .
whether you shall feel the bitter anguish of repentance—or not;
whether you shall be pensive and serious—or not;
whether you shall think upon gloomy and alarming subjects—or not.
This is not at all the state of the case—for . . .
you must feel the sorrows of repentance;
you must be thoughtful and pensive;
you must confine your minds to subjects of terror!
You MUST, whether you will or not! It is utterly unavoidable!
But the only alternative proposed to your choice is—whether you will voluntarily submit to the kindly, hopeful, medicinal, preventive sorrows of repentance in this earthly state of trial, which will issue in everlasting joy! Or whether you will be forced to submit to the despairing pangs, and useless, destructive horrors of 'too late a repentance' in the eternal world; which will only torment you—but not save you; which will be your punishment—and not a means of your salvation, or a preparative for happiness!
Your only choice is—whether you will now contemplate your present miserable circumstances, while hope irradiates even the darkest gloom of discouragement, and the gospel opens such bright and inviting prospects beyond those melancholy views which now first present themselves to your thoughts; or whether you will choose to pine away a doleful eternity in sullen, intense, hopeless porings upon your remediless misery, in remorseful reviews of your past folly, and shocking surveys of endless ages of woe before you!
This is the true state of your case! And can you be at a loss what choice to make! Does not the voice of reason, the voice ofconscience, of self-interest and self-love, as well as the voice of God—direct you to choose a few serious, solemn, sorrowful, penitent hours now—rather than to forever regret your choice; and to purchase a few hours of presumptuous ease at the expense of a wretched, despairing eternity? Oh choose life, that you may live! While you indulge a trifling levity of mind, and a roving dissipation of thought—there is no hope you will ever seriously attend to your most important interest, or use the means of grace in earnest. Hence it is that I have made it so much my endeavor today to make you serious and thoughtful.
Ah! my friends! while we laugh—all things are serious round about us. God is serious, who exercises patience towards us! Christ is serious, who shed his blood for us! The Holy Spirit is serious, who strives against the obstinacy of our hearts! The holy Scripturesbring to our ears the most serious things in the world! The whole creation is serious in serving God and us! All who are in heavenand hell are serious! How then can we be mirthful?
I beg you, my dear friends, yield an immediate compliance. Do not delay this great affair for another year—you are not sure that you shall live another year! You may perhaps have time enough to work out your salvation—if you immediately begin to improve it: but, if you loiter—you may perish for lack of time! All the riches of the world will not be able then to redeem one of those precious hours you now squander away!
Let me now make you one of the most reasonable, beneficial, and advantageous proposals that heaven itself can make to you; and that is—that you endeavor to enter upon this new year as new creatures. Let the old man with his affections and lusts die with the old year. "Do not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry!" How shocking the thought that your old guilt should follow you into the new year, and haunt you in future times! Oh! begin this year as you would wish to end your life! Begin it so as to give hopes that your future time will be so spent as to render death harmless, and even welcome to you.
Let the possibility suggested in my text, have due weight with you: "Thus says the Lord—I am about to remove you from the face of the earth! This very year you are going to die!"
But perhaps some of you may be inverting this consideration, and whispering to yourselves, "This year I may not die!" and therefore there is no immediate necessity of preparation for death. But what if you should not die this year, if you still delay the great work for which your time is given you? Alas! if you persist in this—one would think it can give you but little pleasure whether you die this year or not? What end will your life answer—but to add to your guilt, and increase your punishment? What safety can another year afford you—when you must die at last? What valuable end do you intend to answer in future life? Do you purpose to spend this year—as you have your past years?
What! in offending your God!
What! in abusing his mercies!
What! in neglecting the precious seasons of grace!
What! in hardening yourselves more and more in impenitence!
What! in adding sin to sin, and treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath!
Is it worth your while to live for such horrid, preposterous purposes as these? Can you wish for another year with these views? Could you venture to pray for it? Come, put on the hardiness of an infernal fiend, that you may be able to support yourselves, under the horror of the sound: "O supreme Excellence! Author of my being, and all my powers! Father of all my mercies! O righteous Judge of the world! I have spent ten, twenty, or thirty years in displeasing you and ruining myself; but I am not yet satisfied with the pleasures of such a conduct. Grant me, I pray you, another year to spend in the same evil manner. Grant me more mercies to abuse. Grant me more time to misspend. Grant me more means of grace to neglect and profane."
Could you now fall on your knees, and present such petitions to Almighty God? Surely you could not! Surely your body would shudder; nay, would not the heavens gather blackness, and the earth tremble at the sound! But have your temper and practice no language? Language expresses the thoughts and intentions of the mind; and are not the habitual temper and practice—a more certain discovery of the thoughts and intentions, than mere words? words, which may be spoken without a thought, or in a passion, and which may soon be heartily retracted? But the temper and practice—is a steady and sure rule of judging, and decisive of a man's predominant character.
Therefore, while your temper and practice are agreeable to such a prayer: that is, while you are disposed to spend your time that God gives you in sin and impenitence; you are perpetually insulting almighty God with such petitions, and that too in a manner much more expressive and strong, than if you should utter them in words! And can you quietly bear the thought of this horrid blasphemy, which you are constantly breathing out against the God of heaven? Can you wish and pray for another year for this horrid purpose?
What though you should not die this year? Will this exempt you from death forever, or from the punishment of misspent life? Alas! no! This will only render you a greater criminal, and a more miserable wretch in eternity! One more year of sinning—will make a dreadful addition to your account.
Therefore conclude, every one for himself, "It is of little importance to me whether I die this year, or not. But the only important point is, that I make a good use of my future time, whether it be longer or shorter." This, my brethren, is the only way to secure a happy new year—a year of time, that will lead the way to a holy and happy eternity!
"Thus says the Lord—I am about to remove you from the face of the earth! This very year you are going to die!" Jeremiah 28:16
Back to SERMONS Samuel Davies