26 LECTURE II. THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. "And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."-Revelation xiv. 13. I HAVE already unfolded several features of the family of God. I showed you the state of the one hundred and forty-four thousand-the sealed ones-true Christians in the sight of God: "they are without fault before the throne of God;" that is, "there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus;" they are "justified" by him, and have "peace with God." "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth." They "have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Next, I described their practical conduct upon earth; or the mode in which they visibly develop, in their intercourse with the world, those great Christian principles which they had received through grace: they "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." They follow him in the great aim and end of his life-in his appeal to the only standard of truth, the word of God-in his intercourse with the world, sympathizing with him in all his sorrows, and reflecting all his joys. You have thus, then, the state of Christians before God: "without fault before the throne;" you have, next, the practical course before men: they "follow the Lamb." Having thus read their biography in life, let us read and comment upon the epitaph upon their tombstones. Their state is justification before God; their practical character is following the Lamb; and the beautiful epitaph which may be inscribed upon * See Lecture IV. of the Exeter Hall series, where the above also was delivered. their tomb, and pronounced as the noblest requiem over the ashes of the dead, is-"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." I allow there is here a special reference to the first resurrection, and I believe the blessedness to be associated primarily with their relation to this great event; but its main truths are not affected by chronology-they are always true. Let us consider, first, those that are described as "the dead;" secondly, their peculiar and distinctive relationship-"the dead in Christ;" thirdly, the benediction pronounced upon them"blessed are the dead;" fourthly, the special reason of that blessedness" they rest from their labours;" and lastly, the evidence of their entrance into that blessedness-"their works do follow them." Let me endeavour, as fully as the time will permit, to lay before you some remarks upon each of these several divisions into which I have split the text, dwelling rather on its general than on its special prophetic bearing. "The dead." Where are they? Where are they not? My dear friends, has the thought ever struck you, in looking round the world, that its dead outnumber its living? A far greater amount of the population of the globe is beneath the soil, than there is at any moment treading and breathing above it. Our churches, our homes, our thrones, the theatres and playhouses of the world, are all built upon the dust and ashes of the dead. Our cornfields and vineyards wave above the soil that was once warm with life: "the toe of the dancer treads upon the ashes of the dead." "Where is the dust that hath not been alive? O'er devastation we blind revels keep: Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel." This great globe on which we dwell seems to be as much a sarcophagus of the dead as it is a home of the living. What are all its graves, but various compartments in this one great and silent mausoleum! The ashes of Abraham mingle somewhere with those of Martin Luther; and that of Martin Luther may mingle somewhere with those of Napoleon; and the dust of Napoleon may, in a few years, mingle with the dust of a far better man that has recently passed from the stage of life to the stage of glory-Thomas Chalmers. Thus the world is a vast sarcophagus; its graves are its chambers, or compartments; and those compartments are not able to prevent the dust of all from mingling together. But not only the remains of those who never had a quarrel— who lived in friendship, and died in peace-but of those who were sworn and implacable foes, by a great law must mingle and blend most peacefully together. The ashes of Martin Luther. and of Leo the Tenth, who hated him so heartily-the dust of Wickliffe and that of those who cast his body into the stream which bore it to the silent sea-the dust of John Knox and that of Queen Mary, must blend and lie right silently and peacefully together. Thus, not only the dust of friends, but of bitter foes, as if to cast reproach upon their feuds, must blend and mingle together in spite of all their repulsions. It is now dead-disintegrated-mingling with all streamsmixing with all elements-blown by all winds; yet there is not a particle of that dust, incorporated with trees, mingled with the sea, or buried in the earth, that shall not hear the first tone of the resurrection trumpet, and become instinct with a life that can never end; for, when the trumpet shall sound, each one that died, whether he died in Christ or not, shall, each in his own order, come forth. Some shall rise from the depths of the fathomless sea, and come; some shall cast off their only windingsheet, the sands of the desert, and come. The Pharaohs shall leap forth, when they hear that peal, from their pyramidal chambers; the Ptolemies shall start from beneath their marble monuments; Napoleon, and those who fought and fell beneath his banner at Jena, at Austerlitz, and at Waterloo, shall rise and gather in shivering crowds around him; the dust of Martin Luther shall be quickened at Wirtemberg, and put on the apparel suited to a citizen of the New Jerusalem; Calvin shall rise from his grave, which is now unknown; Oberlin and Felix Neff shall start from their Alpine repose-some rejoicing in the hope that accompanies them to the realms of glory, others calling on the hills to cover them, and on the mountains to conceal them; and all shall gaze as they gather together into that tremendous infinitude, the eternity that stretches before them. Brethren, you and I, if we never met in the congregation of the living before, must meet together in the congregation of the dead. Each atom of our dust "rests in hope again to rise;" "for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise." And when we stand upon that vast platform, amid that mighty surging multitude-a multitude more countless than the waves of the sea, or the leaves of the forest, or the sands upon the sea-shoreand when we take a retrospective view of all we have passed through-how poor and paltry will many things look which we have fought, and struggled, and spent our health and strength for on earth! My dear friends, seen from the judgment-seat of Christ, the most brilliant crowns will grow pale, and the proudest coronets will appear denuded of all their attractions; and thousands shall feel that the gold which we worshipped, instead of being fit to be turned into shrines and gods for us to adore, was only worthy to be turned into a pavement on which our feet should tread, in our passage to another, a better, and more glorious repose. This leads me to the second point that I wish to consider that there are not only "the dead," but, distinctively, "the dead in Christ." There are three expressions used to describe our relationship to Christ. There is, first, to be "without Christ," the state of nature. There is, secondly, to be "in Christ," the state of grace. And there is, lastly, to be "with Christ," the state of glory. To be "without Christ," is our state by nature; to be "in Christ," is our state by grace; to be "with Christ," is our destiny, our happy destiny hereafter. It is here implied that there are but two distinctions upon earth that are real" in Christ," or out of Christ; and there is not a tombstone in London, on which affection has written its varied eulogy over the ashes of the beloved dead, if it had the inscription which God would write upon it, that would not record— "Dead in Christ," or, "Dead out of Christ." Hence, after all, what is the real value of many of those distinctions, which may be expedient or inevitable, but about which men dispute and quarrel? How startled will the high-churchman be at the discovered emptiness of those peculiarities in which he gloried! I mean high-churchmen in the popular sense, not in the true sense; for, in the right sense of the word, I hold that I am a higher churchman than Dr. Hook or Dr. Pusey. The high-churchman is not surely the man that measures the church by the height of the steeple, but he who belongs to the congregation of the redeemed. In this view, those who call themselves Dissenters adopt a questionable name. If it apply to separation from the Establishment, it is, at most, of no eternal moment; but if it mean dissent from the true church, the church of the redeemed, the name is a reproach. How startled will the Dissenter be, to find his Shibboleth was a Shibboleth earth-sprung, and that it died on earth, and has no place, or part, or mention at the judgment-seat of Christ! And there, amazed beyond expression, will the Puseyite be, (for I trust that there are some of them who, amid all the rubbish, hold the foundation,) when he discovers that his section gave the fewest members to the church of the redeemed in glory; and that his candelabras, and his genuflections, and his crosses, and his crucifixes, and his altars, were just so much wood, hay, straw, stubble, which he piled upon the true foundation! It will not be asked, when we stand at the judgment-seat of Christ, Whence are you?-but, What are you? It will be no recommendation that you are a churchman-it will be no disqualification that you are a Dissenter. These distinctions will have dropped away, and perished as unreal in that light in which reality only lives. You may have been baptized-you may have belonged to the visible church-you may have been one of its ministers you may have been a communicant-you may have been a liberal supporter of the ordinances of Christ-and yet may not have been in Christ. I believe that what will be seen and witnessed in the hereafter, will startle and surprise many participants of it. You will miss many a bold professor, whose voice you thought you would hear loudest in the choir of the |