Preached at Burnham, 13th Sunday after Trinity. August 26, 1866.
“For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death.”—1 Corinthians xv. 25, 26.
Some of you have heard these words already, perhaps more than once, during this week. You have heard them in a way that explains them, as no words from a pulpit can explain them. You have seen the coffin in the church. You have known that it contained what was mortal of one whom you have seen lately among you, who has exchanged kind greetings with you, whom you have respected and cared for. You saw those mortal remains put into the grave, and you heard the words “earth to earth, dust to dust,” pronounced over them. But these came first—“He must reign till all His enemies are put under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
Yes; they could not be mere words out of a book when they were spoken then; they must have concerned actual things which you had to do with, actual persons whom you had conversed with. They were human words, words about men and women; they were divine words, words coming from the Living and Eternal God.
They were not less human words because they were Divine, not less Divine because they were human, for they speak of Him who is one with God and one with man; of Him in whom God and man are reconciled. It is said of Him “He must reign till all His enemies are put under His feet.” It is said of Him that death is one of those enemies.
My friends! we often wish—each of us has wished—that we could know what has happened to some one whom we have loved; where he or she is; what he or she is doing or feeling when we cannot talk with them any longer, when the veil has dropped between our eyes and them. Would it not be comforting to have some tidings of this person and that? would it not strengthen us for our work? should we not be encouraged to follow them? should we not have some fellowship with them which we have not now? I do not know, but I think not. I suspect that we have the best tidings about them which we can have, when we hear the assurance in this text; the greatest strength for all work; the best encouragement to follow those who have been better than we are; the most real fellowship with them and with all just men made perfect.
For I do not find that they fed themselves with dreams of what might come to pass some time or other. They lived upon realities. They liked to think of what had come to pass. They got from the Gospel their most clear and bright hopes of that which would be, which must be, in the days to come, aye in the ages to come. They lived upon the thoughts which St. Paul sets us in this chapter. “Christ has risen from the dead; Christ is become the first-fruits of them that slept. As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Christ must reign till all enemies are put under Him.”
Here was their consolation. It did not rest upon guesses or chances, it rested upon One who is, and was, and is to come; it rested upon a work which He has accomplished, upon a victory which He has won. It grew up in the hearts of those who were conscious of great sins, of manifold weaknesses; who did not feel less aware of their sins or of their weaknesses as they grew older and nearer the end of their pilgrimage, but more aware of them; who were therefore obliged to depend more upon the Deliverer from sin, more upon Him in whom is perfect righteousness and strength. They felt their enemies more cruel and harder to overcome every day, but they believed more in Him who was mightier than their enemies, who would put them under His feet. They learnt more and more that all their confidence must be in Him who had trodden the winepress alone; that all their life was in Him who had tasted death for all men, who had gone into the grave and had risen out of it.
Therefore, if we would be partakers of their fight, or share in their victory, we should not be asking ‘Where are they? what are they doing?’ but we should be remembering this. Wherever they are, whatever they are doing, that which they believed when they were with us, remains true now; this must be their comfort and ever increasing delight now that they have cast off the burden of mortality.
So St. Paul thought; for it is this he dwells upon throughout this chapter, when he is telling us the source of his own comfort, and when he is most trying to comfort his fellow-men. He does not talk of any special blessings that should come to him because he was an apostle; because he had laboured more abundantly than all; because he had been carried into the third heaven. He talks of that which was common to him with the Corinthians; common to him with all of us. He speaks of Christ’s battle and Christ’s victory. That is more to him than anything which he could imagine about himself, after all his visions and revelations. And yet that, he says expressly, is for the Corinthians, though he complains bitterly of them; he reproves them for not claiming this victory as theirs; for not assuring themselves that Christ’s resurrection was their resurrection, that by it they might rise out of their sins, that by it they might set death at defiance.
We need not be afraid of following St. Paul, my brethren; we need not suspect that he will betray us or lead us into foolish confidence. If he encourages us to trust in Christ, we may be sure that trust is safe, that it will not disappoint us; that it is what we want to make us right and true men.
Believe that Christ who died and was buried is reigning over us and over the whole creation; believe that He will put all His enemies under His feet; believe that death—the death which we see sweeping away multitudes at once, the death which takes away one and another of those we have known, and which will take you and me—will be destroyed by Him; believe this, I say, really seriously, and you will find that you have a bond to all those whom you see, and to those whom you do not see, which nothing else can give; you will not indulge in sin because you have such a hope, but the hope will purify you from sin; you will not lose your fear of God, you will change the fear of death which hath torment, for the fear of God, in which there is rest and peace.
It is this belief, this sure and certain hope, which the church in its Burial Service seeks to cultivate in us. When people try to rob us of those words which we repeat at the grave of all whom we commit to the dust, or when they would leave it to our poor miserable judgment, whether we should use them or not, they know not what they are doing. It is not the wrong they would cause to poor mourners which I complain of; it is not even the temptation they would cause us to break our Lord’s commandment, “Judge not that ye be not judged;” it is that we should teach you to disbelieve St. Paul’s words, to doubt that Christ has actually risen and is actually reigning, to measure His victory by our low and feeble standards. If we are wise we shall never do that. We shall believe that His work exceeds all which we can ask or think; we shall not shrink from the strange and wonderful words, that these vile bodies of ours shall be made like to His glorious body, because we shall know that there is a power in Him which can subdue even all things to itself. Yes, if He can subdue our stubborn wills to Himself; if He can by His discipline bring our hard unbelieving hearts to trust in Him, it is not too much to think that these frames which are so curiously and marvellously made shall be delivered from their disease and death; that “this corruptible shall put on incorruption,” that this “mortal shall put on immortality.” But, as St. Paul teaches us so continually in this chapter, that which sustains all these expectations is the recollection of Christ, of His death and resurrection—His union with the Father—His union with us His brethren upon earth. If we try to fashion this world or the world to come without Him, both will be very solitary and dreary; if we look to Him as our fellow-sufferer and our Lord, as our advocate and forerunner, the earth which He has trodden, which He has redeemed, will be full of delight and beauty amidst all its sorrows. And the world unseen into which He has entered will be filled with the brightness of His presence, with the brightness of that innumerable company which cast their crowns at His feet, and hail Him as the Lamb that was slain, and that has brought them out of every kindred and tribe into His Father’s house.