"As sweetly as a child, Whom neither thought disturbs, nor care encumbers, Tired with long play, at close of summer's day, Lies down and slumbers."
If now, in addition to this physical preparation for his departure, the man possesses a deep consciousness of forgiven sin, and a firm hope of future and eternal joy, this change, which we call death, becomes only a joyful translation from earth to heaven; and though the man passes from our view,--
"He sets, As sets the morning star, which goes not down Behind the darkened west, nor hides obscured Among the tempests of the sky, but melts away Into the light of heaven."
Nay, when such faith and hope form an anchor to the soul, it is not necessary that the physical preparation, which I have described, should exist. The poor body may be torn by fierce disease, nay, by the infernal cruelties of martyrdom, and yet faith can rise--often has risen--over the pains of nature, in joyful triumph; and in the midst of the tempest, with her anchor fastened to the eternal Rock, she can exclaim, _O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! Thanks be to God, which giveth me the victory through my Lord Jesus Christ._ Surely such a dissolution as this cannot mean the death mentioned in the primeval curse.
Look now at the contrast. Behold a man writhing in the fangs of unrelenting disease, and feeling at the same time the scorpion sting of a guilty conscience. His present suffering is terrible, but that in prospect is more so; yet he cannot bribe the king of terrors to delay the fatal stroke.
"The foe, Like a stanch murderer, steady to his purpose, Urges the soul through every nook and lane of life."
It were enough for an unruffled mind to bear the bodily anguish of that dying hour. But the unpardoned sins of a whole life, and the awful retributions of a whole eternity, come crowding into that point of time; and no human fortitude can stand under the crushing load. This, this is emphatically death; the genuine fruit of sin, and therefore in correspondence with the original threatening.
If we turn now to the Scriptures, we shall find some passages in striking agreement with the opinion that the death threatened to man was not the mere dissolution of the body and soul; not a mere going out of the world, but the manner of going.