My heart is with you though I am absent, as to my bodily presence from you, and therefore as I have often already, so I have now written to you to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, and to call upon you for your steadfast continuing, and vigorous proceeding in the ways of God. Dear friends and fellow soldiers under Christ, the Captain of our salvation, consider your calling and station, and approve yourselves as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, as men of resolution and courage, be discouraged with no difficulties of your present warfare. As for human affairs, I would have you to be as you are, men of peace: I would have you armed not for resisting, God forbid, but for suffering only, as the Apostle hints: you should resist, even to the uttermost, striving against sin.
To die to the Lord, we apprehend, is to have a view to the glory of God in all that pertains to our death. It is to consult for God’s glory, in the state of our views and feelings in the prospect of death.
Much honoured and very dear Sir, I do by this line salute much in the Lord yourself and your worthy yokefellow and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, whom he is graciously pleased to keep yet together when he hath made many sad separations and divorces between other husbands and wives, partly by violent, partly by natural deaths, which I know mightily alarms and provokes you to more than ordinary and more than ever diligent, careful, and conscionable improvement of one another’s fellowship, to the best spiritual advantage.
When the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway resolved to run trains on the Lord’s Day, William Burns announced his intention of holding open-air services at the Haymarket (the Edinburgh terminus in those days), at the hours of departure and arrival of the trains.
We are to consider largely then in Philippians, chapter 1, and particularly, verse 21; the epistle to the Philippians, chapter 1, and verse 21. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” The Apostle Paul was in prison in Rome, because of his faithfulness in his testimony to Christ, and he’s writing this letter to the Philippians from prison. And you’ll notice that there is very little about his physical conditions in the prison. What he is more concerned about are the spiritual implications of his imprisonment, and the effect of his imprisonment upon the cause of Christ, and upon the church of Christ.
The following story aims to illustrate the display of God’s providence and grace, in his patient pursuit of an elect soul. It provides an account of the conversion of a young woman named Sarah Baker. The excerpted portion below are her own words as recorded in an interview. Born to parents of some wealth, Sarah spent her earliest years in a loving, pleasant home and was afforded a full array of comforts and care, including an education at a boarding school and instruction in general morals. When she was nine years old, however, an event occurred which completely changed her prospects and course of life—the untimely death of her beloved father. From that point forward, one disastrous circumstance after another caused her formerly comfortable life to unravel into poverty and hardship.
A common engraving on seventeenth century gravestones depicts an hourglass with wings. The image conveys a clear message to even the illiterate bystander: time flies. Outside of cemeteries, a barrage of subtle reminders pelt men with the truth that “time is short and eternity is long.” The natural propensity of men, however, tends to suppress and ignore this inescapable reality.
The wise man prepares for eternity today; the foolish man puts off his preparation for eternity till tomorrow. The wise man has his eye always on the day of his death; the foolish man shuts his mind to the obvious fact that death, and what follows death, must soon be experienced by everyone.
My eldest son, Robert Stockton Green, died the very close of this year 1813. He died at Boston, on Tuesday the 28th of September, and the next day his corpse was deposited in Mr. Dexter’s cemetery;—the very day of our annual commencement, eight years after taking his degree in this College. He was born July 30th, 1787; and was, of course, twenty-six years and two months of age when he died, wanting two days.
The greatest lesson to learn in life is how to die well. To die well is to pass from this sad and fallen world into paradise, and so to bid farewell to all our pains and cares and sorrows, into the glorious presence of Almighty God. To enjoy this great and blessed change, we must all in this life prepare.
