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Tag Archives: Death

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation LIX

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized, William Spurstowe, William Spurstowe

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Death, Psalm 90, The Spiritual Chymist

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Upon Going to Bed

How like is the frail life of Man to a day, as well for the inequality of its length, as the mixture that it has both of clouds and sunshine? What a kind of exact parallel are sleep and death: the one being a state of ligation of the senses; and the other, the privation of them? And how near a kin is the grave to the end, when the Scripture calls it by the same name?

When the clothes that do cover us do the like office the mould [of the grave], that must be cast spread over us. When therefore the day and the labors which Man goes forth unto are ended and the darkness of night dispose unto rest; what though can any better take into his bosom to lie down with? 

Then to think that death, like the beasts of the forest may creep forth to seek its prey, and that when it comes there is no resistance to be made or delay to be obtained. It spares no rank of men, but flies to the rich as well as the poor, the prince as well as the peasant. The glass that has the king’s face painted on it is not the less brittle; neither are kings, that God’s image represented in them, less moral. And whether it comes in at the window or at the door, whether in some common or in some unwonted manner, who can tell?

Many oft times fall asleep in this world and awake in the other, and have no sums at all to acquaint them whither they are going. And yet though every man’s condition be thus uncertain, and that his breath in his nostrils, where there is as much room for it go out as to come in; how few do make their night’s repose to serve as memorial for their last rest? Or their bed to stand for a model of their coffin? 

Some pervert the night, which was ordained to be a cessation of the evils of labor, to make it a season for their activity in the evils of sin. They devise (as the prophet says) inquiry upon their beds, when the morning is light they practice it, because it is in they power of their hand. [Micah 2:1] 

Others are easily brought asleep, by the riot and intemperance of the day, owning their unhappy rest not to the dew of nature but unto the gross and foul vapors of sin, which more darken and eclipse their reason than their sleep. Their dreams having more of it in them than their discourse. 

Others again by their youth and health seem to be seated in such an elevation above death; as that they cannot look down from their bed into the grave without growing dizzy, such a steep precipice they apprehend between life and death. Though this distemper does not arise from the distance between the two terms, but from the imbecility of their sense, which cannot bear the least thoughts of a separation form those delights and pleasures to which their souls are firmly wedded. 

When therefore most of men are such unthrifts [wasters] of time, and like carless navigators keep no journal or diary of their motions, and other occurrences that fall out. What need have others to make the prayer of Moses the man of God, their prayer?  So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. [Ps. 90:12] He who was learned in all the sciences of the Egyptians [Acts 7:22] desires to be taught this point of arithmetic of God: so to number, as not to mistake or make any error in the account of life, in setting down days for minutes and years for days. 

A man would think that a little arithmetic would serve to cast up so small a number as the days of him, whose days are as the days of a hireling, few and evil. [Job 7:1] And yet it is such a mystery that Moses begs of God to be instructed in it, as that which is the chief and only knowledge. Yea, God himself earnestly wishes this wishes this wisdom to Israel, his People, O that they were wise; that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! 

Can we then render the night more senseless? Or keep the bed unspooled from those impurities that are neither few nor small, then by practicing duly this divine art of numbering our days; which is not done by speculation, or prying into the time or manner of our death: but by meditating and thinking with ourselves what our days are, and for what end our life is given to us; by reckoning our day by our work, and not by our time; by what we do, and not by what we are: By remembering that we are in a continual progress to the chambers of death; no man’s life being so long at the evening as it was in the morning.

Night and day are as two axes at the root of our life, when one is lifted up, the other is down, without rest: every day a chip flies off, and every night a chip, and so at length we are hewn down and fall at the grave’s mouth. O what a wide difference is there between those that lie down with these considerations in their bosoms, and others, who pass their time in pleasures, and allow not the leasts portion fit to think what issues are that a day or night may bring forth? 

How free are their conversations from those sensualities and lusts, which others commit in the day, and lie down with the guilt of them in the night? How profitably do they improve their time who count only the present to be theirs, and the future to be God’s? above those, that fancy youth and strength to be a security of succeeding proportions of their life? 

Yea, how comfortable is the date of those who are in daily preparation for it, as well as in expectation of it; above what it is to others, who are surprised by it in the midst of those delights in which they promised themselves a continuance for many years?

In what a differing frame and figure does it appear to the one and to the other? The one behold it as a bridge lying under their feet to pass them over the Jordan of this life, into the Canaan of eternal blessedness; and the other as a torrent roaring and frighting them with its hasty downfall: Gladly, therefore would I counsel Christians, who enter the Church Militant by a mystical death, being buried with Christ by baptism; and cannot pass into the Triumphant but by a natural death, to duly bear daily in their minds, the cogitations of their inevitable end, as the best means to allay the fear of death, in what dress soever it comes, and to make it an inlet into happiness whensoever it comes. 

As Joseph of Arimathea [Matt. 27:57-60] made his sepulcher in his garden, that in the midst of his delights he might think of death; so let us in our chamber make such schemes and representations of death to ourselves as may make it familiar to us in the emblems of it, and then it will be less ghastly when we behold its true visage.

That shortly (as St. Peter says) we must put off this our Tabernacle. [2 Pet. 1:14] I, and think again, what a likeness there is between our night-clothes and our grave-clothes, between the bed and the tomb. What little distance there is between life and death, the one being as an eye open, and the other as an eye shut. In the twinkling of an eye we will be living and dead men. [1 Cor. 15:52]

O what ardors of lusts would such thoughts chill and damp? What sorrows for sins past? What diligence for time to come to watch against the first stirrings of sin would such thoughts beget? It being the property of sin to divert us rather from looking upon our end, then embolden us to defy it. 

Lord then make me to know my end

And the measure of my days, 

That I in my own generation serve the will of God

And then fall asleep as David did

And not as others

Who fall asleep before they have done their work,

And put off their bodies before they have put off their sins.

A Pilgrim’s Song, Horatius Bonar

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Horatius Bonar, Hymns, Singing, Singing, Uncategorized

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Death, Horatius Bonar, Hymns, Singing, Songs

(I have a lovely little volume from 1871 which fits in my pocket. Hymns of Faith and Hope by Horatius Bonar, D.D. This week two friends lost someone they loved (an aged mother for one, a young wife for the other). As I was reading through these hymns, I came upon three which made a pointed impression upon me. Christianity is a great answer to death (that is, death is not the final word). Anyway, here is one)

 

A few more years shall roll

A few more seasons come,

And we shall be with those that rest

Asleep within the tomb.

Then, O my Lord, prepare

My soul for that great day;

O wash me in Thy precious blood

And take my sins away!

A few more suns shall set

O’er these dark hills of time,

And we shall be where suns are not,

A far serener clime.

Then, O my Lord, prepare

My soul for that blest day;

O wash me in Thy precious blood

And take my sins away!

 

A few more storms shall beat

On this wild rocky shore,

And we shall be where tempests cease,

And surges swell no more.

Then, O my Lord, prepare

My soul for that calm day;

O wash me in Thy precious blood

And take my sins away!

 

A few more struggles here,

A few more partings o’er,

A few more toils, a few more tears,

And we shall weep no more.

Then, O my Lord, prepare

My soul for that bright day;

O wash me in Thy precious blood

And take my sins away!

 

A few more Sabbaths here

Shall cheer us on our way,

And we shall reach the endless rest,

The eternal Sabbath day.

Then, O my Lord, prepare

My soul for that sweet day;

O wash me in Thy precious blood

And take my sins away!

 

‘Tis but a little while,

And He shall come again,

Who died that we might live, who lives

That we with Him may reign.

Then, O my Lord, prepare

My soul for that glad day;

O wash me in Thy precious blood

And take my sins away!

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation XXXIV

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized, William Spurstowe

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Candle, Death, joy, judgment, Judgment Day, The Spiritual Chymist, William Spurstowe

The previous post in this series may be found here.

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MEDITATION XXXIV
Upon the Putting Out of a Candle

Light and darkness are in Scripture the two most usual expressions by which happiness and misery are set forth unto us. Hell and Heaven which will one day divide the whole world between them and become the sole mansions of endless woe and blessedness are described: the one to be a place of outward darkness, and the other an inheritance of light.

But it is observable also that as the happiness of worldly men and believes is wholly differing; so the light to which the one and the other is resembled is wholly discrepant. The happiness of the wicked worldling is compared to a candle which is a feeble and dim light, which consumes itself by burning, always put out by every small puff of wind. But the prosperity and happiness of the righteous is not, lucerna in domo, a candle in a house; but sol in Coelo, as the sun in heaven which though it may be clouded or eclipsed yet can never be extinguished or interrupted in its course, but that it will shine more and more onto the perfect day till it comes to the fullness of bliss and glory in heaven.

May we not then rather bemoan, than envy, the best condition of worldly man, who comes out of a dark womb into a dark world, and has no healing beams of the Son of Righteousness arising upon him to enlighten his paths or to direct his steps. What if he some few strictures of light which the creatures, that are no better than a rush candle, to seem to refresh him with, and in the confidence which he walks for a time — yet alas! How suddenly do the damps of affliction make such a light to burn blue and to expire and leave him as lost in the pitchy shades of anguish and despair? How do the terrors of darkness multiply upon him every moment all those evils that a restless fancy can suggest? He sees nothing and yet he speaks of ghastly shapes that stand before him: He cannot tell who hurts him, and yet he complains of the stinging of serpents, of the torments of fiery flames, or the wracking of his limbs.

If he have cordials put into his mouth, he spits them out again as if they were the gall of asps. Of if he have food ministered unto him, he wholly rejects it as that which will help to lengthen his miserable life. And yet die he dares not, lest worse things befall him.

If death approach, he then cries out as Crisorius in Gregory, a truce, a respect Lord until the morning. So great are his straits as that he knows now what to choose or where to fly. O that I could then affect some fond [foolish] worldlings with the vanity and sickness of their condition, who have nothing to secure them from an endless night of darkness but the wan and pale light of a few earthly comforts, which are ofttimes far shorter than their lives, but never can be one moment longer.

Have you no wisdom to consider that your life is but a span and that all your delights are not so much? Have you never read of a state of blessedness in which it is said that there shall be no night, and they need no candle, neither the light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for ever and ever? Or are you so regardless of the future as that you will resolvedly hazard what can never fall out for the present satisfaction of some inordinate desires? Do you not fear the threatening of him who said, The candle of the wicked shall be put out.

O then while it si called today makes David’s prayer from your heart, say,
Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us,
Thou shalt put gladness in my heart more than in the time my corn and wine increased.

She hath exchanged earth for heaven

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Thomas Brooks, Uncategorized

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A String of Pearls, Death, letters, Thomas Brooks

(Thomas Brooks writing to a friend on the loss of his wife):

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I could heartily wish that you and all others concerned in this sad loss, were more taken up in minding the happy exchange that she hath made, than with your present loss.

She hath exchanged earth for heaven,

a wilderness for a paradise,

a prison for a palace,

a house made with hands for one eternal in the heavens, 2 Cor. 5:1, 2.

She hath exchanged imperfection for perfection,

sighing for singing,

mourning for rejoicing,

prayers for praises,

the society of sinful mortals for the company of God, Christ, angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, Heb. 12:22–24;

an imperfect transient enjoyment of God for a more clear, full, perfect, and permanent enjoyment of God.

She hath exchanged pain for ease,

sickness for health,

a bed of weakness for a bed of spices,

a complete blessedness.

She hath exchanged her brass for silver,

her counters for gold,

and her earthly contentments for heavenly enjoyments.

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1, “A String of Pearls” (1657) (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 401.

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Art, Ecclesiastes

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After Apple Picking, Death, Ecclesiastes 3, poem, Poetry, Robert Frost

Robert Frost & Ecclesiastes 3:

 Apple Picking

MY long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.


The poem is about the approach of death: the ladder has gone through the tree points toward heaven. There is work which has not been finished. There is a strangeness he cannot shake. There is exhaustion with his work. There is a sleep coming, but he doesn’t know what it is. 

This poem was written well before Frost died. It is not really about the approach of his own death, but rather the question raised in Ecclesiastes 3:

 18 I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts.

19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.

20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.

21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?

22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? http://esv.to/Eccles3.18-22

What Zombies Mean and Why They Matter

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture

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Culture, David P. Goldman, Death, Dying Culture, temple, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies

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Sometime in 2011 the total number of film plots with the keyword “zombie” passed the number of film plots with the keyword “cowboy,” according to the Internet Movie Database. One might argue that the zombie has become the great American archetype of the postmodern era, as the cowboy was the American archetype a century ago. With the release of Brad Pitt’s $200 million zombie epic World War Z, what used to be the stuff of low-budget shockers has entered the American cultural mainstream. Therein lies a lesson.

***

Dying cultures are the living dead. Half of the world’s 6,000 languages will disappear by the end of this century. They are zombie cultures. But we Americans are gestating a zombie culture inside what used to be a “country with the soul of a church,” as G.K. Chesterton put it. The hedonistic narcissism that took over popular culture during the 1960s produced a spiritual deadening like nothing in American history. That’s why we are so fascinated with zombies. We identify with them.

******

We have dismissed the Jewish and Christian hope of eternal life as superstition offensive to reason, but instead, we find ourselves trapped in a recurring nightmare. We know that we will die, but (as Woody Allen said) we don’t want to be there when it happens. We act as if exercise, antioxidants and Botox will keep the reaper away, but we know that our flesh one day must putrefy nonetheless. The more we try to ignore death, the more it fascinates us. The more we tell ourselves that mortality doesn’t apply to us, the more it surrounds us. And the more we try to fight off the fear, the more we feel like the beleaguered survivors resisting the zombie herd.

There is far more and all of it interesting: Spengler on the Zombie Apocalypse

On the Death of an Infant: “She is not lost to you who is found to Christ.”

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Charles Hodge, Charles Spurgeon, Galatians, John MacArthur, Ministry, Samuel Rutherford

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Charles Spurgeon, Death, Infant, John MacArthur, Samuel Rutherford

This is from a short address I gave on what happens when babies die?

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What happens when an infant dies? That child stands before the Lord with glory and honor as a joint heir of Christ. How can I say this? Because God is good and Christ died for sinners. The 19th Century Princeton theologian, Charles Hodge explained in his Systematic Theology: “[A]ccording to the common doctrine of evangelical Protestants [] all who die in infancy are saved.”
Hodge explains that the death of Christ, according to Romans 5:18-19, undoes the work of death wrought by Adam:
We have no right to put any limit on these general terms, except what the Bible itself places on them. The Scriptures nowhere exclude any class of infants, baptized or unbaptized, born in Christian or in heathen lands, from the benefits of the redemption of Christ.
In short, Jesus saves infants.
This doctrine is quite dear to me. At nine months of age, my first son died. He had a seizure late at night, then his heart stopped and his breathing stopped. He died while his mother held him. The paramedics came, and despite their best efforts, his heart would not start again. A few hours later, as the sun came-up, a man came to our house and laid a sheet on the floor of my son’s bedroom. He took the body of myson, laid him in the middle of the cloth and wrapped him like a package and then carried him away.

Continue reading →

God really did kill people

22 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Theology

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Death, Kill, Stephen Altrogge, Theology Proper, Untamable God

But God really did kill people. In fact, the Bible is full of stories about God taking the lives of men and women. Yet for some reason we don’t like to talk about these stories. When was the last time you heard a sermon about killing people (talk about a great way to shrink your church)? When was the last time you sang the hymn “We Praise Thee For Thy Killings” (FYI: I don’t believe such a hymn exists)? I read to my little girls out of several different children’s Bibles. We read about David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion’s Den, and Jonah and the Giant Fish. But all the stories of divine killing have been censored out of the children’s Bibles. Why? Why do we have such an aversion to these types of stories? Why do we get queasy, uncomfortable, and somewhat apologetic at the idea of God killing someone? I suspect it’s because these stories don’t jive with the sanitized version of God we have created. We put bumper stickers on our cars that say, “Smile, Jesus Loves You”. We don’t have any use for stickers that say, “Watch Out, God Might Kill You”. We could sing of his love forever, not his wrath.

Altrogge, Stephen (2014-01-03). Untamable God: Encountering the One Who Is Bigger, Better, and More Dangerous Than You Could Possibly Imagine (p. 59). Blazing Center Books. Kindle Edition.

Lecture on Ecclesiastes 2:12-17

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiastes, Lectures

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Death, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 2, Ecclesiastes 2:12-17, Fool, Lecture, Lectures, Wisdom

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Ecclesiastes 2:12–17 (ESV)

12 So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. 13 Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

The notes for this lecture will be found here.

https://memoirandremains.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/20120513.mp3

 

George Herbert, Dialogue Anthem: Christian, Death

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in George Herbert, Literature

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1 Corinthians 15, Death, George Herbert, poem, Poetry

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A DIALOGUE-ANTHEM.

CHRISTIAN, DEATH.

Chr. ALAS, poor Death ! where is thy glory ?
Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting ?
Dea. Alas, poor mortal, void of story !
Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.
Chr. Poor Death ! and who was hurt thereby ?
Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accurst.
Dea. Let losers talk, yet thou shalt die ;
These arms shall crush thee.
Chr. Spare not, do thy worst.
I shall be one day better than before ;
Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.

1 Corinthians 15:50–58 (ESV)

50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

55  “O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

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