THE PREPARATION REQUISITE FOR THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
“Prepare to meet thy GOD, O Israel.” Amos, iv. 12.
This concise but comprehensive address contains one of the most solemn warnings, that can possibly sound in the ears of sinful mortals. Prepare to meet thy God! Awful sentence! Every word in it is fraught with meaning, is big with importance; and rings an alarm, louder than the voice of ten thousand thunders. Who can read it with inattention? Who can hear it with irreverence? Who can preach upon it, without deeply feeling, himself, the weighty truths he enforceth? And yet the most nervous language must be inexpressive, and the warmest sentiment flat, when compared with a subject, which, for majesty and importance, rises infinitely above all the powers of description or the utmost stretch of conception itself. To whose heart is it not sufficient to carry, at least, a transient impression of seriousness? Methinks when the solemn sentence, Prepare to meet thy God, is repeated, the votary of pleasure, even in the giddy whirl of dissipation, is made to think, and levity itself, for a moment, looks solid; an irresistible awe seizes the mind of the licentiate, that imbitters his gratifications, and disturbs his sensual repose; that extorts a sigh from the unrelenting breast of impenitence, draws a tear from the eye of the prodigal, and forces a blush into the hardened cheek of immodesty itself:—even the daring infidel himself cannot stand the shock of the solemn warning; he starts—turns pale—looks aghast—and all the guilt of his conscience, all the misgivings of his heart, and all the horrors of his mind, fly into his pallid countenance, as so many witnesses against his atheistical principles, as so many vouchers for the truth of revelation; so that, methinks, even infidelity itself for a moment believes, and trembles.
In the context, (i.e. the passage immediately connected with the text,) we shall behold an additional evidence to the solemnity and importance of the warning before us. There the prophet is reciting the various judgments with which God had visited Israel; the end he had in these severe visitations; and the strange incorrigibleness of the people under them, and after their removal. The judgments were, famine, drought, blasting, and mildew, the pestilence, the sword, and an overthrow of some of their cities, judicial and final, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Dreadful and numerous as those public, those national calamities were; yet Israel was not humbled, did not repent. Yet have not ye returned unto me, saith the Lord, is the complaint of God himself, as annexed by the prophet to every verse, that recites their visitations. Jehovah spoke to them repeatedly, and awfully, by the rod; but they would not hear it, nor did they regard Him who had appointed it. He met them in his judgments. All of them were his messengers; each had a voice, that spake loudly for God and vehemently against sin; and all, in accents thundering through their land, solicited the dutiful attention of the inhabitants. But in vain. Though they were obliged to give those dreadful visitants the meeting, yet they would not give them an humble audience. They were too busy to hear; too proud to submit; too stubborn to obey. Well, since the embassadors are despised, the king will resent the affront: since they would not regard the harbingers, all the Majesty of God shall summon them to an interview. One meeting more is therefore determined upon; in which the holy and eternal God himself shall be one of the parties, and an incorrigible and rebellious people, the other. Prepare to meet thy God.
From the words thus stated, I propose, with a view to our personal improvement, considering,
I. That there will be a certain, an awful, a swiftly-approaching, and an inevitable interview between God and sinners.
II. What kind of preparation it is incumbent upon sinners to make in the prospect of that interview.
III. After which, I shall, in an applicatory way, consider, to whom the warning is directed.
I. The interview;—1. at death; 2. in the day of judgment.
1. It is appointed unto all men once to die, agreeably to the original sentence delivered to our first parents, Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return. For, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. v. 12. The wages of sin is death. Rom. vi. 23. That we might be impressed with a due sense of the cause of that awful change which passeth upon man at his dissolution; the scriptures uniformly ascribe it to the first man’s disobedience, in which was involved the sin of his posterity, and death, as one portion of the entailed penalty. The scriptural account of the origin of death, as very precisely and satisfactorily traced in the 5th chapter of the epistle to the Romans, is, that Adam sinned; that in him, as a public person, ?f’ ?, all sinned; and that, because all sinned in him as their representative, therefore all die through him, or are obnoxious to death, the very moment they are born, and are by nature the children of wrath. Ephes. ii. 3.
After the scriptures of truth have instructed us in the origin of sin, they then proceed to a description of that calamity of universal influence—death, with which are connected innumerable woes. This is done, with a view to impress man with a solemn truth, which every trifle tends to obliterate from his mind, viz. that he must die; to humble him under a sense of that guilt, from whence his mortality originated, and to solemnize and prepare him for an event as inevitable, as uncertain, in the time of its arrival.
Hence death is represented as a king of mighty power, extensive dominion, and universal sway; before whose unconquerable arm, even conquering kings themselves fall; and to whom, as to a superior potentate, they must resign those very trophies that marked their own conquests, together with all the glittering regalia of sceptres, diadems, and thrones, which lie as spoils at death’s footstool.—As a king of terrors; whose train is composed of the terrific attendants of the pestilence, the famine, the sword, the earthquake; and all the numerous maladies which attack the body, or torture the mind; by which, as by a great army, death invades this microcosm man, and converts the globe into an aceldama or field of blood, filled with promiscuous heaps of slain. As a monster, armed with a sting, 1 Cor. xv. 56, so pointed as to strike through the liver of the stoutest transgressor; so impoisoned, as to communicate a venom, which mocks all the powers of medicine; and so deadly, as, by its baneful influence, to blast health in its highest vigor, and youth in perfect prime; and to reduce the outward fabric of man to a state, humble as the dust, and vile as the crawling reptile.
This king of terrors, this deadly monster, all must meet. He is a messenger of the Almighty. He bears a warrant signed in the court of heaven. He has executed his commission already upon millions; and millions more shall fall before his invincible arm. Even now he is knocking at the door of thousands of our fellow-mortals, and God only knows, who next may be accosted by this awful visitant. In the midst of fancied security, and boasted health, this invisible foe may be this very moment whetting his scythe, and meditating a blow at the healthy and the strong; while the pampered miser, who says to his soul, Soul take thine ease, thou hast much goods laid up in store, eat, drink, and be merry, may be instantly the first to be surprised with the unexpected call, Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee.
If death call, we must hear. If he summon, we must obey. If he enter our doors, we must give him the meeting. Who can stay his hand? Who can reverse or even retard the execution of his summons? Is he to be bribed by wealth? Is he to be repelled by force? Can titles or honors demand his partiality? Will he compliment the dignified, or the opulent? Can entreaties move him? Or,
“Can flatt’ry sooth the dull, cold ear of death?”
No. He is as impartial, as he is relentless and inexorable. He pays no respect to age, sex, rank, or fortune. He visits equally the palace and the cottage. The king and peasant are alike indiscriminate objects of his summons. Crowns and sceptres are no more in his estimation, weigh no more in death’s balance, than rags or pebbles. The prince and the subject, the wise and the foolish, the healthy and invalid, the beautiful and deformed, shall lie down alike in the grave, and the worms shall cover them. Job, xxi. 26. The small and the great are there; Job, iii. 19; in that land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is as darkness. Job, x. 22.
Sin makes man meet death; and death brings him to a meeting with God. Those, who would not meet him, in his ordinances, by prayer or through faith, in a Mediator, shall be forced to an interview with the holy and eternal Jehovah at his tribunal, to give an account for all the deeds done in the body. To those, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, Rev. vii. 14, this meeting will be the commencement of perfect, perpetual, and uninterrupted bliss: but to the unrighteous it will be, beyond description, horrible. To these, death comes as an executioner; lays his axe to the root of the trees; and gives the fatal blow. If rotten and fruitless, down they fall, and so they lie as fuel fit for everlasting burnings. Isa. xxxiii. 14. Then the wicked launch into eternity; are consigned over to the bar of God; and receive their eternal doom. The instant life’s silken cord is broken, and the soul dislodged from the body, the sinner is either transported on the wings of cherubs to Abraham’s bosom, or lifts up his eyes with that rich man, in endless torments: if he meet God in his sins, unpardoned and unconverted; God meets him as a consuming fire, Heb. xii. 29, clad in all his vengeance and terrors.
O sirs, it is this consideration, that strips death of all that unimportance, with which, from the frequency of its arrival, it is viewed, in general, by a thoughtless world. To die, sounds common, and appears trivial; but not so, to die and be damned, or to die and be saved. When we consider, that either eternal damnation, or eternal salvation, is the instant and inseparable consequence of death; how wicked, how diabolically absurd, are the jests of the infidel and the wit, when affecting to smile at that solemn event! However, with all the affected gaiety of the proud and the profane, when they come to lie on a death-bed, their mirth will forsake them, and all the boasted heroism of infidelity sink in a dreadful succession of horror and dismay. And no wonder; since
“’Tis not the dying, but ’tis this they fear,
To be—they know not what, they know not where!”
The prospect of meeting the Lord God Almighty, constitutes the bitterest drug in the cup of the wicked, and is the most tormenting thought, in the view of their dissolution, that racks them on the verge of eternity. How would they court death, and solicit his arrival; were it not, that after death is the judgment! How gladly would they meet and embrace the messenger, could they but be excused from meeting that God; the light of whose countenance makes heaven, but in whose frown, is hell! From a reluctance to do this, arise dismal apprehensions, dreadful impatience, torturing doubts, and a tormenting anxiety to live. All which conflict of raging and tumultuous passions, in a soul, at the article of dissolution, and upon the point of meeting God, is most beautifully described in the following striking imagery of the poet:
“In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement!
Runs to each avenue; and shrieks for help!
But shrieks in vain! How wishfully she looks
On all she’s leaving, now no longer her’s!
A little longer, yet a little longer,
O might she stay, to wash away her crimes,
And fit her for her passage! Mournful sight!
Her very eyes weep blood; and every groan
She heaves, is big with horror! But the Foe,
Like a staunch murd’rer, steady to his purpose,
Pursues her close through ev’ry lane of life,
Nor misses once the track; but presses on;
Till forced at last to the tremendous verge,
At once she sinks,”—sinks into the bottomless and gloomy gulf of everlasting darkness and death!
Awful plunge! Dreadful exit! What heart can conceive, or tongue describe, the state of an immortal soul, trembling on the brink of fate; arrested by death; the prisoner of guilt and fear; reluctant to depart, yet viewing dissolution inevitable; looking forward to eternity with painful dread, and backward, upon the world, with sorrow and regret; unwilling to go, yet unable to stay; soliciting a reprieve for a year, another month only, or even a week, but denied one moment’s delay; putting off in imagination or in wish, what is present to sense; quitting the world, and bidding an everlasting farewell to all its enjoyments, with nothing in prospect to compensate for the loss; at length, forced to launch, though sure of shipwreck; and nothing in view, but a black abyss, a forfeited heaven, and an angry God! This is the end that awaits the wicked. This is the fate of those who die without Christ! Oh that the consideration might awaken the fears of the careless, and prompt the people of God, to give diligence to make their calling and election sure! 2 Pet. i. 10. And yet this is not all. For,
2. We must meet God at the judgment-day; when he will judge the world in righteousness by that man, whom he hath appointed. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth that he may judge the people. Psal. l. 3, 4. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thes. i. 7, 8. I beheld, says Daniel, till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued, and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. Dan. vii. 9, 10.
These are some of those sublime descriptions, which the inspired writers give us of that period, in which every circumstance that is grand, terrible, and august, shall conspire to render it the great and terrible day of the Lord, Joel, ii. 31, the great day of his wrath, Rev. vi. 17, the general assize. If we contemplate the dignity of the Judge, the splendor and multitude of his retinue, the majesty of his throne, the process and issue of the judgment, together with all the circumstances that shall precede, attend, and follow, his glorious appearing;—if we take into consideration either the goodness or the severity, the wrath or the mercy, the destruction or the redemption, the felicity or the woes, which shall be respectively dispensed in this important period, have we not reason to cry out, who shall be able to stand before this Holy Lord God?
Consider, what a Judge we have to meet!—one of infinite dignity; for he is the King of glory, Psal. xxiv. 7; the great God our Saviour, Tit. ii. 13; the mighty God the everlasting Father, Isa. ix. 6; King of kings and Lord of lords, Rev. xix. 16; the Lord of hosts himself, Isa. viii. 13, 14; compared with 1 Pet. ii. 8. The true God. 1 John, v. 20.—A Judge as much transcending in dignity all earthly judges, as the heavens surpass in glory the earth, or the sun in the firmament, the twinkling stars, which all disappear, when he riseth.—A Judge, at whose footstool the kings of the earth shall prostrate themselves in either cheerful or compelled adoration; and, before whose tribunal, judges themselves shall stand, and be judged. A Judge, whose eye is so keen, as with one glance to survey the universe; to pervade the thickest darkness; to penetrate the depths of hell; and to search the heart; whose arm is irresistible; and whose power neither men nor devils can control. He shall be seated on a great white throne; white in unspotted, unbribed, uncorrupted administration of justice, from whence nothing can issue but purity, equity, wisdom, and truth; and great, as being reared on the ruins of all earthly thrones, and as forming the magnificent seat of him, who is the Most High God, possessor and arbiter of heaven and earth. Gen. xiv. 19. Thy throne, O God! is for ever and ever. Heb. i. 8.
What attendants shall grace his advent! Countless myriads, a multitude, which no man can number, of saints and angels bearing the harps of God, and decorated with crowns of gold; all ambitious to be of his train; all vying with sacred emulation, who shall tune their harps to the sweetest notes, and exert their voices in loudest harmony, to the praise of Emmanuel; and all joining, without a single discordant string, in one grand and unanimous hallelujah, To him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen. Rev. i. 5, 6. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Rev. v. xii.
What signs shall announce his arrival! On earth distress of nations, with perplexity; men’s hearts failing them for fear—wars and rumours of wars—earthquakes in divers countries—pestilence and famine—all nature thrown into universal convulsions, dreadful pangs that presage her approaching dissolution—the earth shaken to its centre, and sea horribly agitated—the heavens wrapped together like a parchment scroll, and passing away with a great noise—the elements melting with fervent heat; while the heavens and the earth are in one general flame—the sun turned into darkness, being utterly eclipsed by the overpowering lustre of the Sun of Righteousness; and the moon into blood—the stars falling, as when the untimely fruit of a fig-tree are thrown down by the wind—the tremendous blast of the trump of God, so loud as to pierce the caverns of the earth and the depths of the sea, to sound an alarm in the abyss of hell, and carry an awakening summons through the regions of the dead—the grave and hades resigning their respective charge—gaping tombs, and parting seas giving up their dead—bodies that slept for thousands of years in a bed of dust, roused at the Archangel’s voice, to sleep no more; and re-united to immortal souls, their ancient mates, all thronging to the tribunal of God.
See the Judge himself enthroned! a mixture of majesty and mercy, of vengeance and love, seated on his brow;—the clouds his chariot, and the heavens his canopy; while rocks and mountains flee before his face!
“His lightnings flash, his thunders roll,
How welcome to the faithful soul!”
Millions attend his bar. Men, angels, devils, all receive the summons, to await his decisive sentence. Adam and his numerous posterity, Lucifer and his apostate train, and all the angels who kept not their first estate, compose the awful levee. The righteous fly swifter than the wind or the rapid lightning, to meet their Lord in the air; devils and the wicked, like criminals in chains dragged from their cells, are compelled, though reluctant, to appear at his tribunal. Small and great stand before God; the books are opened; Rev. xx. 12; the judgment begins; the grand transaction that is to decide the fate of the world goes on, till at last sentence is passed, Come ye blessed, or Depart ye cursed; and then, upon the one hand, are heard doleful cries, tumultuous lamentations, bitter weepings, that bespeak guilt and despair; but upon the other, the triumphant songs of elect angels and redeemed sinners, rending the heavens with applausive shouts and acclamations in honor of the Judge; and with a voice, louder than the noise of many waters, and more harmonious, than that which celebrated the creation of all things, shouting Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the LAMB!
And must we meet this glorious, this tremendous Judge of heaven and earth? We must. Every eye shall see him; every knee shall bow to him; every ear shall be witness to his decisive sentence; and every tongue confess, either with cheerful and voluntary acknowledgment, or with forced and irresistible conviction, that he is God. The people of his grace shall see him, and kindle into rapture at the sight; shall meet him, and find their heaven of heavens in the interview. They shall meet him, to grace his triumphs, and adorn his mediatorial crown, as jewels, of an immense purchase, of infinite value, of unfading lustre. The day of Messiah’s second appearing will be his grand coronation day; whereon, in the presence of admiring and applauding millions, the crown of salvation, that crown of crowns, shall be unanimously, publicly, and solemnly placed on the head of King Jesus; and every voice shall shout, Worthy is the Lamb. Oh! that each of us may bear some humble part in that immortal song! some humble office in that great solemnity!
But who, among the wicked, may abide the day of his coming; and who shall stand, when he appeareth? Mal. iii. 2. For behold the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the PROUD, yea, and all that DO WICKEDLY, shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. Mal. iv. 1. O what a meeting will take place between the Judge, and those, who once refused to acknowledge him as their Saviour and their King! He will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps, and devour them as a lion; Hos. xiii. 8; and they shall meet him, as the briers and thorns, the flame that consumeth them. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living GOD. In the character of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, his advent will be tremendous: but it is the wrath of the Lamb, of the once-wounded, rejected, persecuted, blasphemed, and injured Lamb, that will be most insufferably dreadful; and it is from that, they will earnestly solicit mountains and rocks to hide them, as a shelter from his indignation. Rev. vi. 16. But, rocks and mountains will be no veil from his all-seeing eye; no covert from his Almighty arm; no obstruction to the shafts of his vengeance. He will find them out though they make their bed in hell; will pursue and overtake them, though they take the wings of the morning, and flee to the uttermost parts of the earth or sea; and bring them down, though they make their nest in the stars. And who can conceive how fearful that meeting must be, when the parties are, rebellious mortals and a holy God;—potsherds of the earth, and the Creator of all worlds! worms, and Omnipotence!
Since, then, there will be a certain and swiftly approaching interview between God and sinners, at the solemn hour of death; and a more awful and decisive one, at the general assize: O how deeply incumbent it is upon all, to prepare for both! But, are you ready? Should death call, or God-Messiah descend to judgment; would you be found in circumstances of security and preparation? Ask your hearts. Are there no guilty misgivings there? Ask your lives. Are they such as correspond with the temper of persons, looking out for, and hastening unto, the coming of the day of God? Ask conscience. Sprinkled from the evil of guilt by the blood of Christ, does it witness to your salvation? or loaded with sin, and fraught with pollution, does it proclaim you the subject of misery, and the heir of hell, and bear a loud testimony to your condemnation? Ask the word of God. Will your hearts and lives bear to be tried by that touchstone of truth? If you profess Christianity; are you Bible Christians? If you think you are sound in the truth; will you bear to be probed? If you shrink from this examination; is there not cause to fear, that there is some latent sore you wish to conceal? some morbid part, you are unwilling to be touched even with a gentle hand, though it is festering deep, and spreading wide, and threatens death everlasting? You may think you are prepared, when you are not. The thought, in such a case, arises from a spiritual mortification, that deadens the conscience, and deprives it of feeling. And a supposition of safety, where there is no scriptural ground to warrant it, is only the reverie of a sick man, or the chimera of one that dreameth. That you may not be deceived, or flattered, in a point of such vast moment; let us now consider,
2. What kind of preparation it is incumbent upon sinners to make, in the prospect of an interview with God at death, and in the day of judgment.
I. A gracious preparation; or, a preparation through the inherent efficacy, and transforming influence of divine grace. The nature of man is so depraved, and all the faculties of the soul are so alienated from the life of God, that a divine and supernatural power is absolutely requisite to the restoration of that image, which sin effaced; to the recovery of that happiness, which man, as a transgressor, has forfeited; to the implantation of those fruits of righteousness, which were eradicated by the fall; and to the possession of that divine and gracious “thing, which BY NATURE man CANNOT HAVE.” [353] For, “the condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the GRACE of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.” Thus speaks Article X. “Of free will.” And the XIIIth is equally strong and express. “Works done before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith.”
It may be urged, that “these are the words of fallible men.” A poor evasive plea this. For though the words be the composition of fallible men, yet the sentiments are the truths of the infallible God: for the scriptures declare that the preparation of the heart in man is of the Lord; Prov. xvi. 1. See also I Chron. xxix. 18; that we must be born again, John, iii. 7; that being dead in trespasses and sins, we must be quickened by God, Ephes. ii. 1; that no man can come unto Christ, except the Father DRAW him, John, vi. 44; that, if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his, Rom. viii. 9; that it is God who worketh in us, to will and to do of his good pleasure, Phil. xxii. 13; and that, without (or ????? severed from) Christ we can do nothing, but sin, and err. John, xv. 5. The nature of man, since the fall, is depraved: nothing but grace can rectify and renew it. It is disordered: grace alone provides a remedy. It is polluted: its innate defilement is cleansed by grace. It is unholy: the grace of God, which bringeth present salvation, teacheth us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. Titus, iii. 12. It is debased by sin: nothing can ennoble or exalt it, but all-sufficient grace. It is weak and impotent: grace alone can strengthen and fortify it against temptation. It is rebellious: grace controls and captivates its most stubborn opposition, and makes its powers passive, and flexible. Human nature is barren: and nothing but all-conquering grace can subdue its sterility. It is grace that breaks up the fallow ground; softens the soil; sows the seed; cherishes it, when sown; makes it spring; brings it to maturity; blesses it with sunshines and showers; defends it from nipping frosts and scorching heat; and crowns the once-barren and stubborn soil with a rich harvest of fruit. It is grace that makes that wonderful change, so beautifully described in Isa. xxxv. 1–9. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them: and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose: it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing.—For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land, springs of water: in the habitation of dragons (fierce, untamed, impoisoning lusts, that make a carnal mind to resemble the haunt of venomous beasts) where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of Holiness.
Such is that gracious work which renews the soul, and makes it meet for a meeting with God; which makes all old things pass away and every thing become new; 2 Cor. v. 7; and without which, man is indisposed to the ways of righteousness, and unfit to perform any thing acceptable to God. O that you may be enabled to determine whether or not this work has been wrought in you! Trust not to poor, naked morality; that meagre, superficial thing, which unsanctified immoral Pharisees make their all. Morality only skins over the wound; but grace effects a radical cure. Morality strikes at outward branches; but grace alone can lay the axe to the root of corruption. Morality may give a specious white-washing to a sepulchre, or a gilded varnish to a statue; but grace alone can cleanse from inward foulness, turn rottenness and death into life and purity, and convert dead men’s bones into living members of Christ. Morality confines its attention only to the cleansing of the streams: but grace, like Elisha’s wonder-working cruse of salt, goes up to the springs of water, and pours its primary, its salutary, influence there. 2 Kings, ii. 20, 21. Morality gives the appearance only of that, of which grace makes the reality. Morality assumes the name of religion; but grace forms its nature. Morality may make an useful member of society, but grace alone can make a faithful member of Christ. Human power can accomplish a doctrinal speculatist, or constitute a pharisaical formalist; but God that made the world, must make a Christian.
2. The preparation requisite, is such, as demands the solemn and unreserved dedication of the heart and life to the service and honor of God; or such a devotion of all we have and are, to his glory, as bespeaks the purity of the principles by which we are to be governed; the power and sincerity of the motives, by which we are to be actuated; and the great importance of the end we are to have in view.
God has an indisputable right to all we possess; because all we have is the effect of his power, and the result of his unmerited bounty. The heart is more especially his claim; because he first made it himself, and, when fallen, redeemed it with the blood of his Son. My Son give me thy heart, Prov. xxiii. 26, is therefore his most reasonable and gracious demand. To give it to any thing else, save to its original Proprietor and Redeemer, is black ingratitude, is palpable idolatry: and to pretend devotion, when the heart is withheld, is hypocrisy and dissimulation. Give God any thing, and keep back the heart, and you virtually give him nothing, or present him with an abomination. He is a Spirit, and they who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. John, iv. 24. The most tedious round of duties, the most punctual and ceremonious attendance upon forms, are but so many elaborate modes of affronting Jehovah, if the heart be not right with God; and so many delusive methods to conceal a latent malady, which is open to the eye of omniscience, as the foulest insincerity, and the rankest pride. They who honor the Lord with lip-service, or draw nigh to him in mere formality, are they who trust in lying words and espouse a delusion; especially when crying out, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these. Jer. vii. 4.
But how few consider this with becoming seriousness and attention! Hurried on in the circle of dissipation, and driven impetuously forward by the torrent of popular example, multitudes possess neither leisure nor inclination, to examine the grounds of their profession, or to compare their hearts and lives with the word of God. As if religion had nothing to do with the heart, they only profess with their lips, what, alas! is strongly reprobated by the current of their affections and the tenor of their lives. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life, are their favorite idols: and to sacrifice to these, not to the Lord of Hosts, is the wish, the desire, the ultimate resolution of their hearts. To such, an inspired Apostle says, Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not, that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. James, iv. 4. They attend public worship; but while they are visible in their pews to the eye of man, their real selves, their hearts, appear to omniscience to be pursuing their vanities, and wandering immeasurably far from God, when they should be approaching him in the most solemn and intimate communion: so that in the very act of pretending to worship him, they mock him most. Their “week’s preparation” is hurried over with the rapidity of a school-boy repeating his task; only with not so much attention, nor with equal fear; and, while they feel religion to be perfect bondage, and go through it as a drudgery, they nevertheless depend upon their lame performances for acceptance, and so make their very sin and abomination their Saviour.
And is this the preparation the scriptures require? Is this giving the heart to God? Are such persons consistent worshippers of that God, who is a Spirit? Can these be said to be preparing to meet the Lord? Are they at all ready to go forth at the coming of the bridegroom? No. A spiritual infirmity, deeper than that lameness, which prevented Mephibosheth from going out to meet King David, incapacitates, and indisposes them totally for the advent of the King of kings. Their preparation, like the ceremony of a funeral, is nothing but the pageantry of the dead; and the decorations of a breathless corpse carried in pompous procession to be food for worms in the grave, exhibit too striking a representation of that unanimated and lifeless formality, which, with all its gaudy trappings, is but the corpse of religion, and leads to the chambers of everlasting death.
3. An habitual watchfulness of spirit, that implies diligence, solicitude, fidelity, prayer, holiness, is absolutely required of those, who would wish to meet God with joy. This watchfulness, in scripture, is contrasted to sloth, inaction, unfaithfulness, inordinate care, worldly-mindedness, and carnal security. It is compared to that circumspection and fidelity which should mark the conduct of a servant, entrusted with the care of a household, and obliged by the nature of his office, as well as the injunctions of his master, to manage every thing in his absence with wisdom, and to prepare for his return; and to that wakeful diligence, by which a house is guarded against the depredations of nightly robbers. Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return from the wedding. Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. And this know, that if the good man of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Luke, xii. 35–39. The contrary temper of unwatchfulness is described in the character of an unfaithful, quarrelsome, disobedient, and drunken servant, who takes occasion to riot and revel, from the delay of his master’s returning home. But, and if that servant say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken, the Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. Luke, xii. 45, 46. And in all those instances, the principal argument to urge the necessity of watching, is founded on the uncertainty of the time of our Lord’s arrival. Be ye therefore ready, for the Son of man cometh at an hour, when ye think not. Luke, xii. 40. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. 2 Pet. iii. 10.
The watchfulness, therefore, recommended by our Lord, and implied in the text, comprehends an habitual spirit of prayer; hence the exhortation, Watch and pray—habitual sobriety; Watch and be sober; Thes. v. 6;—holiness in conversation; Set a watch before my mouth; Psal. cxli. 3;—a patient, yet ardent expectation of the Lord’s arrival; and a cautious avoidance of every care, of every pleasure, and of every entanglement, which might ensnare the heart, captivate the senses, and immerse the affections in sloth and self-indulgence. All which is enjoined in that concise but most solemn and comprehensive exhortation of the Son of God, What I say unto you, I say unto all. Watch! Mark, xiii. 37.
