/ L\^ -V v,«*V >'.^y»<^ y THE LORD OF THE DEAD: A SERMON PREACHED IN CHRIST CHURCH, ALBANY STREET, BY Rev. J. W. FESTING, M.A., Vicar, ON SUNDAY MORNING, 2nd November, 1884. Printed hy Request. A. MACKAV & Co., 185, Albany Street. N.W. 1884. Price Fourpenee. THE LORD OF THE DEAD: SERMON PREACHED IN CHRIST CHURCH, ALBANY STREET, Rev. J. W. FESTING, M.A., Vicar, ON SUNDAY MORNING, 2nd November, 1884. Printed by Request. A. MACKAY & Co., 185, Albany Street.' N.W. 1884. Price Fourpence. Romans xiv. 9.—" For to this end Christ both died , and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living." St. Paul is dealing in this latter part of his Epistle with questions which touch mainly the comnion daily life, the social life of Christians. They are not matters of highest importance in the eyes of all men. But St. Paul, with that earnestness which marks him, and which quite startles us at times in the way in which it shows itself, goes down to very deep principles, and brings into consideration very great and very solemn truths in dealing with these matters. He is talking about certain observances, about keeping certain days, about eating herbs or eating meat. He evidently did not think the matters in themselves so important as some people did, but he sees an importance in them which they did not. He sees that there is something very important not in these things, but underlying them. . " Meat," as he says to the Corinthians, " commendeth us not to God."* Meat of itself does not make us spiritually the better or spiritually the worse, but the way in which we take the meat is important. It is important because it shows whether or not we really accept the great principle of the Christian life, that we belong to Christ, that we are His at all times, His when we are doing simple commonplace trivial things as well as when doing something difficult, or great, or heroic. So he brings the thoughts of those whom he his addressing to the great truths, that we Christians are the Lord's, and to the great mystery by which we are made the Lord's. And in doing so he speaks very decidedly and strongly. " He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks ; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and " he equally " giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself For whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."! * I Cor. viii. 8. f Rom. xiv. 6, 7. S. A 2 This is a very strong asseveration of the truth that we are the Lord's, that we belong to Him. that we belong to Him entirely, that, therefore, nothing in our life ever can be struck out of our service of Him, that of nothing whatever in our life can a man say this finds no place whatever in the relations which exist between me the servant, the possession of Christ, and Christ my Lord and Master. But is it only of life that St. Paul is speaking ? I mean is it only of life as we know it, i.e., of existence in the body in this world. He speaks about death here, and what does he mean ? Does he mean only that moment when life ends, or does he mean the mystery of the state of death ? When he says " Whether we live or die we are the Lord's," what is the exact force of the assertion? Does he mean whatever may happen to us, whatever may lie before us in life, we are now in life the Lord's ? Is this all ? It would be sufficient for his argument ; but it seems to me that the words which follow, and which I have taken for my text, suggest that it is not all. St. Paul appeals in argument to a truth which is wider than the exact basis whicli he needed for his argument. It gives it to him, for the greater includes the less, but it is the greater that is put before us. We are the Lord's in life, i.e., in life now, because we are always the Lord's, and nothing, not even death, can end the relation between us. "Whether we live or die we are the Lord's ; for," he says, " to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living." Lord of the dead ! Lord of the dead as Lord of the living ! Death cannot terminate His lordship over man in the same way that the death of a man does terminate that lordship which another man may have over him in this world. Lord of man always. Lord of man in death, in the many years of waiting for the Judgment Day beyond the scenes of this life, as well as in the few years of life here ; this is what St. Paul declares of Christ's lordship over man. St. Paul, no doubt, is thinking of the Christian's service in this life, and he is arguing that we are the Lord's whatever happen to us, because even death itself cannot end that lordship of His over us. But the principle has a wider application than that which St. Paul makes of it here in this Epistle. The truth is true when applied to the consideration of other matters than questions of meat and drink and observance of days. The truth which is true when we think of man's estate here in this life, is true when we think of man's estate after death. The dead are Christ's ; He is their Lord. As we say this we think of those wonderful words of His to the Sadducees, " God is the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, but God is not a God of the dead, but of the hving, for all live unto him," where He teaches us that those who are dead to us, and whom, therefore, we call dead, are living to God. They are before Him something very different from what their dead bodies, which is all that we can see of them, are to us. The difference is the difference between life and death. If then Christ be the Lord of the dead, inasmuch as He is God, He is their Lord in this sense. Dead to us, they live to him. Between Him and them there are relations existing as they existed before. They are the old relations. Death has not abolished the old and set up new ones. He is to them now v.'hat He was to them when they were on earth. He is the Christ. Death is no severance of those relations, so St. Paul teaches us, therefore the relations remain ; as he sa,ys in the 8th Chapter of this Epistle to the Romans, " I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor tilings to co?ne, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature [or as it perhaps should be, any other creation], shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."* The love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Think of the significance of these words ; St. Paul does not speak of the love of God simply, but of the love of God as shown in a certain person holding a certain office. All that Christ Jesus our Lord is to man through the love of God is included here. There is then here the idea of Jesus Christ as the Sacrifice, the Mediator, the Life. The love of God to man in Christ Jesus our Lord is shown in Christ Jesus being for man the Prophet, the Priest, the King. The love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, is the manifestation of that love of God in the relations that exist between Christ and man. Of that manifestation we are taught much, and know something in this life; it does not end with this life. That manifestation, says St. Paul, remains unbroken by death, unbroken by things to come, unbroken by all that may be, and shall be. What Christ is to us in life, He remains to us in what we call death. It is this which I wish to put before you to-day. To-day was called in old times All Souls' Day. The name stands * Rom. viii. 38, 39. A3 no longer in our Calendar, but the thoughts which the Festival of yesterday — the Festival of All Saints' — must always arouse are, or at least some of them are, just those which would belong to an All Souls' Day. The Festival of All Saints is one which is particularly dear to religious minds. It tells us of the great Communion of Saints. It tells us of the great multitude which no man can number, but few of whose names are known, who are resting in the rest of God. It tells us not only of the great and well-known, but of the insignificant and the unknown among men. And it does not speak only to the mind or imagination — it does not appeal only to man's hope for him- self, it speaks to his heart. Each one thinks of those whom he may call his own dead ; each one thinks of those he has known and has loved. They belong to him still ; they come back to him and speak to him in the visions of his memory, as he visits old familiar scenes, or reads old books, or recalls old conversations ; they come back to him at times all unbidden ; they people his dreams. They are not altogether cast out of his life now — they cannot be ; their remembrance is part of his life, he cannot shake his life free of them if he would. But what of them ? What are they now ? Are they dead indeed to all that they cared for, to all that they ever lived to ? We are awed by our ignorance, by our ignorance of that which must be beyond this life of ours, which to them is now so real. We cannot assure ourselves of anything, for we cannot speak with any sort of certainty of a condition of existence which is beyond our com- prehension. We cannot comprehend the spirit's existence apart from the body. The separation of man from man in death is utterly different from any separation of which we know in life. Imagination can pierce the veil which distance in time or space may spread between us and another, but imagination cannot pierce the veil of death. But the Bible speaks to us, as we look on with such baffled hopeless yearnings, and tells us much. It tells us that He our Lord and Master, of whom here we know something, is Lord of the dead as He is Lord of the living. There are relations between Him and them, and such relations as there are between Him and us. He is still to them Jesus Christ. He is the Jesus who knows man's estate in death as He knew it in life. He is the Christ the anointed of God to be man's Deliverer, man's Pro- tector, man's Life. He is the Shepherd who always carries His lambs in His bosom ; who always feeds His flock in green pastures, and leads them by the waters of comfort. He is the Lamb who was sacrificed for man, who died to free man from sin, to make recon- ciliation with God for man ; who rose and revived that He might destroy death and give eternal life to man. Their life in the body is over, they can sin no more in the body, but death still has dominion over them for a time. The Saviour has not dismissed them from His care, for His work for them is not over. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and that enemy is not yet destroyed. Till then the mediatorial kingdom of Christ continues, continues therefore for the dead as well as for the living. It is this, I say, which I wish to put before you this morning. It is thus that we should think of the dead. In many ways they are cut off from us, and we from them, and we cannot realize what they now are. But we can realize this, that what Christ was to them and they were to Christ in this life, that He is to them and they to Him now. We are not to think of the dead as having practically passed out of the Church of Christ ; nor are we to think of them as being now in that state in which they shall be after the Judgment Day, when the mediatorial work of Christ shall be ended, and His kingdom established for ever in all the fulness of Divine Glory. That time has not come yet. • But now Christ is the Lord of the dead. They are still members of His Church, receiving the blessings of His Cross and Passion, His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. Hoiv they are blessed, in what exact form and way His blessings come to them, we cannot say ; it were idle to try to imagine, for we cannot, as I have said, imagine the conditions of their present state. But the fact is plainly asserted in Scripture. St. Paul asserted it, and believed it, and took it to himself as a ground of hope, of joyful hope. He had no wish to stay here in this life for himself, it would be better for him to depart, for to depart was to be with Christ ;* and being with Christ in that other world was something which excelled the being with Christ in this world. To be with Christ is surely to be with Him as He is, the Redeemer of man. To be with Him is surely to receive some blessings from Him, and to grow in knowledge and in love of Him. And, I repeat, as we think of the dead as those who are with Christ we are to think of them as being with Him not as He will be in the end, but as He is now— the Mediator. The benefits of His * Phil. i. 23. 8 Cross and Passion are theirs, and these benefits are not exhausted in all that is made known to us in this life. He is the Lord of the dead as He is the Lord of the living, in that He is the Sacrifice, the Mediator, the Intercessor, the Life. And dead to us though they be, they live to Him who is all this to His Church. And why am I saying all this ? Because I think that there is often something wrong in the way that people think of the dead. We know that certain ideas regarding the condition of the dead and the relations between them and the living were among the gravest of those errors which caused the Reformation. And one sad result of extravagant error is that it prejudices men against the truth from which the error has been a wandering. Men in protesting against an error sometimes sacrifice a truth. It has been so here. The errors of the Roman doctrine of Purgatory have made men, in a sort of fear, shut their eyes to some Scriptural truths. The truth of the intermediate state and the condition of the dead has been lost sight of by many. They talk of the dead as if on leaving this life they entered heaven or hell ; but the teaching of the Bible is clear that the entry into heaven, the dismissal to the place of torment, is after the Judgment Day and not now. And then people have been afraid to think of the dead, at least in a religious way. They dismiss them from their thoughts in their worship of God. They count them not merely as absent, but as though they were not — as if they had ceased to be members of the Church, and ceased to have their part in its adoration. This has been a great loss, a great and needless sorrow to many sad hearts. It is true (I want to be cautious, as I think we ought to be in speaking of such subjects), it is true that we must take care how to give rein to our imagination. Where Scripture is silent, where reason is baffled through ignorance, we shall do well to be silent too, and abstain from speculation. But do not let us shut our eyes to the light that we have. Jesus Christ is the Lord both of the dead and of the living. The dead are indeed no longer of " Christ's Church militant here on earth," but death has not cast them out of Christ's Church, or it would have done that which St. Paul declares it cannot do, it would have separated them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The dead are fellow members with us in the Church of Christ and live to Him as such and therefore receive from Him blessings which are His, as Christ, to give ; blessings, that is, which flow from his Birth and Death and Resurrection and Ascension. When then we celebrate His glorious deeds for man, we may and we should think of our dead as sharing with us in our thanks, our hopes, our joy. They with us rejoice in the thoughts of Christmas and Easter ; they with us adore the Lamb that was slain ; they with us cry " Thy kingdom come," and look on to the Judgment Day as the time when they shall be freed from the last great enemy, death. We can bear them in our mind when we praise God for the love He has shown to man in Christ Jesus ; we can bear them in mind when, as we plead the great sacrifice with God, we pray as we do in the Communion Service that " we and a// Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His passion." Of some of these benefits we have experience in this life, but it were presumption in us to say that there are none beyond these we know, that the Lord of the dead has not benefits for them, that He has not something to give them, that He blesses not his Church at rest as well as His Church militant here on earth. As we think of the state of the departed we must be conscious that we are thinking, not only of the state into which have passed so many whom once we knew here on earth, but of the state into which we ourselves must enter. Whatever may happen to us, this must : into that mysterious state of being we must one day pass. It is not absolutely certain that we shall each and all live to enter into our chambers to-night to lay ourselves down in sleep, but it is absolutely, certain that at some time or other each one will enter the abode of the dead. He v/ho is our Lord now will still be our Lord then. That is our stay and our strength, or rather that should be. It may not be. For He is the Lord of the dead, the Lord of all ; but all will not find a comfort and a happiness in that lordship. We read in the Gospels of those unhappy beings who found the presence of Christ a torment to them. He will be to the dead what he is to the living, and so what the living have found in Him here that will they find in Him there. What then do we find in Him here ? Is He our Lord ? and do we serve Him ? Is he our Lord indeed as the sacrifice for sin, the Mediator, the Life whom we know we need ? Have we learnt and do we practice the lesson which St. Paul teaches us, the lesson that we belong to Him, and that our life in every part must show this ? He has in mercy to us lifted the veil for a moment in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and shown us this of that time of waiting for lO the Judgment Day which lies beyond the hour of death, that there there is happiness and misery — happiness for one, misery for another ; that that waiting which to one is the sweet rest in Abraham's bosom, to another is torment. He has shown us that that rest and torment follow upon and spring out of the lives on earth. Let us be wise betimes. We are now living our lives on earth. They are lives of service of Christ, or lives of neglect of Him ; and as they are one or the other so shall we one day pass with joy or with dread into the presence of the Lord of the dead. Harrison &= Sons, Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, St. Martins Lane. / ^# ;,^...'i|w;