Latest / Classic Speeches / The Realities of Life and Death - Thomas Arnold

Transcript

The Realities of Life and Death - Thomas Arnold · Classic Speeches

• 0:01
  Section twenty five of the World's Best Durations Volume one. This is a LibriVox
• 0:08
  recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
• 0:14
  to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Carry Burns. Thomas
• 0:23
  Arnold seventeen ninety five to eighteen forty two. Doctor Thomas Arnold, the celebrated
• 0:32
  Headmaster of Rugby, was born June thirteenth, seventeen ninety five at West cost
• 0:40
  in the Isle of Wight, where his father, William Arnold, was a
• 0:44
  collector of customs. After several years at Winchester School, he went to Oxford,
• 0:51
  where in eighteen fifteen he was elected a fellow of Oriel College. His
• 0:57
  intellectual bent showed at Oxford on the one hand in fondness for Aristotle and Thucydides,
• 1:04
  and on the other in what one of his friends has described as an
• 1:08
  earnest penetrating an honest examination of Christianity. As a result of this honesty,
• 1:15
  in earnestness, he became and remains a great force wherever English is spoken.
• 1:23
  Elected Headmaster of Rugby in December eighteen twenty seven, and remaining in charge of
• 1:30
  that school for nearly fourteen years. He almost revolutionized and did much to civilize
• 1:37
  the English system of public education. When he left Rugby in December eighteen forty
• 1:45
  one, it was to go to Oxford as professor of modern history, but
• 1:49
  his death June twelfth, eighteen forty two left him remembered by the English speaking
• 1:57
  world as Arnold of Rugby. He left five volumes of sermons, an edition
• 2:04
  of Thucydides, a History of Rome in three volumes, and other works.
• 2:09
  But his greatest celebrity has been given him by the enthusiastic love which his manly
• 2:15
  Christian character inspired in his pupils and acquaintances, furnishing as it did the master
• 2:23
  motive of Tom Brown at Rugby, a book which is likely to hold the
• 2:29
  place it has taken next to Robinson Crusoe among English classics for the young.
• 2:36
  The sermon here, republished from the text given in Simon Sermons of Great Preachers,
• 2:44
  is an illustration of the eloquence which appeals to the mind of others,
• 2:47
  not through musical and beautiful language so much as through deep thought and compact expression
• 2:58
  the realities of life and death. God is not the God of the dead,
• 3:06
  but of the living. Matt twenty two thirty two. We hear these
• 3:12
  words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees, and as their
• 3:16
  question was put in evident profaneness, and the answer to it is one which
• 3:23
  to our minds is quite obvious and natural. So we are apt to think
• 3:29
  that in this particular story there is less than usual that particularly concerns us.
• 3:35
  But it so happens that our Lord, in answering the Sadducees, has brought
• 3:40
  in one of the most universal and most solemn of all truths, which is
• 3:46
  indeed implied in many parts of the Old Testament, but which the Gospel has
• 3:53
  revealed to us in all its fullness, the truth contained in the words of
• 3:59
  the text, that God is not the God of the dead, but of
• 4:03
  the living. I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these
• 4:10
  words, which we often hear, even perhaps without quite understanding them, and
• 4:16
  many times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them first
• 4:23
  in their first part, where they say that God is not the God of
• 4:27
  the dead. The word dead, we know, is constantly used in scripture
• 4:32
  in a double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually as well as
• 4:39
  those who are dead naturally, and in either sense the words are alike applicable.
• 4:46
  God is not the God of the dead. God's not being the God
• 4:51
  of the dead signifies two things. That they who are without Him are dead,
• 4:58
  as well as that they who are dead are also without Him. So
• 5:03
  far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals, they appear to be examples of
• 5:11
  this truth. They appear to us to have no knowledge of God, and
• 5:15
  we are not told that they have any other life than the short one of
• 5:20
  which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our ignorance of their
• 5:27
  condition is so great that we may not dare to say anything of them positively.
• 5:33
  There may be a hundred things true respecting them, which we neither know
• 5:38
  nor imagine. I would only say that, according to that most imperfect light
• 5:45
  in which we see them, the two points of which I have been speaking
• 5:50
  appear to meet. In them. We believe that they have no consciousness of
• 5:56
  God, and we believe they will die, And so far therefore they afford
• 6:01
  an example of the agreement. If I may so speak, between these two
• 6:06
  points, and were intended, perhaps to be to our view a continual image
• 6:14
  of it. But we had far better speak of ourselves. And here too
• 6:19
  it is the case that God is not the god of the dead. If
• 6:25
  we are without him, we are dead, and if we are dead,
• 6:29
  we are without him. In other words, the two ideas of death and
• 6:33
  absence from God are in fact synonymous. Thus, in the account given of
• 6:41
  the fall of man, the sentence of death and of being cast out of
• 6:45
  Eden go together. And if anyone compares the description of the second Eden in
• 6:50
  the Revelation and recollects, how especially it is there said that God dwells in
• 6:58
  the midst of it, and is its light by day and night, he
• 7:01
  will see that the banishment from the first Eden means a banishment from the presence
• 7:08
  of God. And thus in the day that Adam sinned, he died,
• 7:14
  for he was cast out of Eden immediately, however long he may have moved
• 7:18
  about afterwards upon the earth where God was not. And how very strong to
• 7:25
  the same point are the words of Hesekia's prayer. The grave cannot praise thee,
• 7:32
  death cannot celebrate thee. They that go down into the pit cannot hope
• 7:40
  for thy truth. Words which express completely the feeling that God is not the
• 7:46
  God of the dead. This too, appears to be the sense generally of
• 7:51
  the expression used in various parts of the Old Testament, thou shalt surely die.
• 7:58
  It is no doubt left purposely obscure, nor are we ever told in
• 8:03
  so many words all that is meant by death. But surely it always implies
• 8:11
  a separation from God and the Being, whatever the notion may extend to the
• 8:18
  being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin and
• 8:24
  had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him the Lord also hath put
• 8:30
  away thy sin, Thou shalt not die, which means, most expressively,
• 8:35
  thou shalt not die to God. In one sense, David died as all
• 8:41
  men die, Nor was he by any means freed from the punishment of a
• 8:46
  sin. He was not, in that sense forgiven, but he was allowed
• 8:52
  still to regard God as his God. And therefore his punishments were but fatherles
• 9:00
  chastisements from God's hand designed for his prophet that he might be partaker of God's
• 9:07
  holiness. And thus, although Saul was sentenced to lose his kingdom, and
• 9:13
  although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gailboa, yet I do not
• 9:18
  think that we find the sentence passed upon him, thou shalt surely die.
• 9:24
  And therefore we have no right to say that God had ceased to be his
• 9:30
  god, although he visited him with severe chastisements and would not allow him to
• 9:37
  hand down his sons. The crown of Israel observe also the language of the
• 9:43
  eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions occur so often he shall surely live,
• 9:52
  and he shall surely die. We have no right to refer these to
• 9:58
  a mere extension on the one hand, or a cutting short on the other,
• 10:03
  of the term of earthly existence. The promise of living long in the
• 10:09
  land, or, as in Hezekiah's case, of adding to his day's fifteen
• 10:13
  years, is very different from the full and unreserved blessing Thou shalt surely live.
• 10:22
  And we know undoubtedly that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel
• 10:28
  spoke died alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of
• 10:35
  the promise and of the threat was, in the one case, thou shalt
• 10:41
  belong to God. In the other, thou shalt cease to belong to him.
• 10:46
  Although the veil was not yet drawn up which concealed the full import of
• 10:52
  those terms belonging to God and ceasing to belong to Him. Nay, can
• 11:00
  we venture to affirm that it is fully drawn aside? Even now I have
• 11:05
  dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to place the common
• 11:11
  state of the minds of too many amongst us in a light which is exceedingly
• 11:18
  awful. For if it be true, as I think the scripture implies,
• 11:24
  that to be dead and to be without God are precisely the same thing,
• 11:30
  then can it be denied that the symptoms of death are strongly marked upon many
• 11:35
  of us. Are there not many who never think of God or care about
• 11:41
  a service? Are there not many who live, to all appearances as unconscious
• 11:46
  of His existence as we fancy the inferior animals to be? And is it
• 11:54
  not quite clear that to such persons God cannot be said to be there God.
• 12:01
  He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of the
• 12:05
  universe, the God of Christ Church, but he is not their God,
• 12:09
  for they feel to have nothing at all to do with him. And therefore,
• 12:15
  as he is not their God, they are and must be, according
• 12:20
  to the scripture reckoned among the dead. But God is the God of the
• 12:26
  living. That is, as before, all who are alive live unto Him.
• 12:33
  All who live unto Him are alive. God said, I am the
• 12:39
  God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
• 12:45
  And therefore says our Lord, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are not and
• 12:50
  cannot be dead. They cannot be dead because God owns them. He is
• 12:58
  not ashamed to be called their God. Therefore they are not cast out from
• 13:03
  Him. Therefore, by necessity they live. Wonderful indeed, is the truth
• 13:09
  here implied in exact agreement, as we have seen with the general language of
• 13:15
  scripture. That as she who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was in
• 13:20
  a moment relieved from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out
• 13:26
  from him. So they who are not cast out from God but have anything
• 13:33
  whatever to do with Him, feel the virtue of His gracious presence penetrating their
• 13:39
  whole nature. Because He lives, they must live. Also. Behold,
• 13:46
  then life and death set before us, not remote, if a few years
• 13:52
  be indeed to be called remote, but even now present before us, even
• 13:58
  now suffered or enjoyed, even now we are alive unto God or dead unto
• 14:05
  God. And as we are either the one or the other, so we
• 14:11
  are in the highest possible sense of the terms alive or dead in the highest
• 14:18
  possible sense of the terms. But who can tell what that highest possible sense
• 14:24
  of the terms is. So much has indeed been revealed to us that we
• 14:31
  know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means a
• 14:37
  conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed do we deceive ourselves if we
• 14:45
  fancy that by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the
• 14:50
  infinite heights or descended to the infinite depths contained in those little words life and
• 14:58
  death. They are far higher and far deeper than ever thought or fancy of
• 15:05
  man has reached to. But even on the first edge of either, at
• 15:11
  the visible beginnings of that infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which
• 15:18
  may give us a foretaste of what is beyond, even to us in this
• 15:24
  mortal state, even to you advanced but so short away on your very earthly
• 15:31
  journey, life and death have a meaning. To be dead unto God,
• 15:35
  or to be alive to Him are things perceptibly different. For let me ask
• 15:43
  of those who think least of God, who are most separate from Him and
• 15:48
  most without Him, whether there is not now actually perceptibly in their state,
• 15:56
  something of the coldness, the lone, the fearfulness of death. I do
• 16:03
  not ask them whether they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger.
• 16:08
  Of course they are not, For they who fear God are not dead to
• 16:14
  Him, nor he to them. The thought of Him gives them no disquiet
• 16:19
  at all. This is the very point we start from. But I would
• 16:25
  ask them whether they know what it is to feel God's blessing. For instance,
• 16:32
  we all of us have our troubles of some sort or other, our
• 16:37
  disappointments, if not our sorrows in these troubles. In these disappointments, I
• 16:45
  care not how small they may be. Have they known what it is to
• 16:51
  feel that God's hand is over them, that these little annoyances are but his
• 16:56
  fatherly correction, that He is all the time loving us and supporting us.
• 17:03
  In seasons of joy such as they taste very often? Have they known what
• 17:08
  it is to feel that they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father,
• 17:15
  that their good things come from his hand, and are but an infinitely slight
• 17:21
  foretaste of his love. Sickness, danger, I know that they come to
• 17:26
  many of us but rarely. But if we have known them, or at
• 17:32
  least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in its graver have
• 17:37
  we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's hands,
• 17:42
  that he is with us and will be with us to the end, that
• 17:48
  nothing can hurt those whom he loves. Surely, then if we have never
• 17:55
  tasted anything of this, if in trouble or enjoy, or in sickness,
• 18:00
  we are left holy to ourselves to bear as we can and enjoy as we
• 18:07
  can. If in trouble or enjoy, or in sickness, we are left
• 18:12
  holy to ourselves to bear as we can and enjoy as we can. If
• 18:19
  there is no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around
• 18:26
  us to give any answer to our own If we are thus left to ourselves
• 18:32
  in this fast world, there is in this a coldness and a loneliness.
• 18:38
  And whenever we come to be of necessity driven to be with our own hearts
• 18:44
  alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be felt but consider that the things
• 18:51
  which we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them.
• 18:56
  The coldness and loneliness of the world without God God must be felt more and
• 19:02
  more as life wears on. In every change of our own state, in
• 19:07
  every separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of
• 19:14
  our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,
• 19:21
  the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly. We shall
• 19:26
  gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that God is not the God
• 19:33
  of the dead, and so also the blessed knowledge that He is the God
• 19:41
  of the living grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely He is not
• 19:48
  far from every one of us. No occasion of life fails to remind those
• 19:53
  who live unto Him that He is their God, and that they are His
• 20:00
  children. On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy,
• 20:07
  still the warmth of His love is spread, as it were, all
• 20:12
  through the atmosphere of their lives. They forever feel this blessing, and if
• 20:18
  it fills them with joy unspeakable, even now when they so often feel how
• 20:26
  little they deserve it. If they delight still in being with God and in
• 20:30
  living with Him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the unerring
• 20:36
  witness of life. Eternal. God is the God of the living, and
• 20:41
  all who are with him must live heart. It is I well know to
• 20:48
  bring this home in any degree to the minds of those who are dead,
• 20:53
  for it is of the very nature of the dead that they can hear no
• 20:59
  words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst writing what I
• 21:04
  have just been uttering to you, the news reached me that one who two
• 21:11
  months ago was one of your number, who this very half year is shared
• 21:17
  in all the business and amusements of this place, is passed already into that
• 21:22
  state where the meanings of the terms life and death are becoming fully revealed.
• 21:29
  He knows what it is to live unto God, and what it is to
• 21:33
  die to Him. Those things which are to us unfathomable mysteries are to him
• 21:41
  all plain. And Yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as
• 21:45
  far from attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it is
• 21:52
  clear that these things life and death may hurry their lesson upon us sooner than
• 21:59
  we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to receive it, And that
• 22:03
  were indeed awful if being dead to God and yet feeling it because of the
• 22:11
  enjoyments of our worldly life. These enjoyments were of a sudden to be struck
• 22:15
  away from us. And we should find then that to be dead to God
• 22:21
  is death, indeed a death from which there is no waking, and in
• 22:26
  which there is no sleeping forever. End of Section twenty five