"And He Died"

"And He died." Gen V:27 [*????-*] [*Yorkwill-*] [*Chillcotton-*] [*Louisville-*] [*Willington *] [*Ded. 27'94*] Those antediluvians [lived to a manifestly great age] of whom we have any account - were marvellously long-lived. [Whereas] [we count on lives by tens of years, they counted theirs] [by hundreds.] | [Doc] They survived [many] dying centuries. | [It required] The [scenes] frosts of almost a thousands winters [effectually to] whitened [their] the heads of some of these fathers of the race, [as we see some amongst] [ourselves whitened by] The period that with us indicates [decrepitude of body] decrepitude, [age] was [to] with them, [the ??es] but the freshness of early youth. | [They reached mature manhood by imperceptible slow] [stages;] They [perceived] looked forward to the approach of old age though the [dim vista of] [dimness of] dim vista of that must have seemed an interminable future; [they succumbed the] and, when [it] old age came, the snow melted from [the] its temples at the almost impalpable touch of the evening sun of [the] its [days] might day. | Those ancient patriarchs appeared to realize what would be reckoned by us a species of immortality. | Their strong-knit 2 frames resembled the everlasting hills, whose ribs it requires some tremendous anvulsion of nature to break. | The beginning of a new year was, to them [seriously an] no such epoch as it is with us - so imperceptible was the step it measured on the sand of their protracted journey, and so small was the difference it made in [their] the experience of life's sluggish movement through their iron veins. The long-lived oak, planted by them in their boyhood, they beheld after its giant limbs had become gnarled, and crooked, and well-night leafless. [from long decay.] | Each feature on the face of nature changed, again and again, before the [heard] hard lines upon their visage gave compounding tokens of the lapse of time. Ailments, came, but they all seemed trivial, and the sinewy growth outbraved them - still going on with his daily business. | Great calamities now and then befell. but they made little impression; the stalwart man shook them off as if he were a lion throwing from his name the moisture of a summer's shower. 3 [went on with his daily business] [duties.] | [Great calamities now and then befel, but] [they were shaken] [the stalwart shook them off as the lion throws] [from his mane the drops of a shower in June.] [April].| [The] [?[ Children, grand children, great grandchildren were born around them; but [and] still their [posterity succeeded] blood was fresh, their [ruddy] ducks were [rounded] ruddy, [with health,] their eyes continued [more] undimmed; [and there] and, when their [still] unbroken wices [gathered] summoned [about them] from time to time, about the lint-doors, the vast multitudes of their descendants, [and] they, each, stood there [among] amid them all, erect, righteous, unshadow; less like some monument of the past than like some Master of the future! And yet, where how are those wonderful men? | [Where is Adam, whose hands] [-one of them] Where is Seth, who conversed with Adam and with men who had talked [???] with Noah? \ Where are Enos, & Jared, & Lamech, whose lives stretch almost across the vast interval that lay between the expulsion from Paradise and the desolations of the flood? 4 [Abel and the [???] of Noah?] There too, is that Metthusaleh who, in this respect toward above all, and caught on his brow the light as it [which] faed from Eden and the light which was reflected from the clouds that presaged the deluge? | [They are all gone! | ] The day came which at last stiffened [their] these huge limbs, dulled those [their] keen senses, [and changed] and laid low those lordly bodies, [*See p. 6*] [Once their beautiful] [abodes and their willing servants, into gloomy cages and] [heavy clogs, and caused them to move mistily through the] [bright world, with no eye or a vision for its familiar scenes] [and no ear for its accustomed music!] [sounds] | ["The keepers ] [of the house" finally begin to tremble. (Those arms, ] [once so brawny, are withered. | The giant can now ] [fling his spear with scarce an infants force, ] [and can has hardly strength enough left ] [ to carry to his own [???] lips a cup of water. ( Any ] [one can bind the once sturdy champion and every] 5 [him against his will whither he would not. | "The] [strong now bow themselves." | Now active energies] [links] [can do no more. | Those once buoyant timeless feet stumble] [over the merest pebble. | ][Those] [The daily meal ] [is itself a drudgery, for "the guides have ceased] [because they are few." | The very landscape has] [become a blot, the very world is a vast fog] [- for "those that looked out of the windows are darkened"-] [the orbs of eight are contained forever. | Even "Jesus] [has failed." | "Barzillai come and live with me] pat the palace" says grateful David. | But, answers] [he: "I am this Day 4-score years;" Can I discern] [between good and evil? Can thy servant taste] [what I eat or what I drink? Can I hear] [anymore the voice of singing men and singing] [women? Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back] [that I may die in my own city, and be buried] 6 [in the grave of my father and my mother." | Thus did] [all those early, these long-lived patriarchs, become each like this Barzillai.] | They, [ [?] having bless] where trembling age had made them "afraid of that which is high," and to whom the light "grasshopper was a burden," wished only to lotter into their sepulchres. | [And,] By and by, they were gratified. | For the word [of] [is] [of every one of them is: "And, he died." | "Whatever they had been, all this is now summed up in these three little words. | Centuries of life could not stand off the hum of death. | Constitutions of rock could not resist the ceaseless wear [of cease-] of slow-dropping time. | Shoulders on whose massive breadth hundreds of years could rest without making their burden felt, must at least give way beneath that inevitable moment which, bearing the accumulated weight of all the mass, was appointed to press them beneath the earth. | Their last breath was drawn, their last look was taken, their last word 7 was spoken, and [they slept in death] the useless dust returned to its kindred dust. || ["There must be][is an] The awful power [reality] of death is seen in such conspicuous instances of [its power] his might. There we behold the king of terrors [invading the cot] triumphing over [life] [of one which a man frail] a tender child, we do not wonder at the result, so unequal [seemed] was the contest. | When we behold him every day laying [low] at his feet [the manhood of generation] [after generation of [?] composed of frail mortals like muscles, we] the fable and the frail, we are not surprised, for we [feel] perceive that there is in [us] them almost nothing to resist - his [might] will. | But when he invades the life of such a [physical] muscular monarch as Methusaleh; and conquer [he Death conquers] although it takes almost a thousand years to do. So, we marvel at the [conquest] victory which Death has here [made] won over the finest and firmest energies of our nature; and we die forced to feel that he is an enemy which no [?] circumspection can 8 evade, and no heart is robust enough to withstand. [This pale flag accordingly waves] [everywhere; no stronghold wherein to protect hushen life has yet been built-] [of which he is not now the assess Master of is] [won to be. | What those ancient heros could] [not do, in the way of warding of this devouring] [monster of our race, we may be sure can be] [done by none who have succeeded them.] Man can indeed do much; in some directions there seems to be almost no limit to his power. He has chained the lightnings - has weighed teh stars - has conquered space - has compelled nature to yield to him, one after another, her [thousand] most hidden secrets. [His] Mind is mightier than matter, and every [?] element in [of] earth, air, water, has acknowledged the superiority by becoming [his] its willing servant 9 Even the most [treacherous] obstinate diseases have often succumed to [his] man's will, and old age itself has been postponed by his acts. | Energy [rules] guided by [wisdom] patience has overcome so many difficulties [that] which once seemed insuperable, that now it has come to be thought that men have only to attempt in order to succeed. But no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, no efforts however [wisely] devoted, no combination of powers, have serve to [snatch the dart from] dethrone Death, or to [Death or dethrone him deprive him] limit the sway of his omnipresent [last] sceptre. [I] He still reigns supreme, over all alike. He still visits with equal step the palace and the hovel, to claim his subjects [from] among the highest and the lowest. | His messengers are as numerous as the seconds; his dominion is as wide as the circle of the world; and his career of conquest is as rapid and as resistless as ever it was. Look back over the entire past. | There 10 is [only one] a uniform epitaph upon [all each of all the graves of] each grave throughout the vast cemetery which covers our earth [is composed[ with its mementos of bygone generations: "He died". } Yonder conqueror - yonder statesman - yoder king - yonder scholar - yonder philanthropist - yonger monster of [c??ne] - men [once called great,] whose names and deeds have filled volumes of history and made [the] a world tremble or admire - as well as each of yonder myriads of common folk whose goodness or whose depravity was the charm or the terror of society's [na??er] [?ricles] - they, and those who officially mourned for them or who secretly rejoiced at their departure, have [only this remaining] in turn succumbed to the inexorable [decree] foe - and for whomsoever of them all you may now [inquire] ask, "where is he?" you will obtain [from the] only the repeated [hollow] response: "He died." | So, two, of your own immediate friends - they whose places were nearest your hearts, but who [are gone south] have bined [to him] the vast 11 procession of their forefathers in the great funeral march of mankind - of each of these you say "He died", as if [thus only] men could satisfactorily [to] account for their [inevitable] absence by [an affect] this reference to the inevitable destiny of all. But, (sadder still!) with respect to nearly every one of those antediluvians of whom it is said, "he died" there is [not much] little else [recorded] written. | Although they lived so long, there [is] was almost nothing in their lives that was considered worthy of lasting commemoration. | We have their names - [a] some notice of their posterity - [and] the news of their deaths - and, besides [these] this brief mention - [well nigh] [nothing] in most [cases] of the instances [there] we have nothing more. | So far as any good [they] was concerned, their [lives of were] lives seem empty. | They left no shining example for future generations to admire and to follow. | They were robust animals, who deem to the imagination to run [moving] through the world without a thought or a purpose that rose above 12 the [earth] ground on which they trod, or that was more valuable than the sands amid which they pitched their tents. | [They seemd to have been] [the disciples and imitators of Cain, who, for some] [inscrutable reason, was suffered to wander for] [untold years among his posterity: that Cain of] [whom an old post has thus sung:] ["An awful form, that through the gloom appeared,] [Half brute, half human, whose terrific beard] [And hoary flakes of long dishevell'd hair] [Like eagle's plumage ruffled by the air,] [Veil'd a sad wreck of grandeur and & grace.] Those ancient men, at whose longevity we [are] stand amazed, were, in fact, monsters of crime, giants of wickedness, who, never blessing, always oppressed, the earth. | Have we proof of this? Proof the most conclusive and uttered in language the most powerpowering. "God 13 saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Such is the proof - but [not] such is [not] not the only language in which it has been expressed. | It was thunderd in the vice of the deluge. | It was healed in the roar of those flood [waters] which suffreated a drowning world. | It was rehearsed in the death cries of millions who sunk beneath that wild ocean, [of] filled with terrors still more wild. | It has come down to us - this express evidence of antediluvian sin - in that picture of a watery hell, whose [l] colors, (pencilled by wrath as they were mixed by vengeance,) still affright our imagination as nothing else can do. | In that picture behold the summing up, the concentrated memoir [history] of Adam's guilt, of [Metthusaleh's] Jared's [??ption], of 14 [Lamech's] [?] [Jared's] Methusaleh's degeneracy, of [Lamech's vain] Lamech's vain remorse, and of the [?] [genealogy of] evil lives of unmentioned myriads beside. | The earth [grew weary of them] grown beneath their, [heaven] weight, heaven grew weary of them, and earth and heaven at last united for their ever memorable destruction. Now, [it] is it not a terrible thing, when a man leaves behind him a character upon which the recollection of no succeeding one may delight to liner, but of whom it can only [be] briefly & hastily said: "And he died" as if [this] to die were the best thing the man could do, 2 [or had ever done[. So stupid, or so useless [wicked], or so positively inperious, was his life, that the only pleasure he ever [gave] gave was his death! | Yon perhaps have known such men. | [O be careful] [lest any of yourselves shall be catalogued with] [these in the final roll-call of earth's inhabitants.] 15 [But,] Behold, [?] hidden among those names to which we [has] have so often uttered, is a sentence more precious than gold: "Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." | There was one, then; of whom it is not said: "he died." [but] of whom something any different is needed. | The others walked with Satan, who, [when] after he had spoiled Eden, [remained] continued on earth as the inseparable companion of those whose hearts and lives he spoiled more effectually than he had spoiled the bloom [walks] and [flowers] fragrances of paradise. | But Enoch walked with God, who, likewise, so [?med] in a stricken world to draw some noble souls to himself by a saving power even greater, but [far more] not less mystrious in its operations, than that of the arch-destroyer. | This illustrious patriarch was enabled to tread the rough paths of life by the side of his Maker & Redeemer, under the then rare protection of divine upholding grace: and when 16 he had thus walked for 365 years. Enoch was taken, in the prime of [his] manhood, to his [ap-] appointed rest: taken thither without having passed through the dark gate which was so crowded by the descending mass of his contemporaries. | [Such] This [a] extraordinary man had so lived, indeed, that he could not die. | His departure must needs be a translation, not a death. His head, as it lay down for the last time admit the scenes of earth, was pillowed in a chariot instead of a grave. The world, which was not deserving of his virtues when living, was [c???ted] unworthy, even of his sepulchre when he himself was [no longer present] gone. | His funeral procession - if such his triumphal passage to glory can be styled - was composed of angels, and the song that was chanted for the occasion was by no means a dirge, but [the] some melting harmony ascending sweet and clear from chord to chord of heaven's own seraphic minstrelsy. Let us, however not think that Enoch's case 17 was singular. | In one material respect indeed it was. | Only [one other] Elijah experienced a similar exit from the toils and cares of earth. | But is it not always true of the good, that they do not die? | Their bodies may expire - the light may be quenched in their eyes - the [fortunes may] cunning may cease from these hands - the voice may freeze upon their tongues - and the gentle colors which made them beautiful may fade into the ashes of the grave - but still they live. | I do not now refer - though well I might - to the fact that God has taken them to a world where for the first time they begin to taste of the real sweetness and to know the real glory of living - where [those] their buried bodies shall again have been informed with breath; [where] their vision [has been] re-illumined with the light [of] that burns no darkness forever; their hands made 18 strong and skilful to [handle the] sweep the harps of everlasting praise; their [us] tongues rendered vocal for [sharing] sharing in the chorus whose notes strike higher and grander than even angelic voices [was] poured forth; and their cheeks pencilled with hues of loveliness transcending all earthly beauty. | Yes - there the good shall live - there where life is drawn from its very format in the [?] being of God - there where the centuries of [the] antediluvian longevity [shall be] are [conuted] measured as so many [hours] seconds on the ceaseless pendulum of eternity. | But, their memory still survives them on the earth, where their heaven began in the moment of their first love for holiness. | "Being dead they yet speak." "Their works so follow them in a never ending line. Their record may not, indeed, be written on what men call "the scroll of fame." | Their names may find no place on the page of that history whose lessons are mainly written in blood - nor get on the page 19 of that other history whose lessons are mainly written, with a peaceful pen, [in] to record the triumphs of [intellectual] learning, or the progress of art. | But, however obscene may have been the lives of those whose chief distinction is that they were "followers of God as dear children,"-- their humblest influence has left indelible traces upon [the world] mankind - traces indistinct, perhaps, for a time to the searching eye of [mankind] others or even to their own, yet always plain to the scrutiny of an all-seeing Lord, and one day to be rendered conspicuous before the universe in lines of broad and living light - traces of imperishable goodness which, when the most brilliant track of victorious evil shall have been blotted out in everlasting darkness, shall be found, unerased and inerasable on that scroll, (of a better fame than earth's,) which shall be unfolded amid the realities of the judgment day. 20 Yes, those are the true worthies, the Coldliest grants of our race - they who have humbly submitted their hearts to the love of God - They who have laid their hands within the clasp of almighty grace - they who have borne upon their willing shoulders the burden of a Saviour's cross -- they who have tasted of the world to come, and, out of the sweetness of their own mouths, have [published] [for] directed [to] others [the] to the honey-comb of the gospel - they whose benevolence, drawn for the spring of Christ's perfect humanity, has gone abroad untiring walks of well-doing - they whose earthly homes and earthly business have been informed by the heavenly-mind which has been [caught] obtained by [devised from] ascending the angel-pespled ladder of ceaseless prayer - they who, being filled with the Spirit of Jehovah, [has] [here] are exhibited to the world as so many Temples in which [dwells the] the Shekinah of faith shines almost more gloriously than the old Shekinah of a visible Deity. 21 -- they who whilst they can [sing with] repeat with a holy derision these words [of worldly wisdom] of folly: "Live while you live, the epicure would say, And seize the pleasures of the present day," are enabled to listen with applause to this the epicure's rebuke: "Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, And give to God each moment as it flies," and are customed to add the wise [passage] [?tition]: "Lord, in my view let both united be: I live in pleasure when I live to thee." These, I say, are the worthies over whom the angel of Death passes in his flight from man to man - these the Enochs of whom the pen of God however it may be with the [?] of [?] - shall never write, "they died" - [but] these those chosen songs of mortality who, when taken form among their [?] mourning generation, shall leave behind them a [memory] renown that can never perish, and be more 22 truly dear to their survivors than a mass of uncounted diamonds. [I have chosen this topic for your [new year's] ] [meditations this day, because it appeared to me timely. | Standing ] [as we do upon that dividing ridge which separates] [between the departure of the old year and the] [incoming of the new, it becomes us to look both] [backwards and forwards. | It is fitting to our] [present circumstances that, inasmuch as we are one] [whole year nearer our graves than we were twelve-] [months ago, [that] we should contemplate the reality of Death.] [ [of Death] [our life's brevity] and its awful certainty.] | [And] This then is what we learn when we look backward over the wrecks and trophies of departed time: that from the beginning the greatest wreck of all has been wrought by [resistless] that insatiate Monster whose pathway is tracked by [the once loving] the ever-rejected [bodies but now] the monotonous desolations of the grave 23 -- that the longest-livers have ceased to live - and that no power of man has ever been enabled to overcome when Death was the wrestler. | Do any of you believe that you will prove an exception to this universal rule of expiring humanity-? | Do you suppose that there is might and majesty - with you to [awe] awe back the Destroyer who insidiously creeps upon your steps, and who, at some divinely-appointed moment, shall put forth the hand whose touch [?] can stop the beatings of the strongest heart? | Ah- how strange it is - how inexplicably marvelous [it is] - that every one [regards] is accustom to regard all men [all others] as mortal except himself? How difficult it is to induce any one to believe that he shal even die: that it will be but a few days when weeping relatives [shall] must follow [him] to the narrow-house him who, [where he has] having helped to inter so many [is now be permitted to] indulges the vain thought that he shall [escape!] 24 escape the common doom! [Let us all dismiss this] [irrational hope! Also, I need not why do I refer you to the] [remote past?] [Where are they who used formerly] [to hear the gospel written these very walls? | Their] [seats are filled by others, and must not you, too] [seek your fathers among the "cold clods," where] [your children will presently weep as they read] [the inscriptions on your monuments - and often, as in] [the solemn dusk of [evening, they] some distant evening, then children shall stay among the] [graves, they will point to one and anther and exclaim:] ["there [lies] be our ancestors, long mouldened [dust] dust] [ -meaning you: +whilst innocent strangers will] [tread upon your ashes with the same light] [indifference with which you walk over the] [sunken sods of these who died a century] [ago. | Though we may now be in the full] [tide of health, in the midst of our own festive pleasures,] 25 [pleasures, our ambitious hopes, our busy calculations] [of [for] a worldly happiness to be found in even better days than] [these - still a dread hour, hung all with black,] [covered over with weeds, dripping with leaves, is] [before us all.] But let us not be unnecessarily appalled by this spectacle of a world billowed with graves. | Let us not be afraid to look cold death in the face. | He is not altogether a foe. He strikes hard, and he strikes sure, but he does not always strike in anger. I [have] have said that the past has its trophies as well as its ruins - its triumphs of [mortality] [grace] life - as well as its triumphs of Death. | I have referred you to a [life] vitality which no power, not even that of this dreadful Desolation can touch or [kill] harm. You know well what I mean. | You have seen a Christian die! | [You have seen how one and] 26 [another [drop] [ have has been dropped] have dropped from [these pews] [about this communion table] around you into their graves, whose] [names, if it were right [possible] for me to recall them,] [ [would at once] might speak as a magic spell to quiet] [your apprehensions of your own approaching end,] [by stirring in each of your hearts, the prayer: May [our] my [diecast be like his or has! - so certain are you] [that [they] death was to them only another birth!] You know that when earthly things faded from [them] his view [they] [their] his vision was kindled with heavenly things - that when [they] he broke the ties of kindred here, [it] still [better and] softer and stranger ties were knit about [their hearts] his affections there - and that when the skill of dissolution was stealing along [their] his bodily numbers, the warmth of a quick resuscitation was already beginning to [pour] be poured through [them] him from the presence of [Him] that one who is "the [life and the] Resurrection and the Life!" 27 [Ah - the only question left you to answer is:] [Will any of you expend [this ensuing] your remaining years as you have] [perhaps misspent [that] those which [has should] have gone - forgetting] [death and not preparing for [immortal] life? | [Are] Is ] [ [you not] not each of you unwilling so to live as that where you go] [ hence, all the eulogy that can be written of you will be: "And] [he died?" | Is there no spirit of Enoch in this assemblage] [of undying souls which shall to-day inspire] [every [heart] one of us with the purpose: "henceforth I] [will "walk with God": I will end my [sins] transgressions by repentance] [before I end my [life] days with sorrow: I will] [obtain from on high the power of an endless life: I will keep] [my heart warm with the celestial - the undying - fie of the] [Spirit of grace: I will take Him as my Pattern] [who has conquered Death by conquering [depravity] [ guilt]] [ [self] [the world] Sin: and if my body must be] [sown in incompletion I will provide for the hour] [ When it shall be raised in glory."] 28 [When it shall be "raised in glory. | O for the dawning] [of [that] the day which shall virtuous this noble] [resolve, as the resolve of all who now hear] [me, and when I [love so much] [reg??] with so much interest as to wish,] [not that you may die, but that, when you] [so die, you shall, with your last expiring] [breath, bless God for the privilege of death, as] [ [and go] you proceed to lie down beneath [the dust] that dust, [where] [so be so] ] [ once so forbidding but now so full of welcome, to which Christ has given the view to say: ] [ "Death is here swallowed up in victory." ] [ - a victory whose greatness will fully be fill ] [ in that day when the once [is] shall be heard in which] [ is to exclaim: X ] Ps. 90.5th pt 4 verse H 61 3 et 2nd been " 6 31 - last verse dox.