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Marriage is called a yoke, too heavy for one alone to bear; therefore, each had a mutual help, a wife. In the participation of good, compassion of evil, in health the best delight, in sickness the best comfort; the sole companion to whom we may communicate our joys and into whose bosom we unload our sorrows. Thus are our griefs lessened, our joys enlarged, our hearts solaced.
We are more sure to arise out of our graves than out of our beds.
The dying words of Mr. Ash, the Puritan, are well-deserving of notice. He said, "When I consider my best duties, I sink, I die, I despair. But when I think of Christ, I have enough. He is all and in all.
Few are ever saved on their death-beds. One thief on the cross was saved that none should despair; but only one, that none should presume.
In election we behold God the Father in choosing; in vocation, God the Son teaching; in justification, God the Holy Ghost sealing; in salvation, the whole deity crowning. God chooses of His love, Christ calls by His word, the Spirit seals by His grace. Now the fruit of all this, of God's love choosing, of Christ's word calling, of the Spirit's grace sanctifying is our eternal glory and blessedness in heaven.
He that demands mercy and shows none ruins the bridge over which himself is to pass.
But we are freed by Christ from the law? I answer, there is a double obligation of the law: the obligation of penalty and the obligation of duty. We are freed from the obligation of penalty but not from the obligation of duty. "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity" (2 Tim. 2:19). He has taken from the law all power to condemn us but not all power to rule us. We must still serve God according to His law or He will not save us according to His gospel. Our faith in the Lord Jesus and our obedience to the law must be joined together, as Moses and Christ met upon the mountain. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).
The good man is weary of doing nothing, for nothing is so laborious as idleness.
Hope is a virgin of a fair and clear countenance; her proper seat is upon earth, her proper object is in heaven; of a quick and piercing eye that can see the glory of God, the mercy of Christ, the society of saints and angels, the joys of paradise through all the clouds and orbs, as Stephen saw heaven opened and Jesus standing in the holy place. Her eye is so fixed on the blessedness above that nothing in the world can remove it. Faith is her attorney general, prayer her solicitor, patience her physician, charity her almoner, thankfulness her treasurer, confidence her vice admiral, the promise of God her anchor, peace her chair of state, and eternal glory her crown.
Divine knowledge makes us understand the gospel, but it is divine grace which makes us live according to the gospel. Therefore, what you want in great learning supply with good living. I love preaching, and I love practicing; and I had rather hear one sermon in a day and do three good works than hear three sermons in a day and do never a good work else.
God is an essence spiritual, simple, infinite, most holy. (1) An essence subsisting in Himself and by Himself, not receiving it from any other; all other things subsist in Him and by Him: "in him we live, move, and have our being." (2) Spiritual: He hath not a body nor any parts of a body, but is a spirit invisible, indivisible. (3) Simple: we are all compounded; God is without composition of matter, form, or parts. (4) Infinite: and that in respect [1] of time, without beginning or ending; [2] of place, excluded nowhere, included nowhere; within all places, without all places. (5) Most holy; His wisdom, goodness, mercy, love are infinite.
Faith is generally an acknowledgment and assent to the truth (James 2:19). It is either common to all: such is an historical faith which is in the devils themselves, and temporary faith that will always keep the warm side of the hedge, never windward. Christ is little beholden to that faith, and that faith shall be little beholden to Christ.Meditations upon the Creed
While the wine is in thy hand, thou art a man; when it is in thy head, thou art become a beast. The drunkard cries to his fellow, "Do me reason," but the drink answers, "I will leave thee no reason; scarce so much as a beast, for they will drink no more than they need." Diogenes being urged to drink immoderately cast the drink on the ground. Being reproved for that loss, he answered, "If I had drunk it, I had lost both the drink and myself."
Death is a believer's ferryman to ferry him over to the land of rest; it opens the portal into heaven…. The day of a Christian's death is the birthday of his heavenly life; it is his ascension day to glory; it is his marriage day with Jesus Christ. After his funeral begins his marriage. Well then might Solomon say, "Better is the day of a man's death than the day of his birth."
Thou art young; thou canst not therefore say thou shalt not die as yet. Alas! Measure the coffins in the churchyard and thou wilt find some of thy length. Young and old are within the reach of death's scythe. Old men, indeed, go to death; their age calls for it. But young men cannot hinder death's coming unto them.
For the day of death to the body is, as one saith, the birthday of eternity to the soul.
There is also a lawful contempt of death. We freely grant it, that in two cases a believer may contemn it. First, when it is propounded to them in a temptation on purpose to scare them from Christ and duty, then they should slight it as in Revelation 12:11. They loved not their lives to the death. Secondly, when the natural evil of death is set in competition with the enjoyment of God in glory, then a believer should despise it, as Christ is said to do (Heb. 12:2), though His was a shameful death. But upon all other accounts and considerations, it is the height of stupidity and security to despise it.
A grave with Christ is a comfortable place.
Oh then let not believers stand in fear of the grave. He that hath one foot in heaven need not fear to put the other into the grave.
If there certainly be such an eternal state into which souls pass immediately after death, how great a change then doth death make upon every man and woman! Oh, what a serious thing is it to die! It is your passage out of the swift river of time into the boundless and bottomless ocean of eternity. You that now converse with sensible objects, with men and women like yourselves, enter then into the world of spirits. You that now see the continual revolutions of days and nights, passing away one after another, will then be fixed in a perpetual now. Oh, what a serious thing is death!
Death mine enemy shall then set me free from the devil's temptation, the world's enticements, the outrage of men, the arrows of the Almighty, and the lustings of mine own flesh—all which have all my days stung my soul and battered my body. My soul! Take courage unto this last encounter.
We are manifestly mistaken concerning death. For the last gasp is not death. To live is to die. For how much we lived, so much we die; every step of life is a step of death. He that hath lived half his days is dead the half of himself. Death gets first our infancy, then our youth, and so forward. All that thou hast lived is dead.
Death is our birthday; we say falsely when we call death the last day. For it is indeed the beginning of an everlasting day, and is there any grievance in that? Death is the funeral of our vices and the resurrection of our graces. Death was the daughter of sin, and in death shall that be fulfilled: "The daughter shall destroy the mother." We shall never more be infected with sin nor troubled with ill natures.
The serious thoughts of death may do that for you which neither friends, counsel, example, prayers, sermons, tears have done to this very day. Well, remember this: to labor not to die is labor in vain, and to put this day far from you and to live without fear of death is to die living. Death seizes on old men and lays wait for the youngest. Death is oftentimes as near to the young man's back as it is to the old man's face.
What is this life but a smoke, a vapor, a shadow, a warfare, a bubble of water, a word, grass, a flower? Thou shalt die is most certain, but of the time no man can tell when. The longer in this life thou dost remain, the more thou sinnest, which will turn to thy more pain. By cogitation of death our minds be often in manner oppressed with darkness because we do but remember the night of the body, forgetting the light of the mind and of the resurrection. Thereto remember the good things that after this life shall ensue without wavering in certainty of faith, and so shall the passage of death be more desired.
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2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
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7. John Flavel (92)
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11. John Owen (74)
12. A.W. Pink (68)
13. Thomas Manton (66)
14. Louis Berkhof (63)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
16. B.B. Warfield (59)
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18. R.C. Sproul (55)
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20. Samuel Rutherford (53)
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