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 No. 6.] ■• 
 
 EXETER-HALL 
 
 SERMONS FOR THE WORKING CLASSES. 
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE? 
 
 % Sermon, 
 
 PREACHED JUNE 28th, 1857. 
 
 BT THE VERY REV. 
 
 THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PARTRIDGE AND CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 
 Price One Fenny. 
 
 hOKDOV. FBINTED BY WILLIAM TYLER. BOLT-COURT. PLEET-8TREET.
 
 LARGE-TYPE VERBATIM EDITION. 
 
 TO BE COMPLETED IN TWELVE PENNY NUMBERS. 
 
 EXETER-HALL 
 
 Sti'tiioiis fur tjjt Mffi'Iiing Classes. 
 
 I. 
 
 Hon. and Riglit Rev. Lord Bishop of CARLISLE : 
 
 " What saith the Scripture ?"— May 24. 
 
 II. 
 
 Rev. W. CADMAN, St. George's, Southwark : 
 
 " Can the Ethiopian change his skin? " — May 31. 
 
 JIT. 
 
 Rev. CAPEL MOLYNEUX, Lock Chapel, Paddiugton : 
 
 ''What think ye of Christ ? "—June 7. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Rev. Dr. MILLER, Canon of Worcester : 
 
 " How can these things be ? " — June 14. 
 V. 
 
 Rev. J. C. RYLE: 
 "What .shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" — June 21. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Very Rev. the Dean of CANTERBURY : 
 
 *• Why will ye die ? " —June 28. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Rev. R. BURGESS, Prebendary of St. Paul's : 
 
 " What must I do to be saved 1" — July 5. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Rev. Dr. McNEILE, Canon of Chester : 
 
 " Who then can be saved ? "—July 12. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Very Rev. the Dean of CARLISLE : 
 
 " Understandest thou what thou readest?" — July 19. 
 
 X. 
 
 Rev. HUGH STOWELL, Canon of Chester : 
 
 " How long halt ye between two opinions?" — July 26. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Rev. W. W. CHAMPNEYS, Canon of St. Paul's : 
 
 " How are the dead raised up 1 " — August 2. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Right Rev. Lord Bishop of RIPON. 
 How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " — August 9. 
 
 * . ♦ 
 
 ♦* A Specimen Number posted free to any address for two stamps. 
 LONDON : PARTRIDGE AND CO., 34, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE? 
 
 BY THE 
 
 VERY EEV. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 '* Why will ye die ? " — Ezekiel xviii. 31. 
 
 You have heard, my brethren, the circumstances under whicli 
 God makes this remonstrance to his people, the children of 
 Israel. He pleads with them through the whole of this 
 chapter, and sets forth to them his dealings with them — how 
 that his dealings are just and right, as between man and his 
 Maker — how that there is in them nothino; forced, nothino- 
 unequal, nothing that we can complain of, but that every- 
 thing is fair and straightforward ; grace is offered, and mercy 
 is offered, and whatsoever soul acquires that grace and mercy 
 shall be safe, and shall live ; and whatsoever soul rejects 
 that grace and mercy shall be in peril, and shall die ; and 
 that no man shall suffer for another man, and that none shall 
 have anything to complain of; when all stand before the bur 
 of the great Almighty Judge, all that they shall have then 
 to confess is, that their ways were unequal, but that God's 
 were equal. 
 
 Now, we — this multitude here assembled — stand in the 
 presence of the same God as then pleaded with Israel. He 
 is the same God, bears the same character, carries on his 
 dealings with the same fairness towards us, as he did towards 
 them. We stand, it is true, on a very different footing, 
 regards his bounty, from that on which tlicy stood ; and that 
 I will presently, by his help, lay forth and explain to you iu 
 
 r
 
 74 "VVHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 detail, when I come to press this question home to every 
 individual soul among you. 
 
 But now let us deal with the question itself, as it lays 
 itself out for our consideration, simply and plainly in the 
 text of which it consists ; for there never was a text in the 
 ■whole of Scripture that preached its own sermon better than 
 this text which I have read to you. 
 
 I. In the first place, then, what is this word with which my 
 text ends ; for upon that the whole stress of the matter evi- 
 dently depends : " Why will ye die ? " 
 
 Now, what does this mean ? I dare say that you, my 
 
 friends, to whomsoever I am speaking, whatever your station 
 
 in life is, have bent over a bed of death. There are very few 
 
 of us whom God hath not called in his providence to witness 
 
 some deathbed scene. You have bent you over the dyinc^, 
 
 or over the dead ; and you have watched that face which 
 
 used to speak to you with such meaning gathering blank- 
 
 ness and darkness ; you have seen those eyes which once 
 
 sparkled upon you with intelligence become glazed, and 
 
 dead, and fixed ; you have seen that form, which but five 
 
 minutes ago, perhaps agonized and tossing in pain, was 
 
 covered with the sweat of that agony, drop into lifelessness, 
 
 and lie before you like a piece of the material of this earth. 
 
 That is death. We all know what it is ; but whose death is 
 
 that ? Who is it that dies, when we thus witness that scene 
 
 — when the family are gathered around that bed, holding 
 
 their breath, and watching for the last moment ? What are 
 
 the first words they speak when it is all over — when the 
 
 blankness and nothingness have succeeded to anxiety ? " He 
 
 is sone ! " Those are the words : " He is erone ! " Then it 
 
 was not he that died ! It was something belonging to him 
 
 which underwent a change ; but it was not the man that 
 
 died. That aftected the body; but it did not affect the 
 
 person. We do not say that when a brute dies beneath our 
 
 eyes ; we do not attribute to a brute that sort of doubleness 
 
 — that he should be in one place, and the carcase in another ; 
 
 and, therefore, when this text says, " Why will ye die ? " it 
 
 does not allude to the death of the body — it* does not allude 
 
 to that of -which I have just been speaking ; but I have been 
 
 speaking of that that I might take it for an example — that I 
 
 might take it for a guide to that more mysterious and less 
 
 well-known thing to which the text does allude. ^^^^ 

 
 WHY WILL YE DIE 1 75 
 
 We have already spoken of this person, this personality, 
 this he, this /, this i/ou, which does not die upon the bed of 
 death, which is not crushed by the power of the accident, which 
 remains and exists on. Now what is this ? Bestow, I 
 beseech you, your thoughts upon me for a moment, and go 
 with me through that which I am about to say. I know 
 that I am speaking to many who are in the habit of thinking 
 — to many who are in the habit of thinking deeply, and 
 thinking upon difficult things, for I know that the class whichi 
 see before me — and bless God that I see before me ! — are men 
 in the habit of thinking, and men in the habit of j^ondering 
 over these things which I am now about to speak of. Now 
 this /, and this «/om, about whom we are questioning, is, 
 I have said, a something which we do not apply to the brute. 
 We never consider the brute creature, the poor dumb animal 
 as we express it, responsible ; we do not consider that he, or 
 it, rather, can give an account ; we do not consider, in any 
 proper sense of the word, that it can do right, or can do 
 wrong. It may do that which is inconvenient to us ; it may 
 put forth its strength in a way that we do not desire, and 
 that puts us in peril, and we use concerning it, in a certain 
 kind of improper sense, the words right and wrong, the words 
 obedient and disobedient ; but we use them with regard only 
 to our own purposes, and not to any responsibility belonging 
 to the brute animal. But the moment you get to a human 
 body, whether that human body is man, woman, or child, if 
 that human body is only in possession of reason and of sense, 
 you cannot divest yourself of that idea of responsibility. That 
 body is answerable, and that thing which that body does is 
 right or is wrong ; and I defy any man, I defy any philo- 
 sopher, however much he may reason and write about it, to 
 divest himself of this idea. He does right or he does wrong. 
 If he does right — I am not saying now whether he is right 
 or wrong in this which follows, but — there is a certain sort of 
 self- congratulation follows upon it, and he knows he has done 
 right. If he does wrong, supposing him to be an ordinary 
 man, and not absolutely blinded by the power of habitual 
 sin — if he does wrong in the common and broad acceptation 
 of the word, his conscience in some measure accuses him. 
 
 II. Now, this may lead us to know and to feel, as indeed all 
 mankind of sound mind have known and have felt, that this 
 personality of which we speak is a lasting and enduring
 
 76 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 thing, which shall give an account. You cannot deny it. 
 There may be persons in this hall at this moment who flatter 
 themselves that they do not believe this ; but they do 
 believe it. I would call to witness not what they choose to 
 say and what they choose to profess — not what they boast 
 with their boon companions — but I would call to witness 
 their solitary nights ; I would call to witness their hours of 
 sickness ; I would call to witness that terror which drives 
 them perhaps to the public-house, or to profane company to 
 get rid of such thoughts. They do believe their respon- 
 sibility ; and responsibility of any kind, whenever believed 
 in, is a pledge of immortality that you cannot get rid of. 
 The one follows upon the other as closely as motion follows 
 upon life. Whatever is responsible is immortal. There 
 must be one to whom that responsibility must be exercised ; 
 and we cannot — I defy you to do it — we cannot conceive of 
 God, that he should create a being accountable to him, with 
 this feeling of accountableness, with this consciousness of 
 responsibility, to extinguish that being and put an end to 
 that life. I say it is inconceivable. We cannot imagine a 
 good and a gracious God calling into existence a being with 
 hopes, and fears, and responsibilities, and terrors, and antici- 
 pations of this final account, and then putting an end to that 
 being. He calls him into being, so that he may live, that 
 he may go on and serve him, and enter, through a state of 
 probation and trial, into a state of perfection and of glory. 
 ■ And now we have come, I believe, very near the point. 
 You will say to me, perhaps, " How then can this being whom 
 you are speaking of to us, this personality, this immortal, 
 responsible soul — for such is the word which we commonly 
 use with regard to this personality — how can it die ? Well, 
 then, let us go back, if you please, to this bed of death, of 
 which we spoke just now. Let us carry onward that scene a 
 little further. Perhaps you may be disposed to say to me, 
 " You cannot carry it on much further without offending our 
 taste." You must excuse me. I did not come hither to con- 
 sult your taste, but I came hither to v.restie with you for an 
 hour on God's behalf ; and if in that wrestle I am obliged to 
 give you some rough falls, blame not, I beseech you, the taste 
 of the matter ; question not nor criticise anything so far 
 beneath our present mark ; but ask yourselves what is said, 
 and whether what is pleaded is calculated to reach your minds
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 77 
 
 and to influence your hearts. Well, then, let us follow on 
 that scene a little. Let us pass — it is a remarkable sentence 
 of the greatest of English preachers — *' from the freshness 
 and the fulness of the cheeks of childhood to the horror and 
 loathsomeness of a three days' burial." And what do we see 
 there ? The body is broken up ; it is become a seething mass 
 of foul and degraded and loathsome life — a life not its own — 
 a life which did not belong to its beautiful and harmonious 
 construction. Its parts are gone, or are going, each to their 
 way ; the solid to the dust of the earth, the liquid to the 
 mighty ocean. It is dispersed ; it is passed away. I know 
 that God shall build that body up again. This is a point, and 
 a glorious point it is, of our Christian belief; and I mention 
 it for fear you should imagine that by not mentioning it I was 
 forgetting. But it does not belong to my present subject : 
 I am only now concerned with the phenomena of that death 
 which is to guide me to the phenomena of the other death about 
 which I am pleading with you to-night. That body is dis- 
 persed ; its harmony is destroyed ; its beauty is marred ; it is 
 gone into corruption and decay. "It is soAvn a corruptible 
 body." It is sown in shame and in contempt Though it 
 was, perhaps, the dearest of things on earth to us a few days 
 ago, we have put it out of our way ; we have buried our dead 
 out of our sight. And that is the death of the body. 
 
 Now is there not something very analogous' to that — I mean 
 very like it, something which follows the same rules — in the 
 death of man's immortal spirit ? What do you suppose God 
 has intended your immortal spirit to be ? Take a pattern 
 from the body. Can anything be more beautiful, more har- 
 monious, more adapted to its end, than this frame of yours 
 and mine? If it were seen for the first time it would be the 
 greatest wonder that had ever been obtained in the universe. 
 We see it every day, and therefore we regard it not. Why, 
 there are books written full of instruction, full of curious and 
 remarkable facts, and the wonderful ways of God, on the 
 human hand, on the human eye, on the most apparently trivial 
 parts of this body of ours ; and every one of them surpasses 
 our intelligence and excites our wonder and our gratitude and 
 praise. And do you suppose that God intended the spirit 
 to be less harmonious than the body, less wonderful in its 
 operations, less beautiful in its structure, less grand in that 
 wliich it was to do and to accomplish ? We cannot imagine
 
 78 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 it for one moment. The spirit was intended by its Maker to 
 rise up from one degree to another of contemplation of him 
 and of service of him, and of likeness to him — all in beauti- 
 ful harmony — the affections drawing out the desires, the desires 
 guiding the resolutions, the resolutions influencing the practice, 
 the practice carrying onwards the situation and condition, all 
 in the most lovely harmony. Now that is the life of the spirit; 
 and we shall have to come back to that a little, and to build 
 it up out of death by-and-by. 
 
 But what is the death of the spirit ? Can you not easily 
 conceive it ? Is it not obvious to the very simplest of our 
 thoughts, that the spirit of man may and, alas ! does fall 
 into disharmony with all these its powers, just like the beau- 
 tiful organs of the body may fall out with one another ; that 
 the spirit may present, in its way and in its condition, some- 
 thing like the terrible and loathsome scene which we just now 
 witnessed with regard to the body after death ? But then, 
 notice all this remarkable difference. The body, as I have 
 said, falls asunder : God shall build it up again. For the 
 present it perishes ; but there can be no cessation, there can 
 be no syncope in the life of the spirit ; the spirit must live on, 
 in the midst of this death — must exist on, perhaps I should 
 rather say, and for this night keep the word "living," and 
 the word "life," to their glorious and more proper meaning. 
 The spirit exists on, then, divided against itself; miserable, 
 and in discord ; all its powers wasted, all its energies spent 
 in self-remorse. It passes in this condition out of a state of 
 trial into a state of finality ; and in this state of finality, what 
 can we conceive but that which is known in Scripture by the 
 name of eternal death; self-accusations for evermore; the 
 ages of eternity rolling on — if we may use such an imperfect 
 expression — one after another, thousands after thousands, 
 millenniums after millenniums ; and the spirit still remaining 
 in this state of death, broken up, miserable, ha\nng lost its 
 centre, namely, God ; having lost its object, namely, God ; 
 having lost all its foundation of joy and of blessing, and 
 existing in eternal death ? 
 
 III. Now comes another most important point to our pre- 
 sent consideration, and it is this — How came about this death ? 
 You see I have now dealt with these few w^ords, " Why will 
 ye die ? " I have tried to show you, however imperfectly, 
 what is the broad and literal meaning of the death of the
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 79 
 
 person himself; that is, the breaking up of the spirit for 
 want of God ; its existing in misery to all eternity for want 
 of him who is the source of all blessing and joy ; but now I 
 ask — and it is important, as leading to the next word as we 
 go backv/ard in our text — *' Why will ye die ?" — How came 
 this about ? What has it to do with man's will ? 
 
 Now, these at first sight are very difficult questions, and 
 they are questions with which it would have been utterly im- 
 possible for us to deal, had not the Holy Spirit been given to 
 lis to enable us to deal with tliem. The man of the world, 
 the unbeliever, cannot deal with these points. He meets 
 with death in the world ; he meets with the death of the 
 body, and he meets with the death of the spirit, in the sense 
 J have been explaining — misery, division against self, ruin ; 
 and he regards it all as the natural and the inevitable state of 
 things. He regards this as a world of disappointment, a 
 world of blind chance, and he tosses and drifts about it as he 
 best may ; and he has no solution whatever of this of which 
 we are about to speak. But we, thank God, have a solution ; 
 the Holy Spirit has given us a solution ; and it is not only 
 the solution sufficient for it, but it is the only one that has 
 ever been attempted to be given ; it is the only one existent 
 upon earth, besides being the only sufficient one, and the one 
 which will carry us through the matter ; and it is this — "God 
 created man upright." He created him to follow out the inten- 
 tion of his spirit, gifted with judgment and the body ; of both 
 of which we have been now speaking. But God did not bind 
 him to his liberty in this way, and to his joy, and to his 
 ultimate end, of reaching after and getting to glory here- 
 after. He left him free ; and this is one of the greatest 
 dignities with which our nature was gifted of God — that it 
 was not made like any tribe of the brute creation, always to 
 run in the same channel, to be incapable of advance or im- 
 provement ; but it was made free to stand and free to fall. 
 What lay before it was an object of adoration, reverence, and 
 obedience ; and with temptation before it, and God's grace 
 ready to help, man was then put into a state of trial, and man 
 fell. That fall was of course foreseen — and I state this to 
 meet an objection, because I am speaking now in the presence 
 of plenty that are ready to make objections, and I am very 
 glad I am so speaking, because these objections ought to be 
 met. It was no accident ; man did not fall without God fore-
 
 50 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 seeing it and permitting it. It was God's gracious intention 
 to bring out of that fall glory, not only to himself, but to all 
 his creatures in himself — salvation to all his creatures who 
 would seek after him, and would come up to and accept the 
 way of salvation, of which we are about in the sequel to 
 speak to you, I hope, more at large. 
 
 Well, that fall took place. But what have you and I to 
 do with that ? I thought we read here that the son should not 
 be responsible for the sin of the father. No more the son is. 
 But this is a very different case. It was not a case of 
 responsibility merely ; because there, as we have just said, 
 very properly, and as this chapter justly and beautifully lays 
 forth, we stand each one of us alone ; but it was just a 
 matter of common, natural evolution, a descent of the race 
 from the head of the race, of a tree from the seed at the first 
 opening, and from the bud and parent stock. That stock by 
 disobedience became defiled; we who follow inherit that 
 defilement ; we inherit it not to our ruin, if we are wise, 
 but we inherit it so that we are brought under a system in 
 which, " where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," 
 about which also I hope we shall say to you more by-and- 
 by. But we are now dealing with the question of how death 
 comes about. 
 
 Death came into the world by sin. "What would have become 
 of this body, which was made at first " of the earth, earthy," 
 as the Apostle tells us, — (" The first man was of the earth, 
 earthy,") — we cannot tell. It might have passed through some 
 glorious change, before it was admitted into the kingdom of God 
 in heaven ; but of that we can say nothing. All we do know 
 is this, that death, in all its horrors, is accompanied by pain, 
 and by decay, and decomposition, and all that loathsomeness 
 of which we have spoken, as entirely the consequence of sin 
 — the death of the body, and the death of the soul likewise. 
 Sin shifted the centre of man's soul. Before, he could have 
 gone on revolving round that centre in beautiful obedience ; 
 after sin, he has become, in the technical sense of the word, 
 eccentric. He now revolves no longer round God, his 
 proper centre, but he has sought an orbit of his own, and 
 this leads him into disarrangement and disagreement, and all 
 those things of which we have been speaking, as ending and 
 issuing in the death of the soul. 
 
 Well, then, you will say to me, if this is the case, what
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE? 81 
 
 has the will of God to do with it ? How can this be said to 
 us, and how can God plead with us in the text, " Why will 
 ye die ? " If death came into the world by sin, if the death 
 of the body is the result of sin — a result which neither you, 
 nor I, nor any one can avoid — how can it be said of the 
 death of the soul, " Why will ye die ? " Is not that a 
 necessary result of sin too ? 
 
 Now we are come to the point, you see, of these words 
 having been necessarily spoken, and the whole of this 
 chapter necessarily written to a people in covenant with God. 
 God has provided a way out of this death. It has pleased 
 him not to provide any way out of natural, corporeal, bodily 
 death. " If Christ be in you," says the Apostle, " the body 
 is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life, because of right- 
 eousness." There is just the distinction. God has bound 
 upon us all death according to the flesh ; but he has not 
 bound upon us all death according to the spirit, although it 
 is our own state by nature out of which we must be helped, 
 if we are to get out of it at all, and that help he has 
 graciously given us. Now, I have said he wrote this chapter 
 to a people in covenant with him. It is all, you see, " House 
 of Israel." " Why will ye die, O house of Israel ? " " Yet, 
 saith the house of Israel, the Lord's ways are unequal." 
 This " House of Israel " was a peculiar people, taken out 
 from among the nations. God gave them his promises ; he 
 gave them his ordinance of circumcision ; he gave them his 
 covenant, his law, and his ordinances ; and they walked 
 before him in the light of that his great salvation, manifested 
 to them in the prospect of a Redeemer to come. It is on 
 that ground that he makes all his pleadings with them in this 
 chapter. You do not suppose tliat a word here spoken 
 about " he that is righteous," and the righteousness that he 
 does, and his living in that righteousness, can possibly apply 
 to natural, unaided man, who has fallen from God. No, it 
 applies to men under grace, to men under the prospect of a 
 Saviour, to those who had made a covenant with God by 
 sacrifice, "ordered in all things and sure," and in the power 
 and strength of that covenant were able to do these things 
 pleasing to God, able to stand before him in his faith and 
 fear, and to say, as the greatest of them said, the sweet 
 Psalmist of Israel, " I will go forth in the strength of the 
 Lord God, and will make mention of thy righteousness only,"
 
 82 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 and able to have those glorious hopes which he expressed in 
 the words " When I awake after thy likeness I shall be 
 satisfied." And it is on those same grounds that we, standing 
 as we do upon the foundation on which Israel stood, but 
 with a far more glorious inheritance, and far more precious 
 promises, read this chapter to you to-night, and enter into 
 every word of it, in our Christian sense, as we make the 
 whole of this precious Old Testament our own in a Christian 
 sense. " Why will ye die ? " are the pleadings not merely 
 of God the Creator, but of God the Redeemer and of God 
 the Sanctifier. I could not speak those words to you to-night, 
 if you were not admitted by the grace of God, in the revelation 
 of himself in his Son, to the possibility of a hope of restora- 
 tion from death unto life. It would be mere mockery, if 
 Christ had never been sent into the world to save sinners ; if 
 the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world had 
 never been devised in the Almighty counsels — it would be 
 mere making mockery of God to come to the world and to say, 
 " Why will ye die ? " But when he says, *' Why will ye die, 
 O house of Israel ? " and when I say, "Why will ye die, O 
 people of England?" there is a meaning in these words, 
 because we take for granted, and we presuppose God's 
 precious covenant of life in Christ Jesus. We come to you 
 not as outcasts from God ; we come to you not as without 
 God in the world, however much some of you, alas ! may be 
 living without God in the world ; but we come to you on the 
 strength of tliat covenant which God has sealed and ratified 
 in the death of his Son upon the cross, which he now assures 
 to us by the pleading of his Son in heaven ; and on the 
 strength of that covenant we say, "Why will ye die?" 
 And how can we say that on the strength of that covenant ? 
 Because in that covenant, and by means of that covenant, the 
 dead will of man is empowered to raise itself up, and to 
 draw near to God ; because there is grace offered to the dead 
 in that covenant. " The hour is coming," said our blessed 
 Lord, speaking those words spiritually, " the hour is coming, 
 and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the 
 Son of God, and they which hear shall live." " Awake, 
 thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead," is the voice of 
 the covenant, " and Christ shall give thee light." 
 
 Now, I know that it will be said to me — and I am fully 
 prepared upon that ground to speak further — that Christ has
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 83 
 
 himself appointed an ordinance of admission into the outward 
 profession of the covenant ; and it will be asked of me, 
 perhaps, Am I justified in thus boldly casting assertion of 
 the cost over a multitude of whom I know not whether there 
 be not many among tliem — hundreds among them — who have 
 never been, admitted by that ordinance? I say I am justified. 
 Tliat ordinance binds closer to him, closer in responsibility, 
 all those who have been thus admitted into the outward pro- 
 fessing congregation of the people of the Lord ; but 
 the mercies of the Lord are over all the land where those 
 mercies are proclaimed ; and it does not depend upon the 
 fact whether a man whom I address is a baptized man, whe- 
 ther I may speak of him as being under the covenant of God 
 in Christ, because I know and I see that in the scriptures of 
 God themselves the Gospel was preached to j)ersons, and the 
 Holy Spirit descended on persons, and thereby received them 
 into the true and living church, before that ordinance was 
 administered, although it was administered afterwards. I say, 
 then, to every one here present, God has made a covenant with 
 you in him : and on the strength of that covenant it is that I 
 say to you, " Why will ye die ?" 
 
 But you may say to me, perhaps, " All this has been mere 
 assertion : you have yet to prove that we are thus disposed 
 for death : you have yet to show us that we will die in this 
 sense." " I do not want," any man here may say, " I do 
 not want this death of the spirit of which you have spoken. 
 The very last thing I desire is unhappiness. I do not want 
 to be divided against myself; I want to live a calm, and 
 peaceable, and honest life, to go down to my grave respected 
 and honoured ; and I do not know what you mean by saying 
 that I am bent upon this death of the spirit : your words are 
 cast away upon me, and are useless." Nay, my friend, let 
 me say a little more to you. We have told you that this death 
 of the spirit is the result of man forgetting God, and that your 
 natural state — as your natural dispositions are concerned, as 
 your common, ordinary, uninfluenced life is concerned — is to 
 go on in this forgetfulness of God, and to pass under the 
 shadow of this death of the spirit, till the shadow gathers into 
 darkness, and the darkness into blackness, and the spirit 
 passes into that place of death from which there is no recall. 
 The will to die, in those who have heard the gospel of Clirist, 
 and who have been brought under this covenant, and here
 
 84 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 have it proclaimed to them, is the disposition to remain in this 
 world without God. And what is it to remain without God ? 
 You may say, " I do not know that I break any of God's 
 outward commandments. You tell me to honour my father 
 and mother ; you tell me not to commit murder, not to com- 
 mit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, not to 
 covet. I am not aware that I break any of these command- 
 ments ; my life is a respectable one." Yes; but this is not 
 the matter. Is your life led as in the sight of God ? Are you 
 conscious, when you look inward upon your own moral state, 
 of a sun shining down upon that moral state, and that sun the 
 presence of God, — known, recognised in your habits ? And 
 what is the presence of God ? It is not the presence of a God 
 of your own imagination ; it is not the presence of some 
 Supreme Being whom your reason has built up for itself. It 
 is very proper that you should reason, in aid of that revelation 
 which God has given you ; but it is not some Supreme Being 
 whom your reason has built up for itself out of the phenomena 
 of nature about you, and of whom you will not believe any- 
 thing but what you have thus gathered for yourself. That is 
 not the God of whom I am speaking. God has revealed him- 
 self ; and he has revealed himself as manifested in the person 
 of his blessed Son : and if your life is led as in the sight of 
 God, it must be as in the sight of the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, who has wrought out for us salvation in 
 Christ, and who pleads with you — '' Why will ye die ?" — that 
 you may have life in Christ, which is the only life of the 
 spirit, because *' he that hath the Son of God hath life, and 
 he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 
 
 And now do not go and say, — After a bit he drifted away 
 into great and high doctrines that we did not understand, and 
 began to talk about theology, and began to speak as they 
 speak from pulpits where we cannot listen, and where our 
 minds and our interest drop within us. The matter of which 
 I speak is exceedingly simple ; every man here can under- 
 stand it. Christ died that we might live ; he lives that we might 
 live for ever. He has become the head of our nature ; he 
 has become to us the source of grace and of help, the help of 
 the Holy Spirit of God, to overcome our evil dispositions, to 
 help us to regulate our tempers, to glorify and adorn him in 
 our station in life, to be better men, better fathers, better 
 husbands, better brothers and sisters, better citizens, better in
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 85 
 
 everything than we ever were before. And this is'a matter of 
 every day life : it is a matter in which there are high things 
 which neither you nor I can understand, and in which there 
 are many things which require explanation ; and the explana- 
 tion perhaps is best given by the ministers of God, who have 
 made it their study to give it. God may reveal it to any man 
 by his Spirit ; but it follows, as an ordinary matter of course, 
 that those who have given the most attention to it, and lived 
 most in the study of it, should be able to tell the most of it. 
 And so far will the matter come to be one of simple common 
 sense ; and I am speaking to you the words of common 
 sense and soberness, when I say that if God has revealed 
 himself to you in Jesus Christ, your bounden duty in this 
 matter, and your only way of escape from the death of the 
 spirit, is to receive God as revealed in Jesus Christ, to study 
 the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to receive the salvation of Jesus 
 Christ, to live upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ, to seek 
 for the spirit of Jesus Christ ; to become men of prayer, men 
 of faith, seeking the ordinances of grace, valuing the word of 
 God. All this is but the ordinary verdict of our stern English 
 common sense, looking at the Bible, and gathering its con- 
 clusions from the Bible. 
 
 Here, then, is the meaning of this question, — " Why will 
 ye die?" that God has manifested to us life, glorious life in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me sav a little more about 
 this, before we conclude. As we asked, what is the death of 
 the spirit ? so now let us ask what is the life of the spirit ? 
 You heard something of it just now. I spoke of the spirit 
 as meant by its Creator to go on in glorious harmony with 
 itself and with him, and to advance from stage to stage of the 
 knowledge of him and of his works and ways. Now apply 
 and carry on this. Wherever you live in this world, and 
 about whatever you are employed in tliis world, there is a 
 life put in the power of the spirit of this kind; there is no 
 situation in life that excludes from it. There is no man here 
 present that can say, " He asked me ' Why will ye die ? ' and 
 told me about a certain life that I now might live in my spirit, 
 but my situation precludes my living to life, and I am obliged 
 to go my way, and give up the matter in despair ; and what 
 he said does not apply to me." There is no one can say this 
 — not one. You may be in the very humblest situation ; there
 
 86 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 is this life in Christ Jesus for you. You may believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and take him as your Saviour, and take 
 him as your Master, and make him to be the object of your 
 desires, the Lord of your spirit, the great pattern of your 
 imitation, the righteousness wherewith ye are clothed. Now, 
 what is there in all this that the meanest, and the humblest, 
 and the busiest, and the most obscure, may not take upon 
 themselves, just as much as the highest, and the one who has 
 most leisure and most understandino; ? Is there anvthins; in it 
 difficult to understand ? I see nothing difficult. The little 
 child who loves its Saviour is just as good a Christian as the 
 philosopher who loves his Saviour; Christ said, " Of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven ; " and every one of you, some perhaps 
 of whom may be at this moment thinking, as I am speak- 
 ing, that it is a difficult matter that is before you, must divest 
 yourself of all high thoughts, and becomie simple as a little 
 child — simple, even till the heart throbs, and the cheek glows, 
 and the tear bursts forth at the recital of God's mercies. You 
 must take from you and put away all the fashion, and the 
 manner, and the etiquette of this world in such a matter as 
 this, and you must become simple like a little child ; and 
 every one can becom e such as this. We are told that "One 
 touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;" certainly, one 
 touch of nature makes all the world God's kin. God's word 
 is as simple to you, as open to you, as to every other. 
 
 As, then, this life of the spirit is a thing I may speak of 
 to each one, wherein does it consist in the case of each one ? 
 
 You must seek it, in fact, in your ordinary occupations. 
 There is the first thing. God will be found of each one of 
 us in the path of life that he marks out for us. He gives us, 
 it is most true, and blessed be his name for it ! — he gives us 
 such davs as this, when we can assemble too-ether to hear of 
 these things ; but he does not give us the invitation to come, 
 and draw near, and live, on this day only. He gives us, 
 again, times of sorrow, times of solemn thought, tim.es of 
 bereave ment ; and I believe that when we get to the other 
 side of t^he water, and look back upon the map of our present 
 course , we shall see that these were our green places, and 
 these were our still waters of comfort, and these were our 
 recallings to him. But these are not the only times when he 
 calls us. Every day, and all day long, he is calling us.
 
 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 87 
 
 The mechanic who lifts his arm to do his ordinary work — in 
 every lifting of that arm is God pleading, " Why wilt thou 
 die ? " The man who goes forth to his daily labour by the 
 light of his glorious sun — every beam that is shed upon him 
 pleads with him, " Why wilt thou die ? " The man who lies 
 down to sleep at night, wherever he be — his preservation in 
 those hours of slumber— the sweet rest that lie obtains — is 
 but another pleading with him, "Why wilt thou die ? " 
 And so we might go on through all the common pathways of 
 ordinary life, grimed as they are with labour, looked down 
 upon as mean, and considered by some as having nothing to 
 do with this matter, and we might show you that they are 
 all means of grace. God meets with you in every one of 
 them, and in them you must seek life in your spirits. 
 
 Now, it needs very little reminding of mine to go on with 
 such considerations as these, and to say that this life of your 
 spirits consists, in the very first place, in the continual recog- 
 nition of God by you. The one diiFerence between man and 
 man is this. It is not rank, it is not station, it is not out- 
 ward advantage, it is not intellect, but it is this — that one 
 man regards a God above him, and another nian does not 
 regard a God above him. These are the two great classes 
 into which mankind is split; and regarding a God above 
 him, you know, brings in its train something else that we 
 have said, that he must regard a God as he has revealed 
 himself. But the great distinction is this, that one man 
 regards God in his ways ; another does not. Now the life of 
 the spirit depends upon this circumstance ; God must be the 
 centre of your spirits if they are to live, just as much as the 
 sun must be the centre of this system, if it is to go on in 
 harmony. God must be the centre round whom your spirits 
 are to revolve in the ordinary orbit of life. You must look 
 at his will ; that will must be a guide to you. You must 
 look at his word ; that word must be a lamp to your feet, 
 and a light to your paths. 
 
 Now every man's conscience here present knows whether 
 he does this or not; and if he does not this, then "Why 
 will ye die ? " For you are dying ; you are not going on in 
 the life of the spirit. God is not yours ; his blessed Son is 
 not yours ; his Spirit is not yours ; and you have no life. 
 That life must begin with the fear of the Lord.
 
 88 WHY WILL YE DIE ? 
 
 And now I trust every one of you here present, my brethren, 
 from wherever you may have come, however little you may be 
 disposed to throw yourselves heart and life into what you have 
 heard to-night, will weigh this fact with all its solemn considera- 
 tions. Go home to your houses and talk it over with your fami- 
 lies, and inquire. Are we fearing God ? for that is the one point. 
 " He said a great deal to us to-night, a great deal" (I dare say) 
 *' that we cannot remember, that we may possibly allow to pass 
 out of our minds ; but he said that one thing, and that one 
 thing I will ask of my wife, and ask of my children, and we 
 will go forth and ask our brothers and friends, ' Do we fear 
 God ? ' " for that is the beginning of the life of the spirit. 
 And then if you do, the mind will be all anxious to inquire, 
 What is God ? to inquire what it is that we can know about 
 him, how much we can know of his will. And then the life 
 of the spirit goes on, you see, in the knowledge of the Lord. 
 The death of the spirit is a death of ignorance, a putting God 
 from it, a not regarding God in its ways ; the life of the spirit 
 is a life of progress, of knowledge of God, of study of his 
 word, if possible; if that cannot be, of going to those places 
 where that word can be heard, and there hearing of it and 
 studying it, and advancing in the faith and fear of God, in 
 practical life, and in the belief of the inward man, from grace 
 to grace, and from strength to strength, transformed by the 
 glorious Spirit of God, who is the great gift of God to those 
 who are living by faith in his Son, even from grace to grace, 
 and from glory to glory, till the spirit enters upon the inherit- 
 ance of its perfect life, in the presence of God above, when 
 death has passed away, and there is no more mention of decay, 
 nor of the breaking up of body or spirit. 
 
 IV. Now, then, God comes to you, my brethren, with this 
 pleading ; and he says to every one of you, " Why will ye die ? '* 
 Is there any reason ? Can any one here present render me the 
 slightest reason why he should go on in this way of forgetting 
 God and of following after death. What a sight it would be, 
 brethren, suppose all the desires and issues of our common 
 bodily life were reversed, and men, instead of seeking life, 
 sought death ? Suppose all God's gracious provisions were 
 exerted to keep men from rushing upon death in the body ; 
 what a strange world this would be ! But such is the world 
 of the spirit. God is ever, at every turn of your life, putting
 
 WHY WILL YE UlE ? 89 
 
 in his gracious hand, and plucking you out of the burning; 
 striving to rescue you from the consequences of your own will 
 and your own perverse way. " JVhy will ye die ? " There is 
 no reason. There is everything against such a supposition. 
 Life is put before you. I have set before you this day life and 
 death, blessing and cursing. I have told you of One who puts 
 life in your power, of One who died that you might live, of 
 One upon whom, when you believe, that burden of sin which 
 rests upon the guilty conscience of unrenewed man shall roll 
 off and pass away, of One who w^as slain for you as your pass- 
 over lamb; so that just as the children of Israel sprinkled the 
 blood upon their lintels and side-posts, so may you sprinkle 
 the blood of his atonement upon your souls, and may stand 
 free in the sight of God, living on, and rejoicing on, with 
 nothing that can be against you, because God is for you, — 
 with the hours of life, chequered indeed as they must be 
 with gloom settling upon them here and there, but still all 
 cheered and comforted by the reconciled presence, and ending 
 in glory unspeakable. 
 
 Choose ye, then, this day, my brethren. Go not hence to 
 remark and to criticise upon what you have heard. What 
 you have heard has been said in the simplicity of one who 
 desires that some of those who now sit before him here may 
 stand with him, if it be God's will that it should be so, at 
 the great day, when we all — and we never shall till that day 
 — when we all shall meet again. That has been my desire 
 to-night ; and whatever has been said, if it offended against 
 taste, I care but little; if it was not that which would have 
 been said with minute preparation and setting down upon 
 paper, I care nothing. If it has pleaded with your souls for 
 God, and rescued one soul by his grace from eternal death, 
 praise and thanks be to him ; and 1 shall have been pleased 
 thus to have interfered with your course onwards towards 
 death, and to have put in force, with the help of his grace, his 
 own invitation conveyed in the end of this chapter, " I have 
 no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord ; 
 wherefore turn yourselves," turn from sin, from corruption, 
 from dissipation, from forgetfulness, " and live ye." If this 
 has been realised, I say, in any soul — and I would fain hope 
 and pray that it may be in many, and that God will pour 
 out his rich blessing upon every one of these services, and
 
 90 WHY WILL YE DIE? 
 
 upon every one which shall in after times, and in other places 
 (for so, I believe, it will be) succeed upon this great ex- 
 periment — if it has been so to-night, and shall be so then, 
 glory be to him for it, and praise to " the Lamb slain from 
 the foundation of the world ! "
 
 
 
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