Street Meeting Thirty Fourth

The dead may teach thee many things concerning the life you have now; yet of life thou canst teach the dead nothing. Their silence instructeth thee, but thy voice can no longer reach them. There are the dead who cannot answer, and there are the dead who will not answer. There are those who know not that they are dead, and those who care little whether they be so. The very words, the dead, have something in them at once dreadful and instructive; and the more I consider them, the more solemn doth the distinction appear.

Death came not merely by the doing of the deed, but by rebellion against God; not first from the hand that took, but from the heart that coveted. Neither is death to be understood merely as the ceasing of breath. Man died when he was separated from God, the fountain of his life. To be lost is to have wandered from the way; and to love a lie is already to have turned the heart against the truth.

I am the Way
I am the Truth
I am the Life.
John 14:6

For whilst they contain unspeakable consolation for those who come unto Him, they pronounce also the condition of every man who remains apart from Him. If Christ be the Way, then apart from Him we are lost. If Christ be the Truth, then apart from Him we abide in falsehood. And if Christ be the Life, then apart from Him we are dead. Thus in declaring who He is, Christ discloses what we also are; and in the same blessed sentence wherein He uncovers our misery, He sets Himself before us as the whole remedy.

None can educate a corpse into life. Instruct it with all the wisdom of men, exhort it with all the earnestness of thy soul, and reason with it until thy strength faileth; yet still it remaineth dead. Life must come from outside itself. The dead possess nothing whereby they may quicken themselves. 

Truth is not ultimately a proposition, neither is Life merely existence, nor the Way principally a system whereby men may order their steps. Christianity itself terminateth not in religion, but in a Person. Christ saith not merely that He teacheth the truth, showeth the way, or bestoweth life. He declareth, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All meet and have their fullness in Him.

Educated minds often ignorantly inquire, What becometh of the living when they die? But there is another question which presseth itself upon me whenever I stand before a multitude: What does it mean that so many who live are dead already? Thus the people of whom I was, and before whom I now plead Christ, possess in my estimation a strange double character. They walk, speak, labor, buy and sell; their eyes see me and their ears hear the sound of my voice—and yet, apart from the power of God that giveth life, they are dead—but they are dead men still within hearing of the Gospel; and herein lieth the solemn difference between them and those who sleep in the graves. I cannot preach unto the graves. Those who lie there have passed beyond the sound of my voice. I may stand among their gravestones and learn much from their silence, but I can tell them nothing more of Christ. Yet these other dead still breathe before me. They may still hear the outward call; so while breath remains in them, I have reason enough to open my mouth.

For who among us found in Christ shall dare stand before God and say, These be dead, and are therefore beyond Thy reach? Shall their inability become the excuse for my silence, when the very glory of the Gospel is that God calleth the dead unto life? Nay; I would sooner plead before a thousand dead souls than presume to determine which among them the voice of the Son of God may make alive. And if I close my mouth to the unbeliever because I assume they be dead already, what then have I made of myself? Shall I, who profess to have received life, willingly become silent as the grave?

If, then, I possess no power whereby I may quicken the souls unto whom I preach, and yet have been arrested by the Spirit of God to declare that Truth whereby the dead are made alive, what remaineth for me but to preach Christ with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength, unto the glory of God? Mine is to deliver His message; His alone is the work of saving. For God both saveth and judgeth dead men, and is pleased to carry His Word through men whom He hath Himself quickened. Yet mercy remains wholly His. None can demand it, none can purchase it, and none shall receive it but those upon whom God is pleased to have mercy. Thus the Gospel never returns void,  without the glory of its Author. Where the sinner is graciously saved, God is glorified in mercy; where the rebel continues in his rebellion and is justly condemned, God is glorified in righteousness. The preacher neither creates the life nor determines the judgment. He proclaims Christ, and leaves both salvation and judgment in the hands of God.

Shall I then be silent, and by my silence rob God of His glory?