to cross to the land of the glorified.” This is one reason why the sting of death is sin.
6. 2. But I must take it in another sense. “The sting of death is sin”: — that is to say, that which shall make death most terrible to man will be sin, if it is not forgiven. If that is not the exact meaning of the apostle, still it is a great truth, and I may find it here. If sin lay heavy on me and were not forgiven — if my transgressions were not pardoned — if such were the fact (though I rejoice to know it is not so) it would be the very sting of death to me. Let us consider a man dying, and looking back on his past life: he will find in death a sting, and that sting will be his past sin. Imagine a conqueror’s deathbed. He has been a man of blood from his youth up. Bred in the camp, his lips were early set to the bugle, and his hand, even in infancy, struck the drum. He had a martial spirit; he delighted in the fame and applause of men; he loved the dust of battle and the garment rolled in blood. He has lived a life of what men call glory. He has stormed cities, conquered countries, ravaged continents, overrun the world. See his banners hanging in the hall, and the marks of glory on his escutcheon. {a} He is one of earth’s proudest warriors. But now he comes to die; and when he lies down to expire what shall invest his death with horror? It shall be his sin. I think I see the monarch dying; he lies in state; around him are his nobles and his counsellors; but there is someone else there. Close by his side there stands a spirit from the pit; it is the soul of a departed woman. She looks on him and says, “Monster! my husband was slain in battle through your ambition: I was made a widow, and my helpless orphan and myself were starved.” And she passes by. Her husband comes, and opening wide his bloody wounds, he cries, “Once I called you monarch; but by your vile covetousness, you provoked an unjust war. See here these wounds — I gained them in the siege. For your sake I mounted first the scaling ladder; this foot stood upon the top of the wall, and I waved my sword in triumph, but in hell I lifted up my eyes in torment. Base wretch, your ambition hurried me there!” Turning his horrid eyes upon him, he passes by. Then up comes another, and another, and another yet: waking from their tombs, they stalk around his bed and haunt him; the dreary procession still marches on, looking at the dying tyrant. He shuts his eyes, but he feels the cold and bony hand upon his forehead; he quivers for the sting of death is in his heart. “Oh Death!” he says, “to leave this large estate, this mighty realm, this pomp and power — this would be something, but to meet those men, those women, and those orphan children, face to face, to hear them saying, ‘Are you become like one of us?’ while kings whom I have dethroned, and monarchs whom I have cast down shall rattle their chains in my ears, and say, ‘You were our destroyer, but how are you fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, son of the morning! how are you brought down as in a moment from your glory and your pride!’ ” There you see the sting of death would be the man’s sin. It would not sting him that he had to die, but that he had sinned, that he had been a bloody man, that his hands were red with wholesale murder — this would plague him indeed, for “the sting of death is sin.”
7. Or suppose another character — a minister. He has stood before the world, proclaiming something which he called the gospel. He has been a noted preacher: the multitude have been hanging on his lips; they have listened to his words; before his eloquence a nation stood amazed, and thousands trembled at his voice. But his preaching is over; the time when he can mount the pulpit is gone; another standing place awaits him, another congregation, and he must hear another and a better preacher than himself. There he lies. He has been unfaithful to his charge. He preached philosophy to charm his people, instead of preaching truth and aiming at their hearts. And as he pants upon his bed, that worst and most accursed of men — for sure none can be worse than he — there comes up one, a soul from the pit, and looking him in the face, says, “I came to you once trembling on account of sin, I asked you the road to heaven, and you did say, ‘Do such-and-such good works,’ and I did them, and am damned. You told me a lie; you did not declare plainly the word of God.” He vanishes only to be followed by another, he has been an irreligious character, and as he sees the minister upon his deathbed, he says, “Ah! and are you here? Once I strolled into your house of prayer, but you had such a sermon that I could not understand. I listened; I wanted to hear something from your lips, some truth that might burn my soul and make me repent; but I did not know what you said; and here I am.” The ghost stamps his foot, and the man quivers like an aspen leaf, because he knows it is all true. Then the whole congregation arise before him as he lies upon his bed; he looks upon the motley group; he beholds the snowy heads of the old, and the glittering eyes of the young; and lying there upon his pillow, he pictures all the sins of his past life, and he hears it said, “Go you! unfaithful to your charge: you did not divest yourself of your love of pomp and dignity; you did not speak:
As though you ne’er might’st speak again,
A dying man to dying men.”
Oh! it may be something for that minister to leave his charge, something for him to die; but worst of all, the sting of death will be his sin; to hear his parish come howling after him to hell; to see his congregation following behind him in one mingled herd, he having led them astray, having been a false prophet instead of a true one, speaking peace, peace, where there was no peace, deluding them with lies, charming them with music, when he ought rather to have told them in rough and rugged accents the word of God. Truly it is true, it is true, the sting of death to such a man shall be his great, his enormous, his heinous sin of having deluded others.
8. Thus, then, having painted two full length pictures, I might give each one of you miniatures of yourselves. I might picture, oh drunkard, when your cups are drained, and when your liquor shall no longer be sweet to your taste, when worse than gall shall be the dainties that you drink, when within an hour the worms shall make a carnival upon your flesh; I might picture you as you look back upon your misspent life. And you, oh swearer, I think I see you there with your oaths echoed back by memory to your own dismay. And you, man of lust and wickedness, you who have debauched and seduced others, I see you there, and the sting of death to you, how horrible, how dreadful! It shall not be that you are groaning with pain, it shall not be that you are racked with agony, it shall not be that your heart and flesh fails; but the sting, the sting shall be your sin. How many in this place can spell that word “remorse?” I pray you may never know its awful meaning. Remorse, remorse! You know its derivation: it signifies to bite. Ah! now we dance with our sins — it is a merry life with us — we take their hands, and sporting in the noontime sun, we dance, we dance, and live in joy. But then those sins shall bite us. The young lions we have stroked and played with shall bite; the young adder, the serpent whose azure hues have well delighted us, shall bite, shall sting, when remorse shall occupy our souls. I might, but I will not tell you, a few stories of the awful power of remorse: it is the first pang of hell; it is the vestibule of the pit. To have remorse is to feel the sparks that blaze upwards from the fire of the bottomless pit of Gehenna; to feel remorse is to have eternal torment commenced within the soul. The sting of death shall be, unforgiven, unrepented sin.
9. 3. But if sin in the past is the sting of death, what must sin in the future be? My friends, we do not often enough look at what sin is to be. We see what it is: first the seed, then the blade, then the ear, and then the full grain in the ear. It is the wish, the imagination, the desire, the sight, the taste, the deed; but what is sin in its next development? We have observed sin as it grows, we have seen it at first a very little thing, but expanding itself until it has swelled into a mountain. We have seen it like “a little cloud, the size of a man’s hand,” but we have beheld it gather until it covered the skies with blackness and sent down drops of bitter rain. But what is sin to be in the next state? We have gone so far, but sin is a thing that cannot stop. We have seen into what it has grown, but into what will it grow? for it is not ripe when we die; it has to go on still; it is set in motion, but it has to unfold itself for ever. The moment we die the voice of justice cries, “Seal up the fountain of blood; stop the stream of forgiveness; he that is holy let him be holy still; he that is filthy let him be filthy still.” And after that the man goes on growing filthier and filthier still; his lust develops itself, his vice increases; all those evil passions blaze with tenfold more fury, and, amidst the companionship of others like himself, without the restraints of grace, without the preached word, the man becomes worse and worse; and who can tell into what his sin may grow? I have