No discharge in this war

Your weekly Dose of Spurgeon

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  The following excerpt is from The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 30, sermon number 1,773, "What is your life?"

"The old must die, the young may die."

If, therefore, death be so impartial that he smites down the captains, let not the rank and file hope to escape. Death, which forces entrance to a prince’s bedchamber, will not respect our cottage door. To us also in due time shall be brought the message, “The Master is come and calleth for thee.” My ear hears a voice crying aloud, “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.”

Will not you hear it? Will any one of you refuse the voice which speaketh from Heaven? Death evidently pays no respect to character, age, or hopefulness. A man may addict himself to the service of his country, but his patriotism will not protect him. He may be surrounded with a wall of affection, but this will not screen him. He may have at his command all the comforts of life, and yet life may ooze out before the physician is aware. He may be tenderly loved by an affectionate mother and his name may be engraved on the heart of the fondest of wives, but death hath no regard to the love of women.

“It is appointed unto men once to die.” There is no discharge in this war: we shall all march into this fight, and unless the Lord himself shall speedily come and end the present dispensation, we shall each one fall upon this battle-field, for the shafts of death fly everywhere, and there is no armour for either back or breast by which his cruel darts may be turned aside. I would to God that all of us retained this truth in our memories.

“Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.” We have a very clear conviction that others will die, but as to ourselves, we put far from us the evil day, and care not to dwell upon a subject which smells so unpleasantly of the charnel-house.

Yes, we admit that we shall die, but not so soon as to make it a pressing matter; we imagine that we are not within measurable distance of the tomb. Even the oldest man gives himself a little longer lease, and when he has passed his four-score years, we have seen him hugging life with as much tenacity as if he had just commenced it. Brethren, in this we are not wise; but death will not spare us because we avoid him.

What is there about any one of us that we should fare better than the rest of our fellow-men? We are in the same army, marching upon the same field; how shall we escape where all others fall? Only two of our race have gone into the better land without crossing the dark river of death—Enoch and Elijah; but no one among us will make a third.

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