The Last Things

by Johnson Grant

Being a series of Lent Lectures on Death, the Grave, the Intermediate State, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven. By the late Rev. Johnson Grant, M. A., Record of Binbrook, and Minister of Kentish Town Chapel. The angel of destruction knocks at every door — his sword ever reeking with death. Within a few years, there is not a house in which he leaves not one dead. To strike the greater terror, he observes no order in his seizures. He lifts the latch of the humble cottage — and breaks through the guards of the stately palace. The high and the low are alternately and promiscuously his prey. Nor can piety herself, though smiling at his malice, charm him into a Passover of her habitation. And as with every condition, so he deals with every age. Walking abroad in the earth, he now smites the lisping infant, with eyes just opened on the world! Now he arrests the youth, with high-beating heart, and with pulses keenly alive to pleasure! Now he levels to the ground, the full-grown man, while confiding and exulting in his strength. And now, though rarely, he allows the lamp of life to be extinguished through the mere exhaustion of the oil. There is not one of us, but is destined to experience his death-struggle — not one but must sooner or later close his eyes on this visible, earthly scene. Sometimes the thread of life is snapped hastily asunder — and sometimes it gradually unwinds itself. Sometimes the work of death proceeds in masses, and by thousands. To pronounce death universal, is to call it unavoidable. Our days are threescore years and ten — some linger upon earth beyond that term; but there is no medical skill, no peculiar privilege, which can stay the advance of decrepitude, or save from the inexorable destroyer. It might be imagined, that the certainty, the nearness, the continual occurrence, the universality, the unavoidableness of Death would conspire to render it a subject of frequent and familiar meditation. Yet strange to tell, these truths, through their notoriety and commonness (which should send them home to the heart) make but a slight impression, and are almost wholly unheeded! The remembrance of them too, is to most men irksome; it dampens the enjoyment of worldly pleasure, and quenches the ardor of worldly pursuit. Whenever, therefore, death intrudes itself, it is sedulously "The righteous perishes and no man lays it to heart; they are destroyed from evening until morning, and no one regards it.” The thought of death, indeed, should so intimately and so constantly mix itself up with all our other thoughts, as to sadden our most innocent satisfactions, and to impede the common business and useful purposes of our calling. But this surely can be no reason, why the remembrance of mortality, the consideration of our departing hour, should be always and altogether banished. There are pauses in employment, there are interruptions in recreation, there are holy seasons expressly set apart for it. Let us direct our attention during these times to Death, the end of all men, and of all things with which men busy themselves — and afterwards to those solemn matters by which death is followed.

84 pages, Paperback

Published June 24, 2016