Here is another extract, thoroughly Shakespearian. Who will not recall as they read it the oft quoted phrase 'All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players' but Master Henry Smith has a moral that is wanting if not ignored in Shakespere. The sermon is entitled The Magistrates Scripture and the text is I said ye are gods &c Psalm lxxxii 6 7 The sermon itself is marvellously faithful. We have only to remember the character of his audience and of his times to justify this strong expression. After a long exposition of the idea and function of a magistrate, this young but fearless preacher adds and his words fell on the ears of many that bore the sword.
Call us no more bishops or pastors or doctors or preachers but call us robbers and sleepers and giants and Pharisees whom we succeed. For why should they be called bishops who do not watch or pastors who do not feed or doctors who do not teach or justices who do not justice except this be the reason the idols were called gods though they were unlike God. If their bodies had grown as far out of square since Christ's ascension as their titles, pomp and honour have, they might stand in the main seas and not be drowned for their heads would crow out of the water.
But the passage to which we refer is the following. It is the peroration of the discourse and evidently finished with elaborate care and no doubt delivered with great effect We make no apology for its length.
Who would have thought that Jezebel. that beautiful temptation, should have been gnawed with dogs. Yet was she cast unto dogs and not an ear left to season the grave. What would he think that had seen Solomon in his royalty and after seen him in the clay? Oh world unworthy to be beloved, who hath made this proud slaughter? Age, sickness and death, the three great sumners, which have no respect of persons made them pay the ransom themselves and bow to the carth from whence they came there lie the men that were called gods. How soon the flower of this world is faded. Yesterday, the tallest cedar in Libanus, today like a broken stick, trodden under foot. Yesterday, the state lived upon earth; today, shrouded in earth, forsaken, forgotten, so that the poorest wretch would not be like unto him who yesterday crouched and bowed to his knees. Then woe to them which had the name of God but the sins of men for the mighty shall be mightily tormented. All their friends and subjects and servants forsake them because they go to prison to try the mercy of hell and to take what the spirits of darkness will heap upon them. Where are they who founded this goodly city, who possessed these fair houses, who walked these pleasant fields, who crected these stately temples, who kneeled in these seats and who preached out of this place but thirty years ago? Is not earth turned to earth? And shall not our sun set like theirs, when the night comes? Yet we cannot believe that death will find out us, as he hath found out them. Though all men die yet every man dreams I shall escape or at least I shall live till I be old. This is strange. Men cannot think that God will do again that which he doeth daily or that he will deal with them as he deals with others. Tell one of us that all other shall die, we believe it. Tell one of us that we shall die and we believe it sooner of all than of one, though we be sore, though we be weak, though we be sick, though we be elder than those whom we follow to the ground. So they thought which lie in this mould under your feet. If wisdom or riches or favour should have entreated death, those who have lived before us would have kept our possessions from us but death would take no bail. We are all tenants at will and we must leave this cottage whensoever the Landlord will put another in our room at a year's, at a month's, at a week's, at a day's, at an hour's warning or even less. The clothes which we wear upon our backs, the graves which are under our feet, the sun which sets over our heads and the meats which go into our mouths do cry unto us that we shall wear and set and die like the beasts and fowls and fishes which are now in our dishes and but even now were living in the elements. Our fathers have summoned us and we must summon our children to the grave. Everything, every day, suffers some eclipse. Nothing standeth at a stay but one creature calleth unto another, Let us leave this world. While we play our pageants upon this stage of short continuance, every man hath a part, some longer and some shorter and while the actors are at it, suddenly Death steps upon the stage like a hawk which doth separate one of the doves from the flight and so he shoots his dart and where it lights there falls one of the actors dead before them and makes all the rest aghast and they muse and mourn and bury him and then to the sport again. While they sing and play and dance Death comes and strikes another. There he lies and they mourn him and bury him as they did the former and then to their play again so one after another till the players be vanished like the accusers who came before Christ and death is the last upon the stage and so the fashion of this world passeth away. And therefore that we may be all like gods hereafter let us prepare before the account for none are in heaven but they that left the world before it left them.
A specimen of purer Saxon than the above it would be difficult to find, while the figure of death being last on the stage is worthy of any of our dramatic writers, Master Henry Smith may not be a great thinker or a profound divine but that he was a most earnest and godly preacher none who have read his sermons can for a moment doubt. We believe that the same kind of intensely practical preching (and this has impressed itself greatly on our minds while reading this volume and remembering the age of theological schiomachy in which it was written) would again fill our emptying places of worship, and again restore the pulpit to its rightful and legitimate monarchy over man's crowd governed soul and to its holy guidance through and safe victory over the temptations and struggles, the perils and sorrows, of this actual world in which and not in transcendental land, we live, move and have our being. With but little comment we will give a few more extracts next month, hoping thus we shall make an acceptable contribution to our theological literature but hoping more that we shall promote, by strengthening, our readers spiritual culture.
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