It may have a double sense, " I am every day, by reason of preach- ing the gospel, exposed to dangers and death." For he doth speak both before and after of the dangers he underwent in the work of preach- ing the gospel. " I die daily;" or, " ' I die daily/ by continually pre- paring myself to die ; I am always in a preparation to die ; through the faith of the resurrection, I am always prepared to die cheerfully and comfortably, according to the will of God." And this is the sense I shall fix upon. And it being in a necessary duty, I may raise a general rule from a special instance, in this example of the apostle.
Observation. It is the duty of all believers to be preparing them- selves every day to die cheerfully, comfortably, and, if it may be, triumphing in the Lord.
Observe only this, that there may be a dying safely, where there is not a dying cheerfully and comfortably. Every believer, whoever he be, shall die safely; but we see many believers do not die cheer- fully and comfortably. I do not speak of the first, how all persons may come to die safely; but of the latter, how believers may die comfortably and cheerfully.
And there are two ways of dying cheerfully and comfortably : —
1. The one is hi outward expressions, to the comfort of them that are about us. This depends much on the nature of the distemper whereof men may die, which may oppress the animal spirits, and cloud the mind ; and therefore it falls not under rule, but is left to the providence of God.
2. But there is also a dying cheerfully and comfortably in persons' own souls ; which, it may be, in their dying moments they cannot manifest, when they are thoroughly prepared for it.
Truly, brethren, all I can say is, that I am speaking to you of the things which I have considered on my own account, before ever I thought of considering them upon yours; and I cannot declare unto you what I have attained, which may be little or nothing; but only what I have aimed at, if it may be of use to us in this dying time, especially among good ministers, one or another [dying] almost every day.1
1 At this time many eminent servants of Christ, who had been associated with Owen in the Christian ministry, and in important public duties, during the event-
THE CHRISTIAN'S WORK OF DYING DAILY. 337
I shall mention three things that, in my judgment, are requisite unto every believer who would die cheerfully, and come in a fit and full season into the presence of God : —
I. The constant exercise of faith, as to the resignation of a depart- ing soul into the hand and sovereign will of God. " I die daily." How ? Exercising faith constantly, in the resignation of a departing soul, when the time comes, unto the sovereign grace, good pleasure, power, and faithfulness of God. The soul is now taking its leave of all its concerns in this world ; all that it sees, all that it knows by its senses, all its relations, everything it hath been acquainted withal, to have an eternal, absolute unconcern in them. It is entering into an invisible world, whereof it knows nothing but what it hath by faith. When Paul was taken up into the third heaven, 2 Cor. xii. 2, we should have been glad to have heard some tidings from the invisible world how things were there. He saw nothing ; only he heard words. Why, blessed Paul, may we not hear those words? No; " They are not lawful to be uttered," saith he. God will not have us know any thing in the invisible world but what is revealed in the word, while we are here. Therefore the souls of them departed, who have died and lived again, as the soul of Lazarus, I doubt not but God sup- ported in their being, but restrained all their operations. For if a separate soul had one natural, intuitive view of God, it would be the greatest misery in the world to send it back into a dying body. God will keep those things to be objects of faith. Lazarus could tell nothing of what was clone in heaven ; his soul was kept in its being, but all its operations were restrained. I bless God I have peculiarly exercised my thoughts, according to the conduct of the word, about the invisible world ; whereof, in due time, you may hear something : but in the meantime, I know we have no notion of it but what is by pure revelation.
Whither now is the soul £oing? what will be the issue within a few moments? Is it annihilated? doth death not only separate the
ful times of the Protectorate, were passing into their eternal rest. In 1679, Thomas Goodwin, President of Magdalene College, a member of the Westminster Assembly, a happy expositor of Scripture, and, according to Anthony Wood, " one of the Atlases and Patriarchs of Independency,'' — was removed from this world, and became, in the highest sense of his own phrase, " a child of light." It was but two months before this sermon was preached that Stephen Charnock died. He had been Senior Proctor in the University of Oxford during the Pro- tectorate; and left behind him manuscripts, from which two large folios of post- humous works have been published, — works held in such estimation, that besides the detached issue of particular treatises, they have been, in their collected form, four times reprinted. Others might be mentioned who died about this period, such as Matthew Poole, author of the " Synopsis Criticorum; " and Theophilus Gale, author of " The Court of the Gentiles." Such facts may help to account for the touching and solemn tone of these discourses on preparation for death, as well as for the particular allusion in the paragraph above. — Ed.