Plain Sermons by Contributors to the, Tracts for the Times," Psalm 82:6-7 I have said, You are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.… Death is the most awful of earthly things to all persons of all ranks; but there is something in the death of a king peculiarly solemn and instructive to all who are willing to consider matters with the fear of God before their eyes. It is a bad sign when people listen eagerly to the accounts of our King's sickness, death, and funeral, merely as to something new, and there an end. 1. First, a man must be cold hearted indeed, not to feel in such an event the touch of an Almighty hand, awakening him to consider the utter vanity and worthlessness of this life, considered in itself. 2. But, secondly, although the sight of a king's death is naturally apt to make us all have sad thoughts of our common mortality, yet the Scripture warns us that we think not rudely on it, as if it proved kings, while they lived, to be no more than other men. You perceive, that in this same place where kings are warned that they shall "die like men," they are nevertheless called gods, and are said to be all of them "the children of the Most Highest." Wherefore the death of one sovereign, and succession of another, may well cause us to have serious thoughts of the high and sacred office of our King; and to remember that he is "the minister of God"; a minister in somewhat of the same sense as bishops and priests are ministers. "Fear God, honour the King." 3. Thirdly, we learn to have duo thoughts of the great anxiety of His Majesty's office, and the especial dangers, spiritual and temporal, which must needs wait upon so high a trust in this bad and unquiet world. "Ye shall fall like one of the princes;" evidently meaning that princes, as such, were in more than common danger of falling; their life, as it were, hung by a thread, so many and so restless were their enemies, and so wearisome their heavy duties. In our time, and in our part of the world, the personal danger of a sovereign may be much diminished; though many who now live may remember a King of France murdered publicly by his own subjects; a sad proof that good and great kings are not yet exempt from violent deaths. Let us, then, remember to join most earnestly in the Church's prayers for the sovereign; and lot us learn to be more and more contented with our own condition. (Plain Sermons by Contributors to the "Tracts for the Times,") Parallel Verses KJV: I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.WEB: I said, "You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High. |
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