Sunday Morning at the Birmingham Christadelphian Ecclesia, No. 66
(Brother Allsopp, a brother specially beloved by all for his many excellencies, died half-an hour before the meeting on May 9th. His death, which was very unexpected, was announced to the brethren assembled an hour afterwards. The announcement visibly affected the whole congregation, and gave rise to the following observations in substance.)
“Exhort one another daily.”—Paul.
p. 273DEAR BRETHREN AND SISTERS,—A heavy blow has fallen upon us. It would be difficult, perhaps, to say exactly why we are so moved by the death of brother Allsopp. Perhaps I should not be far off the mark if I were to say it is because we have lost a sweet and useful brother. He not only understood the use of the musical art, and helped us greatly to take the full advantage of our Music Hymn Book, but he was a true brother. With all the self-possession necessary in a leader, he was gentle and loving and courteous to all; and, above all, he was a self-manifest lover of the truth. He had a visible fervent appreciation of all divine things. He helped us not only in our exercises of praise, but he was ever active, in many little ways, in the dissemination of the truth among the ignorant, and in its application in the comfort and edification of the brethren. In conversation and the free use of tracts, he did more than is known to most. His common expression used to be, “We must do what we can. We don’t know when the Master may come.” He was, too, a daily reader of the Scriptures as many now are. He constantly laboured to keep all connected with him in the practice of this duty. We can ill afford to lose him. He is gone. We shall not see him again till the blessed morning of our realised expectations. We may have his place filled by someone else, but we shall never have a brother more qualified in all respects for the duties he had to discharge.
What shall we say? We had a loan of him for two years. He was given to us at a time when we needed such help and comfort greatly, and he has been a constant comfort to us all since the day he took in charge the service of song. He is now to us a sweet memory only. What shall we say? The Lord who gave has taken him away. We must be thankful we had him, and we must be resigned to relinquish him. All things work together for good. It may be that we stood in need of this sore trial. It may be that the Lord is about to step forth and that he would have us more fully prepared, by the subduing influence of affliction, to meet him. It may be that this is the hand of the husbandman, watering the garden. We have had prosperity a long time. Too much prosperity is not good in our present state. It is like too much sunshine—drying and hardening and gendering unfruitfulness. The rain softens and refreshes the cracking ground, and causes it to send forth fragrance and to yield fruit. Perhaps this is a needed shower of rain.
The seed has been planted in us. This is Christ’s own illustration, who likens the Word of the kingdom to seed. But men do not plant seed for the mere sake of having it in the ground. They sow seed that they may have a harvest. So the p. 274Word is not planted in us merely that we may have the knowledge it gives; it is that we may bring forth fruit. Jesus says “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.” This fruit is in some thirty, in some sixty, in some an hundred fold. Where there is none, there is barrenness, and the unfruitful servant is to be rejected. This is revealed (Matt. xxv. 30.) The degree of our fruitfulness is a question of surrounding influences. Trouble is an indispensable element. Our troubles are permitted (and, doubtless often contrived) not in the spirit of unkindness, but that we may be brought to that state of wisdom which human nature can never be brought to in circumstances of pleasure. Distresses and affliction are a necessary part of the training which is to fit us for a place in the perfect and abiding society of the future age. By them, we become wiser and better and richer. The process is painful, but the end is sweetness. It is better, says Solomon, to go to the house of mourning than the house of fasting. Better is the day of death than the day of birth. Why? Because the living, laying it to heart, learn wisdom. They receive the kind of teaching referred to in the prayer of Moses, the man of God, when he says, “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” People usually number their days in the wrong style. They say, “I have many days to live yet; I will give myself to my own ways for a while, and, afterwards, I will turn to God.” Wisdom’s method of numbering our days is to say “My days are few at the most; I can but live a few years that go quickly fleeting by; and, perhaps, even these few may fail me; perhaps I may have to give up my life to-morrow; I will give myself at once and entirely to wisdom’s ways.”
This is the lesson of this morning’s bereavement. Who would have thought that brother Allsopp was to be the next to close his eyes in that sleep from which Christ only can awake us? Had we been asked to guess, he would have been the last man we should have chosen—young, strong, healthy, active, joyful. Who is to be next? We cannot tell. Somebody, perhaps, we don’t think of, and that very soon it may be. The death of brother Allsopp is a bitter experience, but it may help some to rectify their ways, and on all of us it will, doubtless, shed a salutary influence. It may prove a new illustration of Paul’s words: “No affliction for the present seemeth joyous but grievous; nevertheless, afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.”
It is worth while to take special notice of the last six words They show that trouble is beneficial to one class only: “to them that are exercised thereby.” It is possible to have trouble and not be “exercised” by it in the sense of Paul’s words. We may have trouble and not make a reasonable use of it as applied to ourselves. We may take it simply as a matter of pain or inconvenience, which we shall strive to get over as soon as possible by recourse to pleasure or occupation of one sort or another. Such a man, for instance, say a relation to brother Allsopp in the flesh, knowing and loving him well, would grieve at his death: but he makes no application of the fact to his own case. He goes forth to his usual life and his labour, and, by and bye forgets all about it except as a fact of the past becoming dimmer and dimmer every day. The keenest pangs that ever rent the human breast grow weaker and assuage with time; and the man who is unexercised reasonably by such a fact as that which has come before us this morning, goes away to lose in time his sorrow and to run the same course of folly—respectable, men-applauded, money-getting, self-nourishing folly which he pursued before. And death at last (for death cannot be chased away: he hovers p. 275at every man’s door) finds him just as unready for the glorious yet terrible future that lies before, as if no such incident had ever transpired It is far different with the man who is “exercised thereby”—supposing him, that is, to be in need of it. He says to himself: “Here is brother Allsopp gone, oh, so unexpectedly. I see in this that my present life is nothing—a vapour that appeareth for a very little while and then vanisheth away. I may live a little longer than brother Allsopp has done, but perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I may go next; perhaps I may go soon—perhaps next week. Am I ready to be thus cut off? Is my account such as I shall be able to present it with joy at the judgment seat? Have I been as diligent as my poor brother who has been taken from us? Have I done half as much with my opportunities as he did amid the embarrassment of poverty? I cannot answer these questions satisfactorily to myself. I have allowed myself to be too much overborne by hindrances. I have not sufficiently attended to the daily reading of the Scriptures. I have given in to the pressure of business or house affairs, and have too often suffered the Word of God to be silent in my house, instead of stepping aside with methodical diligence to listen at least once a day to His voice. I have not sufficiently availed myself of the opportunities I have had of identifying myself with the work of Christ. I have not attended the meetings as I might; I have not taken that part that was open to me. True, I cannot speak in public or write to appear in print: but there are many little things I might have done in the way of helping the affairs of the meeting or the brethren privately, that I have not done. I have not been sufficiently anxious to invite the stranger to listen to the word of wisdom in the gospel. I have not sufficiently considered the poor brethren in their need, and the afflicted in their loneliness and desolation. I have not given enough place in my life to the commandments of Christ I have been too prone to act upon the selfish and worldly-wise maxims of a world that knows not God and obeys not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I will alter all this. I will read the Word with more regularity and diligence. I will pray oftener and with more faith. I will attend the meetings with more regularity and punctuality, and not allow all these things to come in the way. I will be more ready to take part in the work in every way brought within my reach. I will try at least to have as good an account as my poor brother Allsopp whom I little expected to lose so soon, and whom I hope to meet again before very long.”
This represents a reasonable “exercise” by the event that has cast its shadow over us this morning; and at the end of years (supposing years to go on) it would represent a very different result, to the man so exercised, from the result to the man not exercised. The difference is not visible at once. It is a matter that takes years for illustration; but the result becomes visible at last. The man who is constantly under the influence of divine ideas and exercises, comes at last to have the mellowness of mental condition (reflected even in his countenance), that fits him for that gathering of the wheat into the garner that takes place by and bye; whereas the man who is wholly exercised in questions of eating and drinking and clothing, and householding, &c., sinks deeper and deeper into the insipidity and cloddishness of the natural man, and becomes more confirmed in his spiritual insensibility with every year’s undivided attention to things which are seen and temporal.
Our sorrow this morning is not for brother Allsopp. We sorrow for ourselves that we have lost so sweet and helpful a companion in the bitter p. 276pilgrimage of this probation. Yet we sorrow not as those who have no hope; for we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and this is the ground of our indestructible confidence that them that sleep in Jesus, God will bring again from the dead with or by him. We expect to see him soon, and the next time we see him, there will have been a great change in our circumstances. Our meetings here will be over. The breaking of bread “till the Lord come,” will have been superseded by the Lord’s arrival; and we shall be all expectancy as to our individual lots at the judgment-seat, and as to the great events that are to follow close among the nations of the world And brother Allsopp will be recovered from his painful disease. He will be alive and well—better than we ever knew him; for the natural man newly reorganised by creative power, will be at the natural man’s best, as the basis for the change to spirit nature, which will be vouchsafed at the judgment-seat to all who are accepted of the Lord. We shall be a joyful yet solemn company, looking for the great meeting with him whom we have so often glorified and remembered in the breaking of bread.
Meanwhile, our loss is brother Allsopp’s gain, for he is relieved from all further struggle with an evil existence. He knows not the interval that still divides him from the Lord. To him it will pass like the lightning’s flash. He will seem to himself suddenly to get better in the midst of his racking pains, to find the Lord is come. Many things combine to tell us this is at the door. The troubled sky of European politics hangs heavy with the elements of the great outburst among the nations which marks the era of the Lord’s return. The nations are armed as history has never known: it is the work of the political frogs which has prepared the nations for the impending conflict of Armageddon. We have seen, and yet see, this great frog sign. We see also the political Euphrates low in its bed—a mere streak compared with the mighty river that overflowed all its banks in the days when the prowess of the Turk threatened the extinction of Christian civilization to the cry of “The Koran or the Sword.” The dry bones of Israel’s scattered community are stirring with the activities of returning life, “bone moving to his bone.” The Roman anti-Christ has also filled the world with indignation at his blasphemous claims. The signs all cry with a loud voice. It is the voice of Christ. We listen. What are the words we hear? “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” We rejoin. “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. We are looking for thine appearing; we love it; we are waiting for it. Let us find grace in thy presence in the great day of thy coming.”
EDITOR.