Today's Puritan Audio Devotional--

"The Last Pang, and Groan, and Tear!"
 by J. A. James (4 minutes)

 ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

This tyrant wields a universal sway!

(Henry Law, "Numbers" 1858)

"For the wages of sin is DEATH, but the
 free gift of God is eternal life through
 Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23

DEATH!

The very sound falls heavily.

What mind can lightly think of it?

What eye unmoved can see it?

The limbs, once full of vigor, stir no more.

Sinews, once elastic in activity, become rigid.

The form, so wondrous in its mechanism,
becomes an inert mass.

The features, once the reflecting mirror of
ten thousand thoughts, are marble monotony.

The vessel, once so proudly merry,
lies a deserted wreck.

The fabric, once so sparkling in beauty,
is a deserted ruin.

DEATH! It is more than animation fled.

Decay draws near, with a polluting touch.

Corruption fastens on its prey.

The friends, most dotingly attached, cannot
but turn loathingly away. A stern necessity
requires, that offensive remains be buried
out of sight.

Reader, here pause and meditate.

This death is pressing at your heels!

It soon will lay you low.

Your weeping friends will hide you in the dust.

A forgetting world will go on merrily,
as though you had not been.

Say, do you joyfully await its touch?

Can you feel, "Death comes as with friendly
hand to open the cage door--that my freed
spirit may fly to its high home?"

Remember, you cannot escape.

This tyrant wields a universal sway!

But in what cradle is DEATH born? Whence
is it armed with that destroying scythe?

DEATH is transgression's child. Sin is the
womb which bore it. A sinless world would
have been deathless bloom. But the world
is sinful, and therefore is an open tomb.
This earth is one charnel house.

This is a humbling truth. But in this very
darkness there is light. We are not left
bereft of remedy.

The unclean may be cleansed.

All stains may vanish.

There is a fountain opened for all soul filth.

There is full help for foulest need. Where sin
abounds, sin's cure exceeds. Where pollution
spreads its wide pall, the Savior brings His
wider covering.

"For the wages of sin is DEATH, but the
 free gift of God is eternal life through
 Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23