I. That there is very generally a strange want of reflection and concern respecting our condition as mortal is most apparent in many plain, familiar proofs. Perhaps nothing in the world, that appears so out of consistency, is so obvious. Notice: (1) The very small effect of the memory of the departed in the way of admonition of our own mortality. (2) How little and seldom we are struck with the reflection how many things we are exposed to that might cause death. (3) How soon a recovery from danger sets aside the serious thought of death. (4) How many schemes are formed for a long future time with as much interest and as much anticipating confidence as if there were no such thing in the world as death.
II. When it is asked, How comes this to be? the general explanation is that which accounts for everything that is wrong, namely, the radical depravity of our nature. There are doubtless special causes, such as: (1) The perfect distinctness of life and death. (2) Even the certainty and universality of death may be numbered among the causes tending to withdraw men's thoughts from it. (3) The general presumption of having long to live is a cause of a more obvious kind. (4) Another great cause is that men occupy their whole soul and life with things that preclude the thought of its end. (5) There is in a large proportion of men a formal, systematic endeavour to keep off the thought of death.
III. Let us remember that to end our life is the mightiest event that awaits us in this world. And it is that which we are living but to come to. To have been thoughtless of it, then, will ultimately be an immense calamity; it will be to be in a state unprepared for it. And consider that there is a sovereign antidote to the fear of death. There is One that has Himself yielded to death, in order to vanquish it for us and take its terrors away.
J. Foster, Lectures,2nd series, p. 241.
References: Deuteronomy 32:29. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 120; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vi., No. 304; J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church,p. 415.Deuteronomy 32:31. D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3342; R. Glover, By the Waters of Babylon,p. 153.Deuteronomy 32:32. H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf,p. 280. Deuteronomy 32:35. A. Tholuck, Hours of Christian Devotion,p. 128; Expositor,3rd series, vol. v., p. 455.Deuteronomy 32:36. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes,p. 45.Deuteronomy 32:37; Deuteronomy 32:38. Expositor,2nd series, vol. iii., p. 225.