I. Look at the threefold loss bewailed in the text. There are, or ought to be, three circles round every man like the belts or rings round a planet: love, friendship, and acquaintanceship. Love is the nearest, while, at the same time, it lends its value to the other two. Friendship and acquaintanceship have no real pith, or substance, or value in them except as they are permeated by the spirit of the nearest circle. The three circles are needed by every man for the proper health and balance of his nature. No man suffices for himself. He needs others, as they need him. In proportion to the number and closeness of the ties in life is the pain in reserve for men. Strange life this, in which our best is the most subject to suffering, and pays a penalty as if it were the worst!
II. Reflections. (1) The thinking of departed friends will help us to realise our own death. It is of the highest moment that we should realise death, for without this we do not realise eternity, sin, or God. (2) Thinking of our departed will help to take away the bitterness of death. Death is but going as they have gone; it is just sharing with them. Death gets identified with the thought of father, or mother, or wife, or child; and we feel that we dare not and cannot shrink from going to them. (3) Thinking of the departed will enable us to realise immortality. One of the most effectual ways of bringing the unseen world before us as solid reality is to think of some loved and familiar one who has gone into the eternal state. They live, these departed ones; if truth and love are real, they live. Death can no more touch their souls than the stormy waves can quench the stars. (4) Thinking of the departed will take away the besetting feeling of solitude connected with death. What a glow it sheds over the future! How rich and full it makes it to think of meeting again some who have gone before. Their horizon is wide now. They have had experience of which we cannot form even a conception; but we know that no distance of time, no range of knowledge, no height or depth of experience, can ever alter their love to us. (5) Thinking of the departed cannot but fill us with regret and penitence. The place of death may be the birthplace of eternal life. Hearts that have been hard to every other plea may be conquered and melted here, and from this spot rise to heaven.
J. Leckie, Sermons Preached at Ibrox,p. 118.
References: Psalms 88 S. Cox, Expositions,3rd series, p. 123.Psalms 89:1; Psalms 89:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1565; S. Cox, Expositions,3rd series, p. 166. Psalms 89:2. Clergyman's Magazine, vol. x., p. 217; J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 99. Psalms 89:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 674, and vol. xxii., No.