and He saith within Himself, Well, I will requite them if ever they come into My kingdom; all their patience, and care, and conscience in walking My ways, I will requite; and they shall receive a double reward from Me, even a crown of eternal glory.  Think of these things that are not seen; they are eternal.  The things that are seen are temporal, and they will deceive us.  Let our hearts be carried after the other, and rest in them forever!

JEREMY TAYLOR

CHRIST’S ADVENT TO JUDGMENT

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Jeremy Taylor, born in Cambridge, England, in 1613, was the son of a barber.  By his talents he obtained an entrance into Caius College, where his exceptional progress obtained for him admission to the ministry in his twenty-first year, two years before the canonical age.  He was appointed in succession fellow of All Souls, Oxford, through the influence of Laud, chaplain to the King, and rector of Uppingham.  During the Commonwealth he was expelled from his living and opened a school in Wales, employing his seclusion in writing his memorable work “The Liberty of Prophesying.”

At the Restoration, Charles ii raised him to the bishopric of Down and Connor (1660), in which post he remained until his death in 1667.  His “Ductor Dubitantium,” dedicated to Charles ii, is a work of subtilty and ingenuity; his “Holy Living” and “Holy Dying” (1652), are unique monuments of learning and devotion.  His sermons form, however, his most brilliant and most voluminous productions, and fully establish his claims to the first place among the learned, witty, fanciful, ornate and devotional prose writers of his time.

JEREMY TAYLOR

1613-1667

CHRIST’S ADVENT TO JUDGMENT

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.—­II Cor., v., 10.

If we consider the person of the Judge, we first perceive that He is interested in the injury of the crimes He is to sentence:  “They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.”  It was for thy sins that the Judge did suffer such unspeakable pains as were enough to reconcile all the world to God; the sum and spirit of which pains could not be better understood than by the consequence of His own words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” meaning, that He felt such horrible, pure, unmingled sorrows, that, altho His human nature was personally united to the Godhead, yet at that instant he felt no comfortable emanations by sensible perception from the Divinity, but He was so drenched in sorrow that the Godhead seemed to have forsaken Him.  Beyond this, nothing can be added:  but then, that