Read Ebook: A funeral sermon for the Rev. Joseph Kinghorn preached in St. Mary's Meeting-house Norwich on Sunday afternoon September 9th 1832 by Alexander John

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 30 lines and 11465 words, and 1 pages

Transcribed from the 1832 Wilkin and Fletcher edition by David Price.

PREACHED IN

ST. MARY'S MEETING-HOUSE, NORWICH,

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 9TH, 1832.

BY JOHN ALEXANDER.

"THE MEMORY OF THE JUST IS BLESSED."

TO THE BEREAVED AND MOURNING CHURCH AND CONGREGATION WORSHIPPING IN ST. MARY'S MEETING-HOUSE, NORWICH, THE FOLLOWING SERMON IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY

SERMON

II Peter, chap, i, verses 12-15.

"WHEREFORE I WILL NOT BE NEGLIGENT TO PUT YOU ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE OF THESE THINGS, THOUGH YE KNOW THEM AND BE ESTABLISHED IN THE PRESENT TRUTH. YEA, I THINK IT MEET, AS LONG AS I AM IN THIS TABERNACLE, TO STIR YOU UP BY PUTTING YOU IN REMEMBRANCE; KNOWING THAT SHORTLY I MUST PUT OFF THIS MY TABERNACLE, EVEN AS OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST HATH SHEWED ME. MOREOVER, I WILL ENDEAVOUR THAT YE MAY BE ABLE, AFTER MY DECEASE, TO HAVE THESE THINGS ALWAYS IN REMEMBRANCE."

THESE words, my brethren, are impressively suitable to the present solemnity; especially when you consider that, if the life and health of your beloved pastor had been prolonged till to-day, he would probably have made them the subject of his own discourse. Having been engaged, for some time past, in preaching a course of sermons on some of the Epistles, he had proceeded in his expositions as far as the eighth verse of this chapter; and, by this time, perhaps, he would have addressed you on the following verses, including those of our text. He would, in that case, have enforced upon you the duty "to give diligence to make your calling and election sure;" and he would have encouraged you to do so by the promise, that "if ye do these things ye shall never fall; for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." But whatever intentions or expectations he might have formed respecting future sermons, they have all been frustrated by the stroke of death. Instead of urging upon you the performance of this duty by his living voice, he now admonishes you from the grave. Instead of animating your minds by this "exceeding great and precious promise," he now enjoys the fulfilment of it himself, in all its richness and perpetuity; and instead of attempting, with mortal lips, to describe to you the glories of that "everlasting kingdom," he has had ministered unto himself "an abundant entrance" into its celestial palaces, where all the inhabitants are made "kings and priests unto God."

The work of a minister of the gospel, as intimated by the apostle, is to remind his hearers of the various and important truths which the gospel of Christ contains; for he determines to put them "always in remembrance of these things," and "to stir them up by putting them in remembrance."

Having thus considered the work in which, as a minister of the gospel, he was engaged during his life, let us now proceed to the second part of our subject, and consider,

The apostle Peter, whilst engaged in his labours, and whilst declaring the manner in which he would endeavour to pursue them, says, "Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me"--and by so saying, he probably refers to the prediction which had been addressed to him by Christ, and which John has recorded in the last chapter of his gospel. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thine hands and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God." The decease which was thus foretold, and which the apostle anticipated in our text, was soon afterwards realized. The earthly house of his tabernacle was dissolved amidst the pains of martyrdom, and he entered a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. A similar event has now befallen your beloved pastor. The putting off his tabernacle had long been the subject of his anticipation; it is now become the subject of his experience. His body has returned to the dust whence it was taken, and his spirit is gone to God who gave it.

His decease had been mercifully preceded by a long life of health and labour, and more than sixty-six years had elapsed from his birth to his departure. Some of the former of those years were connected with occasional attacks of sickness, which sometimes led him to expect an early grave; so that at the time of his ordination, upwards of forty years ago, he said to his father, "you are come to ordain a dying man"--and subsequently to that period, he was once visited with a severe and alarming illness. Nor is it improbable that these occasional admonitions of his mortality were the means, under the blessing of God, of producing much of that seriousness of spirit by which his mind was pervaded. Still, his was a life of comparative health, and when I visited him during the week in which he died, he told me that, till then, he had not been kept out of his pulpit by illness for a single sabbath, during a period of twenty-eight years. His last illness, as you are aware, was confined to one short week. It commenced on the evening of Saturday, August 25th, and concluded in his death, on the evening of the Saturday following--yet it is probable that the fever which at last consumed him, had, for some time previously, been accumulating its exhausting fires. His illness was so short, and of such a nature, as to afford scarcely any opportunities of conversation with him in order to ascertain the state of his mind--indeed those around him little expected that death was so near at hand. This, however, is a circumstance on which we reflect with no feelings of anxiety. His soul, and all its eternal interests, had long been committed to the Saviour. For him to live had been Christ; for him to die was gain. During nearly twelve hours before his departure, he was apparently inattentive to every surrounding object. His body and his mind seemed to be in a state of perfect peace. Not a word was spoken--not a limb stirred--not a symptom of pain appeared. The tide of life gently and silently ebbed away, till at length his breathing ceased, and his countenance faded into the paleness of death,

Calm and unruffled as a summer's sea, When not a breath of wind flies o'er its surface.

To himself--"thanks be to God who gave him the victory"--death was preceded by no terrors, and accompanied by no sting. Its bitterness was past before it was tasted, and he felt "the bliss" without "the pain of dying." It has indeed terminated his labours, which he pursued with deep and increasing interest and delight. It has terminated his accustomed intercourse with earthly scenes and earthly friends. It has terminated a life to which he naturally and instinctively clung. But it has not terminated the existence of his spirit, nor its communion with God, nor its conformity to his image, nor its joy in the light of his countenance. Oh, no! He is absent from the body, but he is present with the Lord. He is gone to the spirits of the just made perfect. He has renewed his communion with many of the members of his church, which death had for a while suspended. He is with Watts, and Doddridge, and Fuller, and Ward, and Hall, and "the general assembly and church of the first born" in those celestial mansions, where all is perfection, and harmony, and love. He is in the pursuit of knowledge with ampler capacities and ampler means than any he possessed on earth. And, above all, he is with Christ--surrounded by the light and glory of his presence--sitting at his feet to receive knowledge and joy from his instructions, and deriving, from the fountain of his mercy, degrees of happiness as large as his desires, and as lasting as his immortality.

But whilst his decease has thus been productive of perfect and eternal blessedness to himself, it has been productive of mourning and bitterness to you. The voice which has often instructed, and admonished, and comforted you, is now silent in the dust. The heart which was so full of kindness, and which yearned over you with such paternal anxiety and love, has ceased its beatings. The eyes which beamed upon you, and wept over you with unutterable tenderness, are extinguished in the grave--and you are "sorrowing most of all that you shall see his face no more." Some of you have lost the companion of your youth, with whom, for more than forty years, you have taken sweet counsel, and walked to the house of God in company. Some of you have lost a father in Christ, whose instrumentality first awakened you to a conviction of your guilt and danger, and then calmed your fears and soothed your agitations, by directing you to the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. All of you have lost a wise and affectionate friend, who was able to advise you in difficulty, to sympathize with you in sorrow, and to comfort you with the consolations with which he was comforted of God. And, by this sad stroke, I too have lost a father and a brother, with whom, for more than fifteen years, I have associated in this city, and to whose example and kindness I owe much as a minister of Jesus Christ. We have often conversed together freely on many subjects, even on those in which we differed in opinion--and all my intercourse with him has only served to increase my admiration of his talents, my veneration of his piety, and my desire to be like him in diligence, and impressiveness, and perseverance. MAY I DIE THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS! MAY MY LAST END BE LIKE HIS!

As it is probably expected that I should give you a brief history of the deceased, I present you with the following sketch before I proceed to the concluding part of the discourse:--

The Rev. Joseph Kinghorn, the youngest child of David and Elizabeth Kinghorn, appears to have been born in Newcastle, Northumberland, on the 17th January, 1766. His father was, from about four years after the birth of his son, pastor of a small congregation of baptists in Bishop Burton, in Yorkshire, where he remained till he and his venerable partner came to reside with him in this city. Their son was in early life engaged in the employ of Messrs. Walker, Fishwick, and Co., of Newcastle, manufacturers of white lead; and whilst there he became a member of the baptist church. His qualifications for public usefulness were soon recognized by his brethren, with whose concurrence he was sent, at the joint expense of Mr. Ward and Mr. Fishwick, to enter on a course of study in the Bristol Academy, under the care of Dr. Caleb Evans, the divinity tutor, and of the Rev. Mr. Newton, the classical tutor, who was succeeded in that office by the Rev. Robert Hall, a short time before Mr. Kinghorn left the academy.

At the close of his studies Mr. Kinghorn visited Fairford, in Gloucestershire, and preached there for some time as a candidate for the pastoral office, but was prevented from settling among them by an unwarrantable suspicion, entertained by some of the people, respecting his orthodoxy, which appears to have harassed his mind and injured his health. At that time his friend, Mr. Fishwick, happened to be in Norwich on business; and, having been informed that the church here was destitute of a pastor, he warmly recommended his young friend as a candidate; in consequence of which, an invitation was sent from the church to Mr. Kinghorn, requesting his services for a few weeks; and he arrived in Norwich on the 28th March, 1789, and preached his first sermon here on the following Lord's day, March 29th, from Romans v. 10.--"For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life."

Mr. Kinghorn's immediate predecessor in this church, was the Rev. Rees David, who served it with fidelity and usefulness for eleven years, when he was cut off by a fever, in the February of 1788. The high degree of regard which Mr. David enjoyed, from the integrity of his character, his zeal for the cause of religion and of civil and religious liberty, and from the energy and power of his preaching, rendered it no small difficulty to obtain a successor acceptable to the destitute church; and though a minister of considerable talents had been supplying the vacant pulpit for some months after Mr. David's death, yet opinions respecting him were so much divided, as to bring the congregation into a very uncomfortable state. It was at this crisis that Mr. Kinghorn arrived; and though much enfeebled and distressed when he came, yet in the society of the late Mr. and Mrs. William Wilkin, he found the consolations of a sincere and delicate friendship, and by frequent visits to their country residence, he soon regained the tone both of his body and mind. In after life he testified his sense of obligation to their kindness, by accepting the charge of their young and orphan children, over whom, as you well know, he watched with affectionate and parental care.

After having preached in Norwich for several sabbaths, he received an invitation from the church to become its pastor, which he accepted in January, 1790. On the 20th of the following May, he was ordained to the pastoral office; on which occasion the Rev. Zenas Trivett commenced the service; his father, the Rev. David Kinghorn, gave the charge, from 1 Timothy, iv, 13.--"Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine;" and the Rev. Mr. Richards, of Lynn, preached the sermon to the church and congregation.

Under his ministry, the congregation having increased in numbers and respectability, it was determined to pull down the old meeting house; and sums of money, sufficient for the erection of a new place, having been liberally subscribed by the people, the present place of worship was erected, and opened for divine worship, on Thursday, June the 25th, 1812; on which interesting occasion, Mr. Kinghorn preached in the morning from Psalm xc. 17; and the Rev. William Hull, in the evening, from Psalm xcv, 1, 2, 3.

Having given you this brief detail, we now proceed to consider,

Your own minister's anxiety and endeavour during his life, like that of the apostle's, was, that after his decease, you might have these things always in your remembrance. Still, it is not merely an intellectual remembrance of these things which it becomes you to cherish. You may remember every text from which he preached, and every sermon he has delivered, and yet neither be sanctified nor saved by their influence. Nor can you be saved by keeping in memory the things which you have heard, unless you remember them with faith, and experience, and practice; "for if ye know these things happy are ye if ye do them." Permit me, therefore, earnestly and affectionately to address to you the following exhortations.

In the first place, you should cherish the remembrance of these things by BELIEVING the gospel which he preached. There are some of you, my beloved friends, whose minds I fear still need to be stirred up to the remembrance of the things that belong to your peace. The endeavours of your departed minister, diligent, and impressive, and persevering, as they were, have failed to awaken in your hearts the feelings of penitence and faith. Some of you have, perhaps, for many years, sat under the sound of that gospel which during every year has been to you "the savour of death unto death." Throughout the whole course of his ministry you are the persons who occasioned his keenest anxieties and his bitterest disappointments; for so far as you were concerned he seemed to labour in vain, and to spend his strength for nought. Yet he warned, and exhorted, and admonished you to the last; and it should be to you, day and night, an awful and awakening remembrance, that the very last text from which he preached, was the subject of a sermon emphatically addressed to you; for its language was, "NOTWITHSTANDING I HAVE SPOKEN UNTO YOU, RISING EARLY AND SPEAKING, YET YE WOULD NOT HEARKEN UNTO ME." And these words, the last which he addressed to you on earth, were, perhaps, the first which he repeated concerning you at the bar of God. Ah! my brethren, were it possible for any thought to disturb his peaceful breast in heaven, it would be the recollection of the state of guilt and impenitence in which he has left you on earth--it would be the thought that now perhaps you and he are separated for ever. And shall this be the case? Can any of you--can you, my dear young friends, bear the thought that you may have bidden an eternal farewell to your faithful and paternal minister? Will you, who have procrastinated till his death, not have these things in your remembrance now, after his decease? When there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, shall he never be told that angels are rejoicing over you? And will you not from this time, and from the grave of your deceased instructor cry unto God, "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth?" My dear brethren, whether you be young or old, "behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation." To-morrow may be too late for ever; and if you delay, the remembrance of these things may be stirred up in your minds by the worm that dieth not, and by the fire that never shall be quenched. But if you wish to have these things in your remembrance now, go, by faith and prayer, to that Redeemer, whose gospel and whose minister you have hitherto neglected. Go to him with all the guilt and condemnation which that neglect has contracted. Go, as the prodigal went, with the feeling of penitence in your heart, and the confession of penitence on your lip--and whilst you are yet afar off, he will behold you with compassion, and run, and fall on your neck, and embrace you, and exclaim, "This my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found!"

Secondly, You should cherish the remembrance of these things by ADHERING to the gospel which he preached. For as it respects you who have, through grace, believed the gospel which he preached, his endeavour was that, after his decease, you might have these things ALWAYS in remembrance--and the Lord grant that his joy concerning you may be fulfilled. There are, I doubt not, many persons, once blessed with the ministry of our beloved friend on earth, who are now his companions in the skies; and of whom he has said already, "Behold here am I, and the children thou hast given me." And there are, I trust, many now present who will be "his hope, and his joy, and his crown of rejoicing in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming." You, my dear brethren in the Lord, can no longer enjoy the living instructions of your revered pastor, but it becomes you, as members of his church, to have the things which he once taught you always in remembrance. Adhere steadfastly and perseveringly to the doctrines, and to the spirit, and to the practice of the gospel of Jesus Christ, "by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned." Imitate your deceased minister's excellencies, and avoid his imperfections. Endeavour to equal him--endeavour to surpass him in all that is holy, and just, and good. Above all, let the same mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus; and repose, with unshaken confidence, on that grace which is sufficient for you, and on that strength which is made perfect in your weakness. You are now in circumstances such as require all the sympathy and consolation that the gospel can supply. Your minister is a corpse--the house of God in which he has been accustomed to meet you is become his sepulchre--and all your future meetings will be held around his grave. May the God of mercy be your comforter. May all the grace and tenderness which fills and flows from HIS heart who wept at the grave of Lazarus, flow into your own. And when you begin to look out for a successor to your deceased pastor, may you be directed to one who shall appear among you clothed with his mantle, and blessed with a double portion of his spirit. In all your future intercourse with each other, and in all your social meetings for devotion or for the business of the church, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, to adhere always to the gospel of Christ. Never lose the praise which you have in other churches of the saints, by destroying peace among yourselves. LET BROTHERLY LOVE CONTINUE. Let each individual among you determine, for the sake of Christ and of his people, to cherish it in his own heart and to exhibit it in his own conduct, and then its fragrance will perfume and bless the church. "It will be like the precious ointment on the head of Aaron, which went down to the skirts of his garments; and like the dew which descended on the mountains of Zion, where the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore." "Jehovah bless you and keep you. Jehovah cause his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. Jehovah lift upon you the light of his countenance, and give you peace."

Finally, You should cherish the remembrance of these things by CIRCULATING the gospel which he preached. This also, my brethren, was one of the things which your minister endeavoured that you should have in your remembrance after his decease--for the ready and efficient assistance which he gave to many of the religious institutions in this city--the efforts which he made to extend the gospel in the county--and the laborious zeal with which he endeavoured to promote the interests of the Baptist Missionary Society--all shew how desirous he was to advance the kingdom of Christ in the world. Go you, my brethren, and do likewise. Never become weary of labouring in the cause of Christ. And remember, for your encouragement, that though the priests are not suffered to continue by reason of death, though ministers of the gospel are as mortal as their hearers, and though all flesh is grass, there is, nevertheless, one thing stable and eternal in the midst of this moving and this dying world--and this one thing is, "the word of the Lord, that endureth for ever." The church lives, though the pastor dies. The church must increase, though he has decreased. One generation shall pass away and another generation shall succeed, "till time and nature dies." But during all this mortality and change, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," and his word shall have free course and be glorified, till it cover and crown the world, and till the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever. "Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule, and authority, and power. For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! THEREFORE, MY BELOVED BRETHREN, BE YE STEADFAST, UNMOVEABLE, ALWAYS ABOUNDING IN THE WORK OF THE LORD, FORASMUCH AS YE KNOW THAT YOUR LABOUR IS NOT IN VAIN IN THE LORD."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet