remorseless tyrants made use of the passions and brute force of the multitude to secure their own elevation to absolute power, inducing their victims to forge and rivet their own chains.  And it is so in this case.  Sinners are the slaves of Satan; those evil desires and inclinations which they so recklessly obey are but the tools and bonds of the great oppressor.  The wicked man sells his soul to the devil for the price of indulgence in “the pleasures

of sin, which are but for a season.”  There is a very easy way of testing this question of freedom or bondage in sin.  If you are really free, free to do as you like, you can do good as well as evil; you can give up your companionship with iniquity, and break your covenant with darkness, as readily, and with as little difficulty, as you made the compact.  Let the man who rejoices in his liberty to sin try to abandon iniquity; he will surely find it an impossible task.  However clearly he may discern the purity, justice, and goodness of God’s law, however passionately he may long, and however earnestly he may strive, to regulate his life by it, he will find himself “carnal, sold under sin;” he will “find another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin and death.”  It is easy to float with the stream, and the stronger the current the more buoyantly and exultingly it bears you on.  But try to breast the current.  You will soon find that you have undertaken a task which is “impossible with men,” and will sink exhausted and undone with the vain endeavour.  Alas! Satan is in very truth the lord of every enslaved soul, not rightfully, only by virtue of the foulest usurpation; but he is so in fact, and he “binds our captive souls fast in his slavish chains.” 

And by this bondage unto sin he holds us captive to death.  His law is “the law of sin and death;” and till Christ redeem and actually deliver us, we are bound over to endure “the bitter pains of eternal death.”  It is an awful thought, but it is as true as it is awful.  Our cruel and relentless jailer keeps us in the prison of sin, shut up under his power, with a view to our everlasting death.  May we be made conscious of our enslavement, for till we become so, we are not likely to seek for deliverance!

2.  The sure sign of bondage to Satan is continual subjection, or rather liability, to the fear of death.  It would scarcely be true to say of the great mass of the unconverted, that they are continually haunted and incommoded by the fear of death.  Their general condition is one of thoughtless and careless ease, but they are always, even through their whole life, liable to be thus haunted and incommoded.  Whenever the thought of death is brought home to them, as in the course of events it is ever and again sure to be, they are appalled and terrified.  They then feel that death has a sting, and they have some foretaste of its sharpness and venom.  They see nothing in death but the ruin of all their earthly hopes and schemes, and nothing after death but “a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery

indignation which shall devour the adversaries,” and when they seem to be themselves stricken by the hand of death, how do the terrors of hell make them afraid!

“O death, how shocking must thy summons be,
To him that is at ease in his possessions!”

There is a difference however, and a very great one, between the fear of death and the fear of dying.  Many good people are often tormented by the latter kind of fear.  It is frequently the result of a sensitive organization, or ill health, or a naturally gloomy temperament; and many who have been much troubled by it through life have found it to vanish completely when the supreme moment came.  But the fear of death is founded on the consciousness of unpreparedness for it, and on the anticipation of the punishments which it will bring.  Every unsaved sinner has abundant reason for the fear which, however he may laugh it off, will assuredly at times gain the mastery over him.  The brooding sense of insecurity; the secret sudden pang, stabbing him in the midst of his wildest joys; the desperate effort never to think, and the resolute refusal ever to speak of death; tell their tale, and show that the slaves of Satan are always liable to the fear of death.  O, if this be your case, it is high

time to look to yourselves!  If you cannot bear the thought of death; if the great and solemn hereafter is haunted by images that scare and threaten you; if you “put far away the evil day;” be sure there is something radically wrong.  Be sure, by that token, that you are the slave of the devil.  Be sure that you “are in jeopardy every hour.”  Never rest, never for a moment be satisfied, till you can look death calmly in the face, and discern for yourself the life to come, and your inheritance in heaven.

3.  For we all may have deliverance from our bondage to Satan, and from this characteristic effect and sign of it.  The death of Jesus has provided this deliverance for us.  By depriving Satan of his power over death, by expiating that sin which is the sting of death, and so entirely reversing and counteracting its penal efficacy, Christ hath wrought out for us a great salvation.  And when we commit ourselves to Him, relying on the efficacy of his atonement, our chains are broken, and our craven fears are banished.  Among the “first words” of newly-converted souls none are more common or triumphant than these, “I am not afraid to die now!  I have a hope beyond the grave!”  It is indeed a mighty deliverance.  What calm, what security, what blessed hope does it inspire!  To lose all

fear of the last and greatest of human calamities; to look into the face of that which was “once an uncouth hideous thing,” and to find that through our Saviour’s death it hath become “most fair and full of grace;” to see no longer a dark and shrouded fiend arrayed in mortal terrors, and poising an envenomed dart for the purpose of laying us low, and compassing our lasting ruin; but a shining and smiling messenger from the King of kings, bidding us to an everlasting banquet in his royal palace; is not this true, priceless, boundless liberty,—worth toiling, striving, suffering, dying for?  This flower of immortal hope blooms for each of us at the foot of the cross.  If by the death of Jesus we gain spiritual life, we shall rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and shall look forward to the day of our death as the day of our eternal marriage with the King of glory.  Let us not lose this unspeakable privilege!  Let us, by faith in the death of our Lord, secure our freedom and our birthright!  And, as we think of our smitten friends, let us thank God for their final deliverance from the power of death, and their admission into everlasting life.  Finally, let us more and more glory in that cross whereby our Saviour Christ “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light.”