Psalms 112:6

The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.

The reputation of good men after death

I. Whence it comes to pass, that good men are very often defrauded of their just praise and reputation whilst they are alive.

1. From what cause it proceeds.

(1) Good men themselves are many times the cause of it. For the best men are imperfect; and present and visible imperfections do very much lessen and abate the reputation of a man’s goodness.

(2) The principal cause is from others. From the hatred and opposition of bad men to holiness and virtue. From the envy of those who perhaps have some degree of goodness themselves.

(3) There is something in the very presence and nearness of goodness and virtue, which is apt to lessen it. Perhaps familiarity and conversation does insensibly beget something of contempt; but whatever the reason of it be, we find the thing most certainly true in experience.

2. For what reasons the providence of God permits it thus to be.

(1) To keep good men humble, and, as the expression is in Job, “to hide pride from men.”

(2) This life is not the proper season of reward, but of work and service.

II. What security good men have of a good name after death.

1. From the providence of God.

(1) In respect of the equity of it. God, who will not be behindhand with any man, concerns Himself to secure to good men the proper reward of their piety and virtue.

(2) In regard of the example of it. It is a great argument to virtue, and encouragement to men to act their part well, to see good men applauded, when they go off the stage.

2. The other part of the account of this truth is to be given from the nature of the thing: because death removes and takes away the chief obstacle of a good man’s reputation. For then his defects are out of sight, and men are contented that his imperfections should be buried in his grave with him.

III. Inferences by way of application.

1. To vindicate the honour which the Christian Church hath for many ages done to the first teachers and martyrs of our religion; I mean more especially to the holy apostles of our Lord and Saviour; to whose honour the Christian Church hath thought fit to set apart solemn times, for the commemoration of their piety and suffering, and to stir up others to the imitation of them.

2. Let this consideration, that “the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance,” be an encouragement to us to piety and goodness. This, to a generous nature, that is sensible of honour and reputation, is no small reward and encouragement.

3. Whenever we pretend to do honour to the memory of good men, let us charge ourselves with a strict imitation of their holiness and virtue. (J. Tillotson.)

Everlasting remembrance of the good

I. It is seen in the favours which Heaven confers upon remote posterity for their sake. God blesses children’s children, unborn generations, for the sake of a holy ancestor. David may be selected as an example of this (1 Kings 11:11; 1 Kings 15:4; 2 Kings 8:19).

II. In the good which the Almighty accomplishes by their instrumentality through distant times.

1. By their biography.

2. By their literary productions.

III. In the connection of their labours with the indestructible consciousness of men. The saved and the lost will remember their counsel, their reproofs, their exhortations, their sermons, their prayers, for ever and ever.

IV. In the blessings which the almighty will impart to them through all eternity. The subject teaches--

(1) The immense value of a righteous man in society. His usefulness is as permanent as the stars.

(2) The best method of achieving lasting fame. Usefulness alone can give it. (Homilist.)

The religious aspect of history

It is now more than six hundred years ago since one of the earliest fathers of English history, an inmate of the venerable Abbey of St. Albans, which nurtured the first school of English historical learning, recounted, at the commencement of his work, how he was vexed by questions, some put by envious detractors, some arising from serious perplexity, whether the record of times that were dead and gone was worthy of the labour and study of Christian men. He replied, with a lofty consciousness of the greatness of his task, first by an appeal to the highest instincts of man, and then added, as a further and complete sanction of these instincts, the words of the psalmist, “The just shall be had in everlasting remembrance.” These are simple and familiar words; but the old chronicler of St. Albans was right in saying that they contain the principle which vindicates and sanctifies all historical research. “If thou,” he said to his readers, “if thou forgettest and despisest the departed of past generations, who will remember thee?” “It was to keep alive,” so he added, “the memory of the good, and teach us to abhor the bad, that all the sacred historians have striven from Moses down to the ‘deep-souled’ chroniclers of the years in which we ourselves are living.”

1. “Everlasting remembrance”--“eternal memory”--“a memorial that shall endure from generation to generation.” This is what history aims to accomplish for the ages of the past. As we are reminded both by Scripture and by experience of the noble, the inextinguishable desire implanted within us to understand and to bring near to us the wonders of the firmament, so in like manner we may be assured that there lies deep in the human heart a desire not less noble, not less insatiable, to understand and to bring near to us the wonders of the ages that are dead and buried (Psalms 77:5; Psalms 77:10; Psalms 78:2). As the celestial spheres are mapped out by the natural student to guide the mariner, and “for times, and for seasons, and for days, and for years,” so the spheres of earthly events are mapped out by the historical student, and the monuments of glory and the beacons of danger are set along the shores of the past, to direct us through the trackless ocean of the future. Happy, thrice happy he who has the ears to hear those voices of the dead which others cannot hear--who has the eyes to see those visions of the ancient times which to others are dim and dark. History may be fallible and uncertain, but it is our only guide to the great things that God has wrought for the race of man in former ages; it is the only means through which “we can hear, and” through which “our fathers can declare to us the noble works which He has done in their days, and in the old time before them.”

2. And not only the religion of the natural man, but the whole structure of the Bible is a testimony to the sacredness and the value of historical learning. Unlike all other sacred books, the sacred books both of the Old and New Testament are, at least half in each, not poetical, or dogmatical, but historical. Doctrine, precept, warning, exhortation, all are invested with double charms when clothed in the flesh and blood of historical facts. If there has been an “everlasting remembrance “ of One supremely Just, in whom the Divine Mind was made known to man in a special and transcendent degree, it is because that Just One, the Holy and the True, “became flesh and dwelt amongst us,” and became (so let us speak with all reverence and all truth) the subject of historical description, of historical research, of historical analysis, of historical comparison. The sacred historians of the Jewish Commonwealth--still more the simple, homely, but profound historians of the New Testament whom we call the Evangelist,--are the most impressive of all preachers.

3. And this power is not confined to the history of the Jewish people, or of the Christian Church. It extends to the history of “the nations”--of “the Gentiles,” as they are called in the Bible. “The just,” without reserve, in whatever nation, and of whatever creed, “is to be had in everlasting remembrance.” “Whatsoever things are true,” etc., in whatsoever race, or under whatsoever form,--these things are the legitimate, the sacred, subjects which the Father of all good gifts has charged the historians of the world to read and to record wheresoever they can be discerned. (Dean Stanley.)

The reputation of the righteous

The desire of reputation is part of the social constitution which God has given us; and, when properly directed, has a powerful tendency to promote our moral perfection. But we desire not the esteem of our contemporaries alone. Extending our prospects through a wider sphere, we seek to be approved by the spirits of the just who adorned the ages that are past; and look forward, with fond expectation, to the reverence that awaits us, after this mortal frame shall have mouldered into dust. But though the desire of reputation be natural to man, and though it operates with peculiar force in the noblest minds; yet it is not to be followed as the guide of our conduct. It is valuable only when it acts in subordination to the principles of virtue, and gives additional force to their impression. Separated from these principles, it becomes a source of corruption and depravity. Instead of animating the soul to generous deeds, it descends to foster the swellings of vain glory, and to beget the meanness of ostentation, or the vileness of hypocrisy. When the love of praise is perverted to such unworthy purposes, it seldom accomplishes its end. For though the artifices of deceit may succeed for a while, and obtain for the undeserving a temporary applause, yet the constitution of things has placed an insuperable bar between the practice of iniquity and a durable reputation. To the virtuous alone belongs the reward of lasting glory; and the Almighty will not suffer a stranger to intermeddle with their joy. For them Providence has prepared the approbation of the age in which they live, and their memorial descends to warm the admiration of succeeding times. Light is sown for the upright; the memory of the just is blessed; and the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. Death removes the chief causes of uncharitable judgment, and enables us to estimate the value of departed worth, free from the influence of prejudice and passion. The little jealousies which darken the reputation of the living seldom pursue them beyond the limits of the grave. Envy ceases when their merit has ceased to be an obstacle to our ambition. Their imperfections are buried with their bodies in the tomb, and soon forgotten; while their better qualities, recalled often to our thoughts, and heightened by the inconveniences which their departure occasions, live in the remembrance of their neighbours, and receive the tribute of just approbation. We are even willing to repay them by an excess of praise for the injury we did them while alive. (J. Finlayson, D.D.)

The immortality of influence

We think that when a man dies he has done with the world, and that the world has done with him. That view, how, ever, needs revision. There is much about a man that cannot be put into a coffin. Keats left for his epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” The names of men are generally so writ, but the life and character are impressed on society deeply, indelibly. We cannot properly speak of the immortality of bad influence; yet that influence spreads and persists to a distressing extent. But we can speak confidently about the immortality of the influence of the good. Abel being dead yet speaketh; we are not told that Cain does. It is a reassuring thing to know that the good which men do is not buried with their bones. Not only do remarkable saints influence posterity beneficially; all saints do so, although it may be in a less degree. We find it easy to believe that the men influence posterity whose deeds are emblazoned in history, whose books are in the libraries, whoso monuments are in the minster, but we are slow to believe in the posthumous life of the obscure and unknown. Yet the immortality of influence is just as true in regard to the humble as to the illustrious. Nature perpetuates the memory of the frailest and most fugitive life, of the simplest and most insignificant action and event. The rolling pebble, the falling leaf, and the rippling water of millions of years ago left their sign in the rocks. The minute creatures of the primeval world built up the strata on which we live, and affecting traces of their being and action are palpable everywhere. All this is going on still; every flash of lightning is photographed, every whisper vibrates for ever, every movement in the physical world leaves an imperishable record. Let us not, then, be anxious lest we should be forgotten. A secret law renders the lowliest life immortal. This gives a new view of the duration of life. We plaintively speak of human life as a dream, a flower, a shade. But the doctrine of the immortality of influence puts the subject in another light. We gain a new view of the seriousness of life. Confined to threescore years life appears insignificant; yet in the light of immortality of influence it appears unspeakably solemn. There is no circle to our influence but the horizon; we are alive to the coming of the Son of Man. We must wait for the last day before we are finally judged. Why? Because men do not close their account with the world at their death; our influence reaches to the last day, and therefore only then can the full and final verdict be given. (W. L. Watkinson.)