I just saw this article from earlier this week at Justin Taylor's blog. More information is available here. This past Monday, I gave away a copy of the 1992 edition of An Introduction To The New Testament to a coworker. That was the day Leon Morris died. I didn't know it at the time. I'm sure that my example of his influence will be multiplied many times. "The memory of the righteous is blessed" (Proverbs 10:7).
"Those preachers whose voices were clear and mighty for truth during life continue to preach in their graves. Being dead, they yet speak; and whether men put their ears to their tombs or not, they cannot but hear them...Often, the death of a man is a kind of new birth to him; when he himself is gone physically, he spiritually survives, and from his grave there shoots up a tree of life whose leaves heal nations. O worker for God, death cannot touch thy sacred mission! Be thou content to die if the truth shall live the better because thou diest. Be thou content to die, because death may be to thee the enlargement of thine influence. Good men die as dies the seed-corn which thereby abideth not alone. When saints are apparently laid in the earth, they quit the earth., and rise and mount to Heaven-gate, and enter into immortality. No, when the sepulcher receives this mortal frame, we shall not die, but live." (Charles Spurgeon, cited in The C.H. Spurgeon Collection [Albany, Oregon: AGES Software, 1998], A Biography Pictoral of C.H. Spurgeon, p. 3)
"A Life That Was Lived Well." Wow, you sure are right, Jason.
ReplyDeleteI never read any of Morris' works, and am not really familiar with him in any other way, but just reading obituaries and other writings in memoriam of the man stirs something in my heart -- which, for some odd reason, I don't recall ever having experienced before (or lately, perhaps?). Truly there's a sweet scent or aroma in nearly every word written about the man.
And, in all sincerity, the response it elicits from me at least is humble gratitude to the Lord for having given him the grace to live a godly life; and for us who seek to follow in Christ's footsteps, a godly man to behold. Especially in our day and age, in which, to me at least, it seems like there are fewer and fewer godly men in whom younger men might look to imitate as they imitate Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 11:1; Eph. 5:1; Phil. 3:17; Heb. 13:7).
Anyway, thanks again, Jason, for your commendation of Leon Morris.