The House Appointed for All the Living
by Thomas Boston

For I know that you will bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all the living. Job 30 verse 23

While we are in the body, we are but an inn on our way homeward. When we come to our grave, we come to our home, our long home. All living must be inhabitants of this house, good and bad, old and young. Man's life is a stream running into death's devouring deeps. Those who now live in palaces must leave them and go home to this house. and those who have not where to lay their heads shall thus have a house at length.

It is long since death began to transport men into another world, and vast multitudes are gone there already. Yet the work is going on still. Death is carrying off new inhabitants daily to the house appointed for all the living. Who has ever heard the grave say, it is enough, Long has it been getting, but still it asks. We do but come in to the world to go out again. This world is like a great market where some are coming in, others going out. One generation passes away and another generation comes. Ecclesiastes 1 verse 4.

Death is an inexorable, irresistible messenger who cannot be diverted from executing his orders by the force of the mighty, the bribes of the rich, or the entreaties of the poor. Death does not reverence the hoary head, nor pity the harmless babe. The bold and daring cannot outbrave it. Nor can the faint-hearted obtain a discharge in this war. The strongest are but brittle earthen vessels, Easily broken in shivers.

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