present with the Lord." "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better." "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." The Master's own sayings, likewise, point to the bright side of death. 66 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." : And then the "saying" of the Holy Spirit crowns all by its explicitness, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." This blessedness must be realized to be fully understood. But even in the present life we can know in part wherein it consists. The mere fact of deliverance from all trouble and sorrow is enough to make Christians rejoice. Of the grave, Job said of old, "There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” And, without tasting Job's bitterness of soul, or being driven to the verge of madness, as he was, by accumulated suffering and unjust aspersions, we can appreciate the truth and beauty of his words. There is a pathos and tenderness about them which seem to soothe and calm the breast. We turn away from turmoil and unrest, oppression and cruelty, and see in the grave only its repose, and its protection from wrong, and are comforted with the thought that there is a refuge from the wicked and a rest for the weary. True, when we think of the grave in relation to many who enter it, the consolation which the idea of its repose imparts is subject to a great drawback. The rest of the grave, when narrowly considered, becomes a fiction. Death terminates bodily suffering, but it hands over the body which it delivers from suffering to uttermost corruption and dissolution. And to the soul death may be only the beginning of sorrows-sorrows, to escape from which it would most gladly come back into the body, even if its return should be a return to the hands of the oppressor and the wrong-doer. that those whom we congratulate as having escaped from the world's troubles, and as having reached that common abode of great and small, where the wicke cease from troubling and where the weary are at rest, may have passed into a condition still less desirable than that from which they have gone. So But, in contemplating the Christian's death, there is no drawback, no misgiving of this sort. The grave is to him a bed of peaceful rest. His body is no longer the occasion or the seat of suffering. The stripes of the taskmaster, and the fires of the persecutor can reach it no more. Aches and pains, weariness and languor, are gone for ever. "Hear what the voice from heaven proclaims For all the pious dead: 66 They die in Jesus, and are blest; How kind their slumbers are! From sufferings and from sins released, And freed from every snare." From the grave where the body lies, we look to the heaven where the spirit dwells; and in that heaven the redeemed "shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away!" We feel how full of comfort this thought is when the aged die-those whose fourscore years have brought them only travail and sorrow. We have gazed on their enfeebled frames, and witnessed the infirmities of their second childhood; and have felt, notwithstanding our reluctance to lose them, how little there is in their mode and state of life to make it desirable that life should be prolonged. And when Providence has taken them from us, we have felt it no small comfort to think that feebleness, and pain, and suffering, are past, and that wearied body and wearied spirit are alike at rest. In the case of the young it seems otherwise. To them life is enjoyment, and strength, and hope; and to be cut off from life is to be cut off from good, not from evil. Yet the difference between the old and the young is not so great as it seems. Life at the best, is full of trouble. The sunshine of the brightest morning is overcast with many clouds; and if the young were gifted with prophetic foresight they would often cry, "Let me hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest," rather than "chatter like a crane, or mourn like a dove," as Hezekiah did, that they are deprived of the residue of their years." The sorrows of even the earlier portions of life are sufficient, both in themselves and as the earnest of evils to come, to make us find comfort in the thought that death has placed them beyond the reach of all affliction and pain. Had they lived, who can tell what their future would have been-what disappointments, what disasters, what agony, what anguish, might have been their lot? But now they have gone where neither the peradventures nor the certainties of earthly sorrow can follow them. All that was mortal of them lies where the weary are at rest, and the immortal is with God, in the kingdom But it is far from being the whole of it. In death, Christians attain that completeness and perfection which are the very end of all earthly discipline and training. Our life is divided by death into two parts: the former very brief, the latter without end; but the whole condition and character of the latter depend on the former as certainly as the produce which is reaped in autumn depends on the seed which was sown in spring. When the Christian dies his harvest is come. The result of sowing and watering, of all culture and training, are now attained; and, instead of lamentation and woe, it is fitting that there should be the joy of harvest and the celebration of harvest-home. The season of growth and ripening some varies much more as to length in the spiritual world than in the natural; and the great Husbandman has reasons of His own, of which He does not inform us, for protracting it in cases, and shortening it in others. But when the harvest is early -when young Christians die-shall we weep on that account? Shall we weep that their days of training have not been prolonged, that they have not been exposed for more years to those vicissitudes of weather, of cloud and sunshine, by which ripening is effected? Shall we not rather rejoice that they have so soon attained the perfection of their being? We often see a broken column erected on a tomb-the tomb probably of one who has died young, or who has died while life seemed still incomplete. And such a monument is not without its significance. But it points rather to despair than to hope, to disappointment than to fruition. The inscription that should accompany it was furnished by Job in his hour of bitterness" My days are passed, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart. I have made my bed in darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister." Put no such monument, we would say, on the young Christian's grave. There is nothing incomplete in his life, nothing premature in his death. Many of the purposes of his heart may be unaccomplished, but they have been accepted by the Master instead of the fulfilment. And the Master's own purpose is accomplished; his work is finished. The Christian has been prepared by a brief but sufficient training for his eternal state. Charac ter has been matured and perfected. The very end for which earthly discipline was instituted and applied has been realized. This is the bright side of death. I once saw a beautiful symbol on the grave of a young Christian-a butterfly rising out of its chrysalis state to enjoy its perfect though brief life in the sunshine. It was designed to set forth the change which had already passed on the precious one that was gone, when her spirit left the body; and also the change which will take place at the resurrection, when "this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality." Put such symbols as this on their tombs if you will, but write on them no words of despair. Engrave on the marble such oracles of hope as these:- "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory.""If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him."-" O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"-"The last enemy, death, shall be destroyed."-" As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Verily death has a bright side. While it seems to be man's destruction, it is, in reality, the Christian's perfecting. And the young Christian instead of being cut off in the midst of his course, and deprived of the residue of his years, only reaches the goal before his older friends, and, instead of being the object of lamentation and wailing, might almost excite the envy of those who have still to traverse the sunburnt and toilsome road of life's wilderness. THE RESURRECTION OF THE RIGHTEOUS. THAT the whole human race, both the righteous and the wicked, are to be raised from the dead, or re-embodied, in order to be judged, is clearly a doctrine of the Scriptures. We find it so written in the Book of Daniel. Our Lord also declares, that "the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." St. Paul, also, in his address before Felix at Cæsarea, speaks of "the resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust," as a doctrine acknowledged by Jews as well as Christians. With such passages before us, the universality of the resurrection is not for a moment to be called in question. To no member of the human family is death an eternal sleep. No ear shall fail to be pierced by that final trumpet-blast. No slumbering human dust shall fail to stir. John the Baptist shall not look in vain for Herod, nor Paul for Nero, nor any saint for any sinner that has ever lived. They shall all be there, every son and every daughter of Adam's race, to receive judgment according to the deeds done in the body. And yet it is a remarkable circumstance, that in most of the New Testament passages which treat of the resurrection, it is the resurrection, not of the wicked, nor of all men, but of the righteous, which is brought to view. Indeed, there are but two passages in the New Testament, (the passage in John's Gospel, and the passage in Acts, already referred to) which teach explicitly the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. (John v. 28; Acts xxiv. 15.) Taking for granted the fact that all would rise, which Daniel had long before proclaimed, and which Christ had but re-affirmed, His Apostles preferred rather to dwell upon the resurrection of the righteous. They made it a theme, not so much of warning as of consolation. Christ would come, indeed, to raise and to judge the race, but He would come especially to raise and reward His Church. This is the view presented in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in language which sounds almost as though it came from the throat of a trumpet: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words." And this is all. The Apostle spends no breath upon those who awake only to shame and everlasting contempt. He salutes only the mustering squadrons of the blest. So, also, in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians : "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." "Slept," in the New Testament is a word sacred to the dying of the righteous: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," said Christ at Bethany. Of Stephen, the Protomartyr, it is recorded that he fell asleep." And then it is represented as characteristic of all departed believers, that they "sleep in Jesus." Hence that sweet inscription found upon hundreds of slabs in the Christian catacombs of Rome: "Dormit," he sleeps. While on Pagan monuments of the same age, spared as if on purpose to furnish a contrast, we read again and again the rebellious and plaintive inscription, "Abreptus," snatched away. Fit description of an unbeliever's exit from life. Mark well this difference, my hearers. In the one case, a violent. disruption of the tenderest ties; in the other, a slumber falling as softly as the evening dew. "Asleep in Jesus! blessed sleep! From which none ever wakes to weep!" Christ, we are told, is "the firstfruits" of them who thus sleep. Allusion is here made to the waving of the barley-sheaf, which was the beginning of the Jewish harvest. It was offered to the Lord as an acknowledgment that the whole harvest was His. It was also a pledge that the whole harvest should follow. The time appointed for it was the day following the Passover. In the year our Lord suffered, that barley-sheaf was waved on Saturday, while our Lord lay asleep in the grave. When Sunday morning dawned, another barley-sheaf was waved, the first-fruits of a glorious harvest which is yet to come. A harvest which began to be reaped and gathered on the very day our Lord himself issued from the tomb. At His dying cry, as we read in Matthew, "the rocks rent and the graves were opened, and many bodies of saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." (Matt. xxvii. 51-53.) The gate was opened for them by the atoning agony; but they rose not from their stony couches till their victorious Captain had led the way. Then they also arose. And, perhaps, as some have conjectured, our Lord took them with Him, when, after forty days, He ascended up on high, bearing them as sheaves in His bosom. Since then, millions have fallen asleep with the name of Jesus upon their. dying lips. Millions of little children, too, have passed away, too young to speak that blessed name. And millions upon millions more, as time rolls on, shall thus depart, speaking or speechless, but dropping their weary heads upon that faithful breast; millions upon millions of them, till the last of the human generation shall have come and played its part in the grand drama of redemption. And then our Lord himself will come, riding down upon a cloud to sit in judgment upon our Fear not, ye sleeping millions, ye who are asleep in Christ. shall not oversleep that trumpet-call. Your souls are already in the Conqueror's train, coming with Him to judgment. And now your bodies shall awake. And then the living shall be changed. And then ye shall all enter, together the New Jerusalem. See, oh! see its shining battlements! "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors." race. Ye Such is the consummation promised us, if only we are, found at last in |