And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and to death.  Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but stolen for an instant; whether death is ours, our subject, ministering only to our good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp we have escaped for a few short years, but who is following fast after us, and when he has once caught us will hold us fast for ever!  Have we ever seen his near approach—­has he ever forced himself upon our notice whether we would or no?  But two days since he was amongst us,—­we were, as it were, forced to look upon him.  Did we think that he was ours, or that we were his?  If we are his, then indeed he is fearful:  fearful to the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being.  It is fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing.  But if death, even thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting beside, the sting of our sins?  What is he when he is taking us, not to nothingness, but to judgment?  He is indeed so fearful then, that no words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no arguments which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.

But what if death too, as well as life, be ours?—­which he is, if we are Christ’s; for Christ has conquered him.  If he be ours, our servant, our minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then, indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from.  Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon, have but little pain for him who is undergoing them.  For it is not only amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more than conquerors,—­in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under the grasp of fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as often and as completely.  It is not a little thing when the faintest whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance breathes of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness.  It is not a little thing when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be, for reason may be too weak for this; but with an indescribable power of support and comfort.  Or even if there be a last conflict,—­a season of terror and of pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and gloomy,—­yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as their trial is so is his love.  Thus it is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if we be Christ’s.  And are we not Christ’s?  We bear his name, we have his outward seal of belonging to his people,—­can we refuse to be his in heart and true obedience?  Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy them as our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure possession for ever?  Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say and to feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to come, as well as things present, because we are truly Christ’s?