the true office of Death is not so much to part from those beloved on earth as to carry to, and unite with, Him that is best Beloved in the heavens, and in Him with all His saints.  They that are joined to Christ, as they who pass from earth are joined, are thereby joined to all who, in like manner, are knit to Him.  Although other dear bonds are loosed by the bony fingers of the Skeleton, his very loosing of them ties more closely the bond that unites us to Jesus, and when the dull ear of the dying has ceased to hear the voices of earth that used to thrill it in their lowest whisper, I suppose it hears another Voice that says:  ’When thou passest through the fire I will be with thee, and through the waters they shall not overflow thee.’  Thus the Separator unites, first to Jesus, and then to ’the general assembly and Church of the first-born,’ and leads into the city of the living God, the pilgrims who long have lived, often isolated, in the desert.

There is a last element in Death which is changed for the Christian, and that is that to men generally, when they think about it, there is an instinctive recoil from Death, because there is an instinctive suspicion that after Death is the Judgment, and that, somehow or other—­never mind about the drapery in which the idea may be embodied for our weakness—­when a man dies he passes to a state where he will reap the consequences of what he has sown here.  But to Christ’s servant that last thought is robbed of its sting, and all the poison sucked out of it, for he can say:  ’He that died for me makes it possible for me to die undreading, and to pass thither, knowing that I shall meet as my Judge Him whom I have trusted as my Saviour, and so may have boldness before Him in the Day of Judgment.’

Knit these four contrasts together.  Death as a step into a dim unknown versus Death as a step into a region lighted by Jesus; Death as the cessation of activity versus Death as the introduction to nobler opportunities, and the endowment with nobler capacities of service; Death as the separator and isolator versus Death as uniting to Jesus and all His lovers; Death as haling us to the judgment-seat of the adversary versus Death as bringing us to the tribunal of the Christ; and I think we can understand how Christians can venture to say, ‘All things are ours, whether life or death’ which leads to a better life.

And now let me add one word more.  All this that I have been saying, and all the blessed strength for ourselves and calming in our sorrows which result therefrom, stand or fall with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  There is nothing else that makes these things certain.  There are, of course, instincts, peradventures, hopes, fears, doubts.  But in this region, and in regard to all this cycle of truths, the same thing applies which applies round the whole horizon of Christian Revelation—­if you want not speculations but certainties, you have to go to Jesus Christ for them.  There were many men