So much, then, for life—­calm, persistent in every duty, and animated by that blessed and far-off, but certain, hope, and all of these founded upon the vision and the faith of a risen Lord.  What have fears and cares and distractions and faint-heartedness and gloomy sorrow to do with the eyes that have beheld the Christ, and with the lives that are based on faith in the risen Lord?

II.  So, secondly, consider what death becomes to those who have seen Christ risen from the dead.

‘Some are fallen asleep.’  Now that most natural and obvious metaphor for death is not only a Christian idea, but is found, as would be expected, in many tongues, but yet with a great and significant difference.  The Christian reason for calling death a sleep embraces a great deal more than the heathen reason for doing so, and in some respects is precisely the opposite of that, inasmuch as to most others who have used the word, death has been a sleep that knew no waking, whereas the very pith and centre of the Christian reason for employing the symbol are that it makes our waking sure.  We have here what the act of dying and the condition of the dead become by virtue of faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

They have ‘fallen asleep.’  The act of dying is but a laying one’s self down to rest, and a dropping out of consciousness of the surrounding world.  It is very remarkable and very beautiful that the new Testament scarcely ever employs the words dying and death for the act of separating body and spirit, or for the condition either of the spirit parted from the body, or of the body parted from the spirit.  It keeps those grim words for the reality, the separation of the soul from God; and it only exceptionally uses them for the shadow and the symbol, the physical fact of the parting of the man from the house which here he has dwelt in.  But the reason why Christianity uses these periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms for death, is the opposite of the reason why the world uses them.  The world is so afraid of dying that it durst not name the grim, ugly thing.  The Christian, or at least the Christian faith, is so little afraid of death that it does not think such a trivial matter worth calling by the name, but only names it ‘falling asleep.’

Even when the circumstances of that dropping off to slumber are painful and violent, the Bible still employs the term.  Is it not striking that the first martyr, kneeling outside the city, bruised by stones and dying a bloody death, should have been said to fall asleep?  If ever there was an instance in which the gentle metaphor seemed all inappropriate it was that cruel death, amidst a howling crowd, and with fatal bruises, and bleeding limbs mangled by the heavy rocks that lay upon them.  But yet, ’when he had said this he fell asleep.’  If that be true of such a death, no physical pains of any kind make the sweet word inappropriate for any.

We have here not only the designation of the act of dying, but that of the condition of the dead.  They are fallen asleep, and they continue asleep.  How many great thoughts gather round that metaphor on which it is needless for me to try to dilate!  They will suggest themselves without many words to you all.