But, dear friends, that final cessation of earthly work has a double character.  ‘Thou shalt rest’ was said to this man of God.  But what of people whom death takes away from the only sort of work that they are fit to do?  It will be no rest to long for the occupations which you never can have any more.  And if you have been living for this wretched present, to be condemned to have nothing to do any more in it and with it will be torture, and not repose.  Ask yourselves how you would like to be taken out of your shop, or your mill, or your study, or your laboratory, or your counting-house, and never be allowed to go into it again.  Some of you know how wearisome a holiday is when you cannot get to your daily work.  You will get a very long holiday after you are dead.  And if the hungering after the withdrawn occupation persists, there will be very little pleasure in rest.  There is only one way by which we can make that inevitable end a blessing, and turn death into the opening of the gate of our resting-place; and that is by setting our heart’s desires and our spirit’s trust on Jesus Christ, who is the ’Lord both of the dead and of the living.’  If we do that, even that last enemy will come to us as Christ’s representative, with Christ’s own word upon his lip, ’Come unto Me, ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I’—­because He has given Me the power—­’I will give you rest.’

    ’Sleep, full of rest, from head to foot;
     Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.’

III.  That leads me to the last thought, the home.

‘Thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days.’  ’Stand’—­that is Daniel’s way of preaching, what he has been preaching in several other parts of his book, the doctrine of the resurrection.  ’Thou shalt stand in thy lot.’  That is a reference to the ancient partition of the land of Canaan amongst the tribes, where each man got his own portion, and sat under his own vine and fig-tree.  And so there emerge from these symbolical words thoughts upon which, at this stage of my sermon, I can barely touch.  First comes the thought that, however sweet and blessed that reposeful state may be, humanity has not attained its perfection until once again the perfected spirit is mated with, and enclosed within, its congenial servant, a perfect body.  ’Corporeity is the end of man.’  Body, soul, and spirit partake of the redemption of God.

But then, apart from that, on which I must not dwell, my text suggests one or two thoughts.  God is the true inheritance.  Each man has his own portion of the common possession, or, to put it into plainer words, in that perfect land each individual has precisely so much of God as he is capable of possessing.  ‘Thou shalt stand in thy lot,’ and what determines the lot is how we wend our way till that other end, the end of life.  ‘The end of the days’ is a period far beyond the end of the life of Daniel.  And as the course that terminated