But if it be so,—­if St. Paul and the Apostles believed in heaven and hell, and the resurrection of the dead, before they became Christians, what more did they learn about the next life, when they became Christians?  Something they did learn, most certainly—­and that most important.  St. Paul speaks of what our Lord and our Lord’s resurrection had taught him, as something quite infinitely grander, and more blessed, than what he had known before.  He talks of our Lord as having abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light; of His having conquered death, and of His destroying death at last.  He speaks at moments as if he did not expect to die at all; and when he does speak of the death of the Christian, it is merely as a falling asleep.  When he speaks of his own death, it is merely as a change of place.  He longs to depart, and to be with Christ.  Death had looked terrible to him once, when he was a Jew.  Death had had a sting, and the grave a victory, which seemed ready to conquer him:  but now he cries, ’O Death, where is thy sting?  O Grave, where is thy victory?’ and then he declares that the terrors of death and the grave are taken away, not by anything which he knew when he was a Pharisee, but through our Lord Jesus Christ.

All his old Jewish notions of the resurrection, though they were true as far as they went, seemed poor and paltry beside what Christ had taught him.  He was not going to wait till the end of the world—­ perhaps for thousands of years—­in darkness and the shadow of death, he knew not where or how.  His soul was to pass at once into life,—­ into joy, and peace, and bliss, in the presence of his Saviour, till it should have a new body given to it, in the resurrection of life at the last day.

This, I think, is what St. Paul learned, and what the Jews had not learned till our blessed Lord came.  They were still afraid of death.  It looked to them a dark and ugly blank; and no wonder.  For would it not be dark and ugly enough to have to wait, we know not where, it may be a thousand, it may be tens of thousands of years, till the resurrection in the last day, before we entered into joy, peace, activity or anything worthy of the name of life?  Would not death have a sting indeed, the grave a victory indeed, if we had to be as good as dead for ten thousands of years?

What then?  Remember this, that death is an enemy, an evil thing, an enemy to man, and therefore an enemy to Christ, the King and Head and Saviour of man.  Men ought not to die, and they feel it.  It is no use to tell them, ’Everything that is born must die, and why not you?  All other animals died.  They died, just as they die now, hundreds of thousands of years before man came upon this earth; and why should man expect to have a different lot?  Why should you not take your death patiently, as you take any other evil which you cannot escape?’ The heart of man, as soon as he begins to be a man, and not a mere savage; as soon as he begins to think