reasonably, and feel deeply; the heart of man answers:  ’No, I am not a mere animal.  I have something in me which ought not to die, which perhaps cannot die.  I have a living soul in me, which ought to be able to keep my body alive likewise, but cannot; and therefore death is my enemy.  I hate him, and I believe that I was meant to hate him.  Something must be wrong with me, or I should not die; something must be wrong with all mankind, or I should not see those I love dying round me.

Yes, my friends, death is an enemy,—­a hideous, hateful thing.  The longer one looks at it, the more one hates it.  The more often one sees it, the less one grows accustomed to it.  Its very commonness makes it all the more shocking.  We may not be so much shocked at seeing the old die.  We say, ’They have done their work, why should they not go?’ That is not true.  They have not done their work.  There is more work in plenty for them to do, if they could but live; and it seems shocking and sad, at least to him who loves his country and his kind, that, just as men have grown old enough to be of use, when they have learnt to conquer their passions, when their characters are formed, when they have gained sound experience of this world, and what man ought and can do in it,—­just as, in fact, they have become most able to teach and help their fellow-men,—­that then they are to grow old, and decrepit, and helpless, and fade away, and die just when they are most fit to live, and the world needs them most.

Sad, I say, and strange is that.  But sadder, and more strange, and more utterly shocking, to see the young die; to see parents leaving infant children, children vanishing early out of the world where they might have done good work for God and man.

What arguments will make us believe that that ought to be?  That that is God’s will?  That that is anything but an evil, an anomaly, a disease?

Not the Bible, certainly.  The Bible never tells us that such tragedies as are too often seen are the will of God.  The Bible says that it is not the will of our Father that one of these little ones should perish.  The Bible tells us that Jesus, when on earth, went about fighting and conquering disease and death, even raising from the dead those who had died before their time.  To fight against death, and to give life wheresoever He went—­that was His work; by that He proclaimed the will of God, His Father, that none should perish, who sent His Son that men might have life, and have it more abundantly.  By that He declared that death was an evil and a disorder among men, which He would some day crush and destroy utterly, that mortality should be swallowed up of life.

And yet we die, and shall die.  Yes.  The body is dead, because of sin.  Mankind is a diseased race; and it must pay the penalty of its sins for many an age to come, and die, and suffer, and sorrow.  But not for ever.  For what mean such words as these—­for something they must mean? —