retaste of his love? Sickness,
danger,--I know that they come to many of us but rarely; but if we have
known them, or at least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in
its graver,--have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's
hands, that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing
can hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted
anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are left
wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if there is
no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths around us,
to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to ourselves in this
vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a loneliness; and whenever
we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with our own hearts alone, the
coldness and the loneliness must be felt. But consider that the things
which, we see around us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The
coldness and loneliness of the world, without God, must be felt more and
more as life wears on: in every change of our own state, in every
separation from or loss of a friend, in every more sensible weakness of
our own bodies, in every additional experience of the uncertainty of our
own counsels,--the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more
strongly: we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us
that "God is not the God of the dead."

And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the living"
grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far from every
one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who live unto him,
that he is their God, and that they are his children. On light occasions
or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the warmth of his love is
spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere of their lives: they for
ever feel his blessing. And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even
now, when they so often feel how little they deserve it; if they delight
still in being with God, and in living to him, let them be sure that
they have in themselves the unerring witness of life eternal: God is the
God of the living, and all who are with him must live.

Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the minds
of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the dead that
they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that, even whilst
writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news