al and inextinguishable, yet apart from Christ it has never
become a certainty. Though historian, philosopher, poet, lover and
saint have their own special arguments for the Hereafter, it is Christ
Himself Who is the sure Light both of this world and of that which is
to come. He has turned this hope into a full and glorious assurance.

HOW HAS HE DONE THIS?

(_a_) _By His teaching_.--Two things about mankind Christ took for
granted--sinfulness and immortality. He did not argue about this life
beyond; He took it for granted. No part of His teaching is explicable
on the supposition that all ends at the tomb. His basis for our
immortality is not our instinct but the character of God. On the bosom
of God's Fatherhood rests man's immortality. If God is our Father and
loves us as His children, then we are His and He is ours _forever_.
Death cannot break this tie of life and love which binds us to Him; it
cannot rob Him of His child. That God cannot be the God of the dead,
but of the living, is axiomatic. His personal relations are real and
are eternal.

The Christian faith is sufficient to give us certainty and comfort
concerning our departed. We are assured that the blessed dead are in
His safe keeping and through Him we are one with them in a union which
will one day be consummated in everlasting reunion and communion. Our
Christian watchwords are enough--"love in absence, trust in silence,
faith in reunion."

(_b_) _By His Life_.--To the eye that can see, His life is the supreme
argument for immortality. He lived such a life of fellowship with God
and so near to the frontier of eternity that the glory of it shone upon
and from His face. The longing for a life higher than the life of time
is answered in His life. Such a life could not be holden by death. It
is eternal. It has the quality now and always of everlastingness.

(_c_) _By His Resurrection_.--He confirmed the truth of what He taught,
and lived, by what He did. He rose again, transformed, not merely
resuscitated. He irradiated the spiritual land. It is no longer "an
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns." The
empty tomb, the cumulative evidence of independent witnesses, the
transformation in the lives of believers, the institutions of the
Christian Church, its continued existence, the personal experience of
the power of a rising life in individual Christians throughout the ages
to the present time--are the attest