most
others who have used the word, death has been a sleep that knew no
waking, whereas the very pith and centre of the Christian reason for
employing the symbol are that it makes our waking sure. We have here
what the act of dying and the condition of the dead become by virtue
of faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

They have 'fallen asleep.' The act of dying is but a laying one's
self down to rest, and a dropping out of consciousness of the
surrounding world. It is very remarkable and very beautiful that the
new Testament scarcely ever employs the words _dying_ and _death_ for
the act of separating body and spirit, or for the condition either of
the spirit parted from the body, or of the body parted from the
spirit. It keeps those grim words for the reality, the separation of
the soul from God; and it only exceptionally uses them for the shadow
and the symbol, the physical fact of the parting of the man from the
house which here he has dwelt in. But the reason why Christianity
uses these periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms for death, is
the opposite of the reason why the world uses them. The world is so
afraid of dying that it durst not name the grim, ugly thing. The
Christian, or at least the Christian faith, is so little afraid of
death that it does not think such a trivial matter worth calling by
the name, but only names it 'falling asleep.'

Even when the circumstances of that dropping off to slumber are
painful and violent, the Bible still employs the term. Is it not
striking that the first martyr, kneeling outside the city, bruised by
stones and dying a bloody death, should have been said to fall
asleep? If ever there was an instance in which the gentle metaphor
seemed all inappropriate it was that cruel death, amidst a howling
crowd, and with fatal bruises, and bleeding limbs mangled by the
heavy rocks that lay upon them. But yet, 'when he had said this he
fell asleep.' If that be true of such a death, no physical pains of
any kind make the sweet word inappropriate for any.

We have here not only the designation of the act of dying, but that
of the condition of the dead. They are fallen asleep, and they
continue asleep. How many great thoughts gather round that metaphor
on which it is needless for me to try to dilate! They will suggest
themselves without many words to you all.

There lies in it the idea of repose. 'They rest from their labours.'
Sleep restores strength, and withdraws a man at