interval for the
disembodied spirit has no foundation, either in what we know of
spirit, or in what is revealed to us in Scripture. For the one thing
that seems to make it probable--the use of that metaphor of 'sleeping
in Jesus'--is quite sufficiently accounted for by the notions of
repose, and cessation of outward activity, and withdrawal of capacity
of being influenced by the so-called realities of this lower world,
without dragging in the unfounded notion of unconsciousness. My text
is incompatible with it, for it is absurd to say of an unconscious
spirit, clear of a bodily environment, that it is anywhere; and there
is no intelligible sense in which the condition of such a spirit can
be called being 'with the Lord.'

So, then, I think a momentary transition, with uninterrupted
consciousness, which leads to a far deeper and more wonderful and
blessed sense of unity with Jesus Christ than is possible here on
earth, is the true shape in which the act of death presents itself to
the Christian thinker.

And remember, dear brethren, that is all we know. Nothing else is
certain--nothing but this, 'with the Lord,' and the resulting
certainty that therefore it is well with them. It is enough for our
faith, for our comfort, for our patient waiting. They live in Christ,
'and there we find them worthier to be loved,' and certainly lapped
in a deeper rest. 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.'

II. In the next place, note the Christian temper in which to
anticipate the transition.

'We are always courageous, and willing rather to leave our home in
the body, and to go home to the Lord.' Now I must briefly remind you
of how the Apostle comes to this state of feeling. He has been
speaking about the natural shrinking, which belongs to all humanity,
from the act of dissolution, considered as being the stripping off of
the garment of the flesh. And he has declared, on behalf of himself
and the early Christian Church, his own and their personal desire
that they might escape from that trial by the path which seemed
possible to the early Christians--viz. that of surviving until the
return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, when they would be 'clothed upon
with the house which is from Heaven,' without the necessity of
stripping off that with which at present they are invested. Then he
says--and this is a very remarkable thought--that just because this
instinctive shrinking from death and yearning for the glorified body
is so stron