their places be, that
these fair twin sisters come to us and make their abode with us.

Then, the second step in this tracing of the origin of the hope which
has the brighter source is the consideration that the joy and peace
which spring from faith, in their turn produce that confident
anticipation of future and progressive good.

Herein lies the distinguishing blessedness of the Christian joy and
peace, in that they carry in themselves the pledge of their own
eternity. Here, and here only, the mad boast which is doomed to be so
miserably falsified when applied to earthly gladness is simple truth.
Here 'to-morrow _shall_ be as this day and much more abundant.'
Such joy has nothing in itself which betokens exhaustion, as all the
less pure joys of earth have. It is manifestly not born for death, as
are they. It is not fated, like all earthly emotions or passions, to
expire in the moment of its completeness, or even by sudden revulsion
to be succeeded by its opposite. Its sweetness has no after pang of
bitterness. It is not true of this gladness, that 'Hereof cometh in
the end despondency and madness,' but its destiny is to 'remain' as
long as the soul in which it unfolds shall exist, and 'to be full' as
long as the source from which it flows does not run dry.

So that the more we experience the present blessedness, which faith
in Christ brings us, the more shall we be sure that nothing in the
future, either in or beyond time, can put an end to it; and hence a
hope that looks with confident eyes across the gorge of death, to the
'shining tablelands' on the other side, and is as calm as certitude,
shall be ours. To the Christian soul, rejoicing in the conscious
exercise of faith and the conscious possession of its blessed
results, the termination of a communion with Christ, so real and
spiritual, by such a trivial accident as death, seems wildly absurd
and therefore utterly impossible. Just as Christ's Resurrection seems
inevitable as soon as we grasp the truth of His divine nature, and it
becomes manifestly impossible that He, being such as He is--should
be holden of death,' being such as it is, so for His children, when
once they come to know the realities of fellowship with their Lord,
they feel the entire dissimilarity of these to anything in the realm
which is subjected to the power of death, and to know it to be as
impossible that these purely spiritual experiences should be reduced
to inactivity, or meddled with