was not seen, through dark, narrow, devious passages, but they were
led into a great company in a mighty hall. Seen from this side, the
ministry of Death parts a man from dear ones, but, oh! if we could
see round the turn in the corridor, we should see that the solitude
is but for a moment, and that the true office of Death is not so much
to part from those beloved on earth as to carry to, and unite with,
Him that is best Beloved in the heavens, and in Him with all His
saints. They that are joined to Christ, as they who pass from earth
are joined, are thereby joined to all who, in like manner, are knit
to Him. Although other dear bonds are loosed by the bony fingers of
the Skeleton, his very loosing of them ties more closely the bond
that unites us to Jesus, and when the dull ear of the dying has
ceased to hear the voices of earth that used to thrill it in their
lowest whisper, I suppose it hears another Voice that says: 'When
thou passest through the fire I will be with thee, and through the
waters they shall not overflow thee.' Thus the Separator unites,
first to Jesus, and then to 'the general assembly and Church of the
first-born,' and leads into the city of the living God, the pilgrims
who long have lived, often isolated, in the desert.

There is a last element in Death which is changed for the Christian,
and that is that to men generally, when they think about it, there is
an instinctive recoil from Death, because there is an instinctive
suspicion that after Death is the Judgment, and that, somehow or
other--never mind about the drapery in which the idea may be embodied
for our weakness--when a man dies he passes to a state where he will
reap the consequences of what he has sown here. But to Christ's
servant that last thought is robbed of its sting, and all the poison
sucked out of it, for he can say: 'He that died for me makes it
possible for me to die undreading, and to pass thither, knowing that
I shall meet as my Judge Him whom I have trusted as my Saviour, and
so may have boldness before Him in the Day of Judgment.'

Knit these four contrasts together. Death as a step into a dim
unknown _versus_ Death as a step into a region lighted by Jesus;
Death as the cessation of activity _versus_ Death as the introduction
to nobler opportunities, and the endowment with nobler capacities of
service; Death as the separator and isolator _versus_ Death as
uniting to Jesus and all His lovers; Death as haling us to the
jud