gment-seat of the adversary _versus_ Death as bringing us to the
tribunal of the Christ; and I think we can understand how Christians
can venture to say, 'All things are ours, whether life or death'
which leads to a better life.

And now let me add one word more. All this that I have been saying,
and all the blessed strength for ourselves and calming in our sorrows
which result therefrom, stand or fall with the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. There is nothing else that makes these things certain. There
are, of course, instincts, peradventures, hopes, fears, doubts. But
in this region, and in regard to all this cycle of truths, the same
thing applies which applies round the whole horizon of Christian
Revelation--if you want not speculations but certainties, you have to
go to Jesus Christ for them. There were many men who thought that
there were islands of the sea beyond the setting sun that dyed the
western waves, but Columbus went and came back again, and brought
their products--and then the thought became a fact. Unless you
believe that Jesus Christ has come back from 'the bourne from which
no traveller returns,' and has come laden with the gifts of 'happy
isles of Eden' far beyond the sea, there is no certitude upon which a
dying man can lay his head, or by which a bleeding heart can be
staunched. But when He draws near, alive from the dead, and says to
us, as He did to the disciples on the evening of the day of
Resurrection, 'Peace be unto you,' and shows us His hands and His
side, then we do not only speculate or think a future life possible
or probable, or hesitate to deny it, or hope or fear, as the case may
be, but we _know_, and we can say: 'All things are ours ... death'
amongst others. The fact that Jesus Christ has died changes the whole
aspect of death to His servant, inasmuch as in that great solitude he
has a companion, and in the valley of the shadow of death sees
footsteps that tell him of One that went before.

Nor need I do more than remind you how the manner of our Lord's death
shows that He is Lord not only of the dead but of the Death that
makes them dead. For His own tremendous assertion, 'I have power to
lay down My life, and I have power to take it again,' was confirmed
by His attitude and His words at the last, as is hinted at by the
very expressions with which the Evangelists record the fact of His
death: 'He yielded up His spirit,' 'He gave up the ghost,' 'He
breathed out His life.' It is conf