ich is before the Throne,' 'Absent
from the body; present with the Lord.'

Further, these two words suggest that the same act is emancipation from
bondage and entrance into royalty.

'My exodus.' Israel came out of Egyptian servitude and dropped chains
from wrists and left taskmasters cracking their useless whips behind
them, and the brick kilns and the weary work were all done when they
went forth. Ah, brethren, whatever beauty and good and power and
blessedness there may be in this mortal life, there are deep and sad
senses in which, for all of us, it is a prison-house and a state of
captivity. There is a bondage of flesh; there is a dominion of the
animal nature; there are limitations, like high walls, cribbing,
cabining, confining us--the limitations of circumstance. There is the
slavery of dependence upon this poor, external, and material world.
There are the tyranny of sin and the subjugation of the nobler nature to
base and low and transient needs. All these fetters, and the scars of
them, drop away. Joseph comes out of prison to a throne. The kingdom is
not merely one in which the redeemed man is a subject, but one in which
he himself is a prince. 'Have thou authority over ten cities.' These are
the Christian aspects of death.

II. Now note, secondly, the great fact on which this view of death
builds itself.

I have already remarked that in one of my texts the Apostle seems to be
thinking about Jesus Christ and His decease. The context also refers to
another incident in his own life, when our Lord foretold to him that the
putting off his tabernacle was to be 'sudden,' and added: 'Follow thou
Me.'

Taking these allusions into account, they suggest that it is the death
of Jesus Christ--and that which is inseparable from it, His
Resurrection--that changes for a soul believing on Him the whole aspect
of that last experience that awaits us all. It is His exodus that makes
'my exodus' a deliverance from captivity and an entrance upon royalty.

I need not remind you, how, after all is said and done, we are sure of
life eternal, because Jesus Christ died and rose again. I do not need to
depreciate other imperfect arguments which seem to point in that
direction, such as the instincts of men's natures, the craving for some
retribution beyond, the impossibility of believing that life is
extinguished by the fact of physical death. But whilst I admit that a
good deal may be said, and strong probabilities may be allege