d, it seems
to me that however much you may argue, no words, no considerations,
moral or intellectual, can suffice to establish more than that it would
be a very good thing if there were a future life and that it is probable
that there is. But Jesus Christ comes to us and says, 'Touch Me, handle
Me; a spirit hath not flesh and bones as I have. Here I am. I _was_
dead; I _am_ alive for evermore.' So then _one_ life, that we know
about, _has_ persisted undiminished, apart from the physical frame, and
that one Man has gone down into the dark abyss, and has come up the same
as when He descended. So it is His exodus--and, as I believe, His death
and Resurrection alone--on which the faith in immortality impregnably
rests.

But that is not the main point which the text suggests. Let me remind
you how utterly the whole aspect of any difficulty, trial, or sorrow,
and especially of that culmination of all men's fears--death itself--is
altered when we think that in the darkest bend of the dark road we may
trace footsteps, not without marks of blood in them, of Him that has
trodden it all before us. 'Follow thou Me,' He said to Peter; and it
should be no hard thing for us, if we love Him, to tread where He trod.
It should be no lonely road for us to walk, however the closest clinging
hands may be untwined from our grasp, and the most utter solitude of
which a human soul is capable may be realised, when we remember that
Jesus Christ has walked it before us.

The entrance, too, is made possible because He has preceded us. 'I go to
prepare a place for you.' So we may be sure that when we go through
those dark gates and across the wild, the other side of which no man
knows, it is not to step out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day'
into some dim, cold, sad land, but it is to enter into His presence.

Israel's exodus was headed by a mummy case, in which the dead bones of
their whilom leader were contained. Our exodus is headed by the Prince
of Life, who was dead and is alive for evermore.

So, brethren, I beseech you, treasure these thoughts more than you do.
Turn to Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead more than you
do. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the Christianity of this
day is largely losing the habitual contemplation of immortality which
gave so much of its strength to the religion of past generations. We are
all so busy in setting forth and enforcing the blessings of Christianity
in its effects