our dear one is remembering you and
storing up in his memory all your love in the past. Did your wife ever
tell you on earth how happy you had made her? Did the old father and
mother now in the Unseen ever thank God for the comfort you had been to
them during their declining years? Be sure that in that land of love
these will be amongst the most precious pictures in their storehouse of
memory.

Section 4

And he has taken with him all the treasures of mind and soul which by
God's grace he has won for himself on earth. A man can take nothing of
the external things--of gold or lands. Nothing of what he HAS but all
of what he is--all that he has gained IN HIMSELF. The treasures of
memory, of disciplined powers, of enlarged capacities, of a pure and
loving heart. All the enrichment of the mind by study, all the love of
man, all the love of God, all the ennobling of character which has come
through the struggle after right and duty. These are the true
treasures which go on with us into that land where neither rust nor
moth doth corrupt.

Section 5

And he is "WITH CHRIST."

The Bible teaches that the faithful who have died in Christ are happy
and blest in Paradise even though the Final Heaven and the Beatific
Vision is still but a thing to be longed for far off in the future.
Lazarus is "comforted" after his hard life on earth. "The souls of the
righteous are in the hands of God, there shall no torment touch them."
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ... they rest from their
labours." But best of all it assures us that they are WITH CHRIST.
"Lord Jesus receive my spirit" the dying Stephen prayed as he passed
into the Unseen. They are "absent from the body at home with the
Lord." They "depart to be with Christ which is far better."

"With Christ." One has to write carefully here. The full vision of
the Divine Glory and Goodness and Love is reserved for the final stage
of existence in Heaven where nothing that defileth shall enter in,
whereas this Intermediate Life is one with many imperfections and
faults, quite unready for that vision of glory. But for all that St.
Paul believed that the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that
waiting land, in some such way we may suppose as on earth long ago.
Only an imperfect revelation of the Son of God. And yet--and yet--oh,
how one longs for it! Think of being near Him, even in some such
relation as were the disciples long ago.

"I think when I