ged in work which they themselves
loathe because of its baseness."

THE DOORWAY
--Easter
--Death

The Resurrection of Christ the Hope of the World--An Easter
Thought.

THE LESSON--That death is but the doorway between the earthly life
and the heavenly life of the believer.

There is no new thought or theory concerning the dead in Christ. The
most profound thinkers of the ages consider death as the entrance to a
future life. The illustration here presented has been employed in
various forms, but is given with the hope that it may, at Easter, help
someone to a clearer conception of the reward which awaits the
faithful.

~~The Talk.~~

"James Russell Lowell, dwelling upon the darkness of the cloud of
sorrow which death brings into the home, wrote:

"'Console, if you will, I can bear it,
'Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death!'

"How true! And God intended it should be so. Surely, it is His desire
that we should love to live in the earth which He has given
us. Surely, it is His desire that we should love those who are about
us, and that we should mourn when the earthly parting comes. And yet,
'it is impossible,' as Jonathan Swift has said, 'that anything so
natural, so necessary and so universal as death should ever have been
designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.' With this thought, we
may lift our faces once more, and as we dry our tears, forget the
problems, the sorrows and the triumphs of earth as we ask ourselves
the question, 'What shall _we_ be in the coming ages?' Compared
with this question, all others sink into insignificance. Science,
discovery, commercial achievement, social problems, the rise and fall
of nations--all come to us and claim attention, but we brush them
aside as we repeat, with passionate earnestness: What shall _we_
be--_we, ourselves_--in the coming time?

"No matter how long we ask the question, no matter how earnestly we
seek the solution, we shall not be satisfied with an answer, for God
has not intended that we should know. The Apostle John, 'whom Jesus
loved,' admits that 'it doth not yet appear what we shall be.'

"Does it mean, then, that we should look ahead, and see nothing before
us but the grave--the end of all? [Draw the grave, the headstone, and
the word, "Death," with black, completing Fig. 39.]

[Illustration: Fig. 39]

"Perhaps the disciples, t