ord
between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the use
of the word is the precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression
because the thing has become gentler.

It is profoundly significant that throughout the whole of the New
Testament the plain, naked word 'death' is usually applied, not to the
physical fact which we ordinarily designate by the name, but to the grim
thing of which that physical fact is only the emblem and the parable,
viz., the true death which lies in the separation of the soul from God;
whilst predominately the New Testament usage calls the physical fact by
some other gentler form of expression, because, as I say, the gentleness
has enfolded the thing to be designated.

For instance, you find one class of representations which speak of death
as being a departing and a being with Christ; or which call it, as one
of the apostles does, an 'exodus,' where it is softened down to be
merely a change of environment, a change of locality. Then another class
of representations speak of it as 'putting off this my tabernacle,' or,
the dissolution of the 'earthly house'--where there is a broad, firm
line of demarcation drawn between the inhabitant and the habitation, and
the thing is softened down to be a mere change of dwelling. Again,
another class of expressions speak of it as being an 'offering,' where
the main idea is that of a voluntary surrender, a sacrifice or libation
of myself, and my life poured out upon the altar of God. But sweetest,
deepest, most appealing to all our hearts, is that emblem of my text,
'them that sleep.' It is used, if I count rightly, some fourteen times
in the New Testament, and it carries with it large and plain lessons, on
which I touch but for a moment. What, then, does this metaphor say to
us?

Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive
conception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively it is by no means
wholesome. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and
the ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their
activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friends, there are
some of us like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with
the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and
bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts
are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of
shuffling off this weary coil of respon