sibilities and duties and tasks
and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I
believe, for my part, that, after all, the deepest longing of
men--though they search for it through toil and effort--is for repose.
As the poet has taught us, 'there is no joy but calm.' Every heart is
weary enough, and heavy laden, and labouring enough, to feel the
sweetness of a promise of rest:--

'Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'

Yes! but the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only
applicable to the bodily frame. The word 'sleep' is a transcript of what
sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded
hands and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that
this repose, deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the
repose of unconsciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not
believe, that this emblem refers to the vigorous, spiritual life, or
that the passage from out of the toil and moil of earth into the calm of
the darkness beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the vital
force of the man.

Why, the very metaphor itself tells us that the sleeper is not
unconscious. He is parted from the outer world, he is unaware of
externals. When Stephen knelt below the old wall, and was surrounded by
howling fanatics that slew him, one moment he was gashed with stones and
tortured, and the next 'he fell on sleep.' They might howl, and the
stones fly as they would, and he was all unaware of it. Like Jonah
sleeping in the hold, what mattered the roaring of the storm to him? But
separation from externals does not mean suspense of life or of
consciousness, and the slumberer often dreams, and is aware of himself
persistently throughout his slumber. Nay! some of his faculties are set
at liberty to work more energetically, because his connection with the
outer world is for the time suspended.

And so I say that what on the hither side is sleep, on the further side
is awaking, and that the complex whole of the condition of the sainted
dead may be described with equal truth by either metaphor; 'they sleep
in Jesus'; or, 'when I awake I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness.'

Scripture, as it seems to me, distinctly carries this limitation of the
emblem. For what does it mean when the Apostle says that to depart and
to be with Christ is far better? Surely he who thus spoke conceived tha