light by the Gospel.' We
do _not_, according to the sad words of one of the victims of modern
advanced thought, pass by the common road into the great darkness, but
by the Christ-made living Way into the everlasting light. And so it is a
misnomer to apply the same term to the physical fact plus the
accompaniment of dread and shrinking and fear of retribution and
solitude and darkness, and to the physical fact invested with the direct
and bright opposites of all these.

Sleep is rest; sleep is consciousness; sleep is the prophecy of waking.
We know not what the condition of those who sleep in Jesus may be, but
we know that the child on its mother's breast, and conscious somehow, in
its slumber, of the warm place where its head rests, is full of repose.
And they that sleep in Jesus will be _so_. Then, whether we wake or
sleep does not seem to matter so very much.

III. The united life of all who live with Christ.

Christ's gift to men is the gift of life in all senses of that word,
from the lowest to the highest. That life, as our text tells us, is
altogether unaffected by death. We cannot see round the sharp angle
where the valley turns, but we know that the path runs straight on
through the gorge up to the throat of the pass--and so on to the
'shining table-lands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon.' There are
some rivers that run through stagnant lakes, keeping the tinge of their
waters, and holding together the body of their stream undiverted from
its course, and issuing undiminished and untarnished from the lower end
of the lake. And so the stream of our lives may run through the Dead
Sea, and come out below none the worse for the black waters through
which it has forced its way. The life that Christ gives is unaffected by
death. Our creed is a risen Saviour, and the corollary of that creed is,
that death touches the circumference, but never gets near the man. It is
hard to believe, in the face of the foolish senses; it is hard to
believe, in the face of aching sorrow. It is hard to-day to believe, in
the face of passionate and ingenious denial, but it is true all the
same. Death is sleep, and sleep is life.

And so, further, my text tells us that this life is life with Christ. We
know not details, we need not know them. Here we have the presence of
Jesus Christ, if we love Him, as really as when He walked the earth. Ay!
more really, for Jesus Christ is nearer to us who, having not seen Him,
love Him, and so