The possible enemies may be taken in four groups— (1) ^ Saaday and Headlam, JRomans, 223.
ROMANS VIII. 38, 39 151
those of our own Experience, gathered under the two com- prehensive words death and life; (2) those of the world of Spirits, called angels, principalities, powers; (3) those of Time, " things present and things to come " ; and (4) those of Space, " nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation."
i. Our own Experience.
" Neither death, nor life."
1. Death ! What a crude fact it is, driving its iron wedge into the limits of this strange, mysterious life of ours ; and the whole question of immortality comes quivering up into con- sciousness with such a sentence as this. Death, that seems to end things, but leaves us so far apart from our beloved ! Shall death end thouglit also, and shall the dream that has been so fair — that beyond the world there lived a Heart that cared for us — vanish into thick darkness and leave us utterly alone ? Death shall not separate us from the love of God; death is but a moment in life, an incident in a soul's career; and if God has loved us once He will love us for evermore, and on beyond the boundaries of the world God's love waits to be gracious. Death need make no man afraid who has believed in the love of God.
^ That men fear death, as likely to separate them from the love of God, to impair their union with Him, or, perchance, to put them beyond His reach, is beyond a doubt. There is nothing that most men fear so much as death ; nothing, alas, that most Christians fear so much. We have an instinctive and natural dread of it, which even faith finds it hard to conquer, and to which our imperfect faith often lends an additional force. It is not only the darkness and decay of the tomb that we dread ; it is also the judgment which lies beyond the tomb. It is not only that we are loth to part with those whom we love; we also fear, lest, in the pangs of death, we should relax the grasp of faith. And, hence, in the Service for the Dead, we use a prayer thau which few are more pathetic : " 0 Lord most holy, 0 God most mighty, 0 holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Th,ee." A most pathetic, and yet, as we often mean it, a most un-Christian prayer ! I'or what we too commonly imply by it is that if, amid the pangs of dissolution and the darkness of death, we should cease to see God by faith and to put our trust in Him, He will forsake us; that if,
152 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE
oppressed by mortal weakness, we loosen our hold upon Him, He will let us fall; that at the very crisis, and in the very circumstance, in which an earthly friend would strengthen his comforting grasp on us, our heavenly Friend will relax His grasj) and let us drop into the darkness which waits to devour us up ! Whereas Christ has taught us that God's help is nearest when we most need His help, that He perfects His strength in our weakness, that our redemption from all evil depends, not on our fluctuating sense of His Presence, or on our imperfect love for Him, but on His being with us although we know it not, and His eternal unbounded love for us.^
2. It is a great thing to be persuaded that this power we call death, which has been so feared and fought against, cannot sever the ties which unite us to God. It seems to separate the children of men from so much. Every day we see it in its own ancient and awful way invading human homes, breaking up circles of friendship, and laying its touch upon the dearest attachments. But let us not make too much of the isolating power of death even from this point of view. There is a love between soul and soul which death cannot destroy — a love that loves on though the outward presence has vanished, and is often conscious of even a closer communion than when each could only half express itself through the poor medium of the body. Death means invisibility, but not the loss or destruction of love ; not separation, perhaps not even distance. And how much more must it be true of Gud that death cannot divide us from Him, cannot pluck us out of His hands, cannot crush us out of existence ? To be loved by God is to be preserved and cherished. We are His children, therefore we must live on with Him and be cared for by Him.
^ To God death and the hereafter are not the mysteries and barriers they are to us. Those who die to us live to Him. They are in His care wherever they are. They have not passed from His sight because they have passed from our sight — gone beyond the range of our eye and ear. The mere passage from the seen to the unseen cannot touch His influence, His love to them, His power to help them and to hold communion with them. Death can have no manner of dominion over the Love that gave us their love, and gave it, not that it might perish, but for everlasting life.^