Never did Grecian art express so graphically the hopelessness of human love to stay the step of death. The inequality of the contest could not possibly be represented to us in a more striking manner. It seems to be cruel, remorseless, inevitable Fate, the sight of which strikes us dumb. And yet there is wonderful consolation in the picture; a calmness, a sense of submission, before which the most passionate nature must yield itself. We yield to death, as we yield to nothing else. It rules us like a law of nature ; and it stills our most desperate struggles. And on the drapery of the majestic figure of death, falling in such graceful folds around her person, there gleams a bright light from a hidden source, as if from another world out of sight, transfiguring the cerements of the grave. That light tells us of an unending day,
' W. E. Henley.
PHILIPPIANS I. 21 285
into which we shall enter as surely as on this earth of ours we pass into the region of the midnight sun. . . . There is nothing stern about death itself. She shows, by her very attitude in the dread struggle with love, how reluctantly she engages in it. That drooping head, that veiled face, that arm stretched out in tender- ness as in might, are each expressive of her infinite pity. And though we cannot see in her face, for it is in shadow, the shadow cast on earth by the very glory that is to be revealed in us, we see her back illumined with a light that streams from the open door of heaven, and we trust her with our own life, and with what is dearer far; for she is the mother of our higher life, as Watts himself so touchingly called her, " that kind nurse who puts us all as her children to bed." ^
This is the house of life, and at its door
Young Love keeps anxious watch, while outside stands One who with firm importuning demands
An entrance. Strange is he, but love with lore
Taught by quick terror names him Death; and o'er Love's face there comes a cloud, and the small hands Would shut the door; for he from loveless lands
Is foe to Love, now and for evermore.
Nay, not for evermore ! Love is but young,
And young Love sees alone what youth can see;
With age Love's vision grows more clear and strong, And he discerns that this same Death, whom he
Had thought his foe, striving to do him wrong, Comes with the gift of immortality.
2. Here is an utterance of faith, reached, not by reasoning from a creed, but by seeing the real outcome of God-given life. This life of union and fellowship with Christ is a power that death cannot destroy. If it is possible to live in the presence of Christ now, and work under His inspiration, then, behind the veil, there is the same possibility in a richer form. There is no attempt at an elaborate description of that other life ; the life beyond as well as the life here is viewed in its essential spirit, not in its circumstances. Here, as elsewhere, Paul reminds us that we see through a glass darkly, and prophesy in part. But even in the dim light of the present the man who is really united
^ Hugh Macmillan, G. F. Watts, 243.
286 ST. PAUL'S RULING PASSION
to Christ can assert his deep intelhgent conviction that neither life nor death can separate the loyal soul from the love of God.
^ On one occasion when Jenny Lind, the celebrated singer, was recovering from a long and severe illness,, she wrote to an author, thanking him for one of his books. " The passage," she said, "across to the other side appeared to me so easy and so beautiful ; the true home above, after which I was longing, seemed so heavenly that everything earthly in me — all, anguish, all grief, all the countless sufferings of a very sensitive soul, were hushed to rest. My soul was in such intimate communion with its Maker that it only longed to go home." Her desire was to go to be with Christ which is far better.
As I stand by the Cross, on the lone mountain's crest,
Looking over the ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest.
And one sails away from the lea; One spreads its white wings on the far-reaching track,
With pennant and sheet flowing free; One hides in the shadow with sails laid a-back,
The ship that is waiting for me.
But lo ! in the distance the clouds break away,
The gate's glowing portals I see, And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay
The song of the sailors in glee. So I think of the luminous footprints that bore
The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore
To the ship that is waiting for me.^
3. The fact that Christ is alive for evermore guarantees the permanence of all that is essential in our relation to Him. It secures that death, which had hitherto been looked upon as an absolute loss, shall only confirm and glorify that relationship, relieving it of all that is alien to its development, and providing it with the noblest sphere for its expression. In short, fellowship with Christ abolishes death. It lifts the soul into a region where its power to hurt is gone. The death which is loss is the issue of the life that is natural, but when that life is changed into Christ its issue undergoes a corresponding change, and the death