Sin hath told lies of thee, fair angel Death, Hath hung a dark veil o'er thy seraph face.
And scared us babes with tales of how, beneath. Were features like her own. But I, through grace
Of the dear God by whom I live and move, Have seen that gloomy shroud asunder rent. And in thine eyes, lustrous with sweet intent,
Have read that thou none other wast but Love.
Thou art the beauteous keeper of that gate Which leadeth to the soul's desired home,
And I would live as one who seems to wait
Until thine eyes shall say, " My brother, come ! "
And then haste forward with such gladsome pace
As one who sees a welcoming, sweet face;
For thou dost give us what the soul loves best —
In the eternal soul a dwelling-place.
And thy still grave is the unpilfered nest
Of Truth, Love, Peace, and Duty's perfect rest.^
III.
The Victory over Death.
" This is the victory that overeometh the world," says St. John, " even our faith." And this is the victory, says St. Paul, that overeometh death. " If we believe," he says. A weight of fact lies behind that "if." St. Paul writes it in no doubtful mood, as indeed his Greek construction indicates. It is the " if " not of conjecture but of logic, as when we say that such and such results are certain if two straight lines cannot enclose a space. He
^ Letters of James Russell Lowell, i. 87.
I THESSALONIANS iv. 13, 14 9
brings the Thessalonians, anxious about their buried dear ones, back to a certainty of hope by appealing to this certainty of accomplished fact. They knew that Jesus had died and risen. Well then, granting that " if so," with equal fulness of knowledge were they to say, " Even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him." Was it a certainty to them that He had risen ? Yes ; and why ? Because, on the one hand, adequate testimony attended the assertion, the testimony not only of the words of many witnesses, but of the moral miracle which those witnesses themselves were ; they were transfigured men compared with what they had been before Jesus rose. On the other hand, the Thessalonians had themselves made proof of the transforming power of Him who was presented to them as risen again ; they were themselves transfigured men, knowing God, loving God, at peace with Him now, and looking with indescribable assurance of hope for His glory hereafter.
1. It is plainly suggested in the text that in the fact that Jesus died there is a special consolation for those who sorrow for the dead. If Jesus had tasted of all that life brings to us except its close ; if through the powers of His Divine nature He had in some way asserted and won for us eternal life apart from death, should we not feel that the darkest tract of human experience was untouched by His sympathy, even if it were transformed by His power ? But now, is it not written, " Jesus died " ? He is no stranger to the terrors of that mysterious land which one day we all must know. Death is not " the undiscovered country " to Him, for He has explored it for us that we should know no dread. He has stepped into the fast-running waters of that cold river which severs time and eternity, and lo ! "a way for the ransomed to pass over " has marked the passage of His pierced feet. Christ died, and therefore Christianity is at home with grief for the dead ; and the first condition of an ample comfort is satisfied in the assurance that there is nothing He does not know concerning death.
2. From the fact that "Jesus died," the Apostle passes on to the triumphant sequel : " and rose again." Here is the second fact which will illuminate sorrow and rob death of its sting.
lo ASLEEP IN JESUS
" We believe that Jesus rose again." Think what Christ would have been to us, if our faith had been shut up to a bare knowledge that He died. If there had been no stone rolled away on the third morning would not His sepulchre in Joseph's garden have been, in no small measure, the sepulchre of comfort too? Christian faith, which suns itself in the assurance that "now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept," knows that it will lose all its brightness, its very vital breath even, if the certainty of that resurrection is broken, and the light and the warmth of that revelation are taken away. In the light of Christ's resurrection alone does death assume or retain for us any higher meaning than for the ancient world. It is the light of the higher life in Christ which alone glorifies it. And unless this light has shone into our hearts, who can tell whence hope can reach us ? We may be resigned or peaceful. We may accept the inevitable with a calm front. We may be even glad to be done with the struggle of existence, and leave our name to be forgotten and our work to be done by others. But in such a mood of mind there is no cheerfulness, no spring of hope With such a thought St. Paul could comfort neither himself nor the Thessalonians. For himself, indeed, he felt that he would be intensely miserable if he had only such a thought. " If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miser- able." Hope in death can spring only from the principle of personal immortality ; and this principle has no root save in Christ.