* Letters oj the Rev. John Ker^ 336.
244 THE DEAD IN CHRIST
it was not difficult to imagine that the shining ones were waiting about the doors." ^
3. To " die in the Lord " — the lips murmuring His name, the eyes of the heart fixed upon His cross, the spirit commending itself to Him even as He commended His Spirit to the Father, while it sinks beneath the weight of the falling tabernacle of clay — of all the exercises of faith this commonly is found to be the least difficult for those who have lived the life of faith on the Son of God.
Tf As Laurence Oliphant lay dying, the dear and sacred name of Christ was ever on his tongue. A day or two before his death he called his faithful nurse early in the morning, probably in that rising of the energies which comes with the brightness of the day, and told her that he was " unspeakably happy." " Christ has touched me. He has held me in His arms. I am changed — He has changed me. Never again can I be the same, for His power has cleansed me; I am a new man." "Then he looked at me yearningly," she adds, " and said, ' Do you understand ? ' " As he lay there dozing, smiling, with the look of this exultation never leaving his face through the long last hours that followed, he was heard to hum and sing in snatches the hymn, " Safe in the arms of Jesus." Who knows where he had learnt it ? — perhaps at some American "revival" or camp meeting, where the keen observer would catch up unawares and with a smile at himself the homely strain, which thus floated back to the memory of the dying the hymn of the humblest believer, the simplest certainty of a faith unencumbered with any new lights. . . . "His last conscious moment on Sunday," adds his wife, " was one of hope and effort lifewards." The actual end was complete and perfect peace. " He passed away as into a tranquil sleep, and woke four hours after in another world, or rather under another form, without having tasted death either physically or spiritually." Thus this extraordinary, varied, and noble life came to an end.^
4 To die in the Lord is to pass on and up to live with Him in the higher sphere, to live with Him there as we have lived with Him here, only no longer brokenly, imperfectly, fitfully, by reason of manifold infirmities, as here, but in perfect communion with Him who is all-perfect, seeing Him as He is and being like Him.
^ James Brown, Life of William B. Robertson, 284.
' Mrs. Oliphant, Memoir of the Life of Laurence OlipTiant (ed. 1892), 404.
REVELATION xiv. 13 245
To die in the Lord is not to cease to live, but to begin to live, as by a new birth, a new and fuller life, and that for ever and ever, in a new and better world, to rise into another and higher region, freed from all the encumbrances of this, a region of intense, con- scious, joyous vitality ; a region of intelligent, responsible, glorious activity, in which nothing that makes the dignity, the grandeur, of the burden of life is laid down, but only the pain.
The soul expands, freed from the baffling barriers of earth; expands to pursue the infinite glory and beauty of God. That is the depth of the blessedness of the dead. Nor need we fear, as some have feared, that in this great development the dead will so excel us that they will lose touch with us, or forget us in their larger life. They cannot, and will not, because the foundation of all their soul's expansion is love. Moreover, God loves, and though He excels infinitely His children, yet in love's communion we reach Him and abide in Him. And if we, so far behind Him, can live with Him like a child, we can also live with those we have loved, even were they a thousand worlds beyond us in all things else but love. Nor is this close communion through love between us and them the least part of their blessedness. And we too, even when our natural grief for their departure is deepest — we too, in belief in the blessedness of those we love, feel blessedness slide into our soul. To believe that they are radiant with joy and life, yet unforgetful of our love, is so Divine a comfort that, even when we stretch out our arms in vain, we thank God that we are not left alone. For spirit can touch spirit, though the eye sees not and the ear hears not. We cry, " Blessed are the dead, and I, too, with them, am happy with their happiness." That is a deep consolation, and if we cherish it, it deepens. Our dead are blest in love, and we, in their love,* are blest.
^ I believe very few of us think enough of the dead. Fear of false teaching about invocation of saints, and prayers for souls in purgatory, has made us Protestants almost forget what God has really told us about the dead. Surely the nearer we are drawn to Christ, the closer is drawn the tie by which living and departed are knit together. That is why I love to tell the mourners who are just feeling the great blank in their home circle that God never meant it to be a blank. I love to say, " that loved husband, or wife, or parent, or child is resting in the Blessed Presence of God. You are summoned to the same Presence ; there