We may now dwell a little on the blessedness of death being thus ours.

If death be ours-our servant, then we need not pass our days here in fear of it. The fear of death is natural to the natural mind. This is observable, not only where the Bible is read and known, but where revelation has not gone. The heathen have a great dread of death. A little while ago, I saw a missionary from India, who said, " The Hindoos have an intense fear of death." He narrated how they dispose of their dead. They burn the body, and carefully preserve the ashes; and then, on a certain day of the year, take them to their sacred river, the Ganges, and having put them in a tiny boat, with a little lamp, they are committed to the stream. The missionary observing a Brahmin doing this to his dead, asked him why they put a lamp with the ashes. The reply was, " It is to give a little light; death is so dark!" And all the tapers of man, all his devices, all his religiousness, even in the most enlightened lands, can give no more true light than the little lamp of the benighted Hindoo. Christianity as taught in the New Testament,-Christianity as known in reality, can alone, in the true sense, take away the fear of death, and enable souls to pass their days in rest and peace, free from dread and uncertainty.

If death be ours, then we shall not see it or taste it should it come. Jesus said, " If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death." Those who heard Him, in repeating His statement, used the expression, " shall never taste of death." (John 8:51, 52.) Thus, the one who keeps the saying of the Lord, though he may die, shall not see, shall not taste, death. The blessed Lord Himself, taking our place, saw death in its reality,-He "tasted" it in all its bitterness. Hence, the reality-the bitterness of death is passed for faith. Nothing but the shadow remains, and there is no taste in a shadow.

"Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are;
While on His breast I lean my head,
And breathe my life out sweetly there."

If death be ours, then, as Christ could not employ a useless servant, we cannot pass through it without being the gainers; and we are assured in . the Word of God that we do not pass through it without gaining thereby,-this servant being used to let us out of "our earthly house" that we may. go to Him who is our all. The Lord said to the dying penitent at His side, "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise." (Luke 23:43.) The apostle speaks of being "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." (2 Cor. 5:8.) He says, " For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. . . . . For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." (Phil. 1:21-24.) These passages have, as we all know, been much tortured to make, them say what they cannot be made to say. What they do say is plain, namely, that the departed in the Lord are with Him,-that to die is gain,-that to depart and be with Christ is far better than to abide in the flesh,-in short, that death being ours, we do not pass through it without gain, the intermediate state being an advance on our present happy, though trying, lot.

If death be ours through the cross, and through being identified with the risen Christ, then, (to the praise of God's grace) it may be said that we have title to a part with Him in the resurrection of life, to the resurrection of which His own was the first-fruits. The Word plainly states this title.- " Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him" (Rom. 6:8.).-"Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. …. Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming." (i Cor. 15:20, 23.) While those who have fallen asleep in Christ are thus^to be raised at His , coming-raised in the power and character of His own blessed resurrection, those who are alive and remain will not sleep, showing that death has no real claim on believers, otherwise they would have even then to die to meet the claim. " Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump." (i Cor. 15:51, 52.) " For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:and the dead in Christ shall rise first:then we which are alive and remain"-being changed in the same moment in which the righteous dead are raised-" shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (i Thess. 4:16, 17.) And being ever with Him after we are caught up to join Him in the air, we shall, of course, be with Him when He appears, and every eye sees Him. Indeed the Word assures us of this.-" When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." (Col. 3:4.)

In short, when the day dawns and the Lord comes, death, the dark servant, must stand aside, and the righteous dead will rise in the power of a blessed life, and the righteous living be changed to immortality,-both be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and go with Him to the Father's house of many mansions, and return with Him when He appears in judgment, and to introduce His millennial reign. As no good reason can be assigned why He may not come at any moment for His saints, the proper attitude is to be watching for Him.

I may add that death being our servant, it follows that when it can be of no further service, it will be dismissed forever. In this sense, " the servant abideth not in the house forever." Of Him who rose a's the first-fruits it is said, " He dieth no more." He says, "Behold, I am alive for evermore." And are we not to be " like Him " ? Is it not said that He will " fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory " ? Is not all that is mortal of the saint to be "swallowed up of life," that is, lost in it forever? The Lord, speaking of those who " shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead," said," Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." In the moment they are raised or changed, the saying that is written,- Death is swallowed up in victory-is brought to pass as to them (i Cor. 15:54.). Henceforth death has no more power with them. They " reign in life by Jesus Christ," not only for "a thousand years," but evermore; for when the millennial age is closed, and all that may be called time is in the past, the Word assures us " there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." He who sits on the throne will " make all things new;'' and those who overcome inherit "all things;" and "they shall reign forever and ever."

" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

All this, and infinitely more than a feeble mortal can utter, or even conceive, is embraced in the truth that death is ours. Our full blessedness in heavenly kingdom, when the results of sin are wiped away forever, will be the outcome of the fact that while we were in the midst of these results, they were our servants. Our being with the Lord in glory will- tell out forever that all things during our little day of trial were jointly working for our real and abiding good.

Beloved, I would remind myself and you that we are indebted to grace, and to what it has wrought in the Lord's death, for all this. It is not of ourselves, or of works, that we have this blessed portion and this bright prospect. The praise is all due to God and the Lamb. If so, should not our hearts be won by a sight of such love ? and ought not our lives to be the outflow of hearts thus won? Oh, beloved, surely every thought should be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. He died that death might be ours, and that we might not come into judgment, yea, that we might be holy and without blame before God in love and favor forever. Let us live to Him who thus died for us and rose again. It should be our joy to do this.