e to speak in a subsequent sermon. Though greater than our thoughts
can now conceive, the bliss of which we are speaking to-day is
incomplete. The spirit which has been set free from the body is alone,
and without a body. This is not the complete state of man. It is a
state to us full of mystery--inconceivable in detail, though easily
apprehended as a whole. We must take care, in what we have further to
say, that this is fully borne in mind. And, bearing it in mind, let us
proceed.

This sight of Christ, this calm of full unbroken assurance of His
nearness and presence, what does it further imply? As far as we can at
present see, certainly as much as this. First, the entire absence of
evil from the spirit. It would be impossible to be with Christ in any
such sense, unless there were entire agreement in will and desire with
Him. It would be impossible thus to see Him as He is, without being
like Him.

Let us imagine, if we can, the effect of the total extinction of evil
in any one of our minds. How many energies, now tied and bound with
the chain of sin, would spring upward into action! How many imprisoned
yearnings would burst their bonds, and carry us onward to higher
degrees of good! And all these energies, all these yearnings, can
exist in the disembodied spirit. It is in a waiting, a hoping state:
the greater the upward yearnings, the greater the accumulated energies
for God and His work, the higher will be the measure of glory to be
attained after the redemption of the body, and the completion of the
entire man.

Well--as another consequence, following close on the last, all
_conflict_, from that same moment, is at an end. Conflict is ordained
for us, is good for us, now. If it were to cease here below, we should
fall back. We have not entered into rest, it would not be good for us
to enter into rest, in our present state. Here, this little platform,
so to speak, of our personality, is drawn two ways, downward and
upward: and it is for us who stand thereon, to keep watch and ward
that the downward prevail not; but from that moment, the dark links of
the downward chain will have been for ever severed, and the golden
cord that is let down from the Throne will bear us upward and onward,
unopposed. So that as to conflict, there will be perfect rest.

And let us remember another matter. If the departed spirit were during
this time dwelling on its own unworthiness, casting back looks of
self-reproach, weighing accur