must not take
such an expression for more than it really implies. Sleeping, or
falling asleep, was a name current among Jews and Christians, and even
among the best of the heathens, for death, implying its peace and
rest, implying also that it should be followed by a waking: but
apparently with no intent to convey any idea of unconsciousness. It is
a term used with reference to us, as well as to the dead. To us, they
are as if they were asleep: removed from us in consciousness, as in
presence. The idea also of _taking rest_ tended to make this term
appropriate. But it must not be used to prove that to which it
evidently had no reference.

The spirit, then, of the departed does not pass into unconsciousness.
What more do we know of it? It is WITH JESUS.

We have now to consider what this implies. And in doing so we shall
have further to make certain that which we think we have already
proved. For first, it clearly implies more than a mere expression of
safe-keeping, or reserve for a future state of blessedness. "The
righteous souls are in the hand of God, and there shall no harm happen
to them." This is one thing: but to be with Christ is another. We
might again appeal to the spirit of the promise made to the penitent
thief, in order to show this: we might remind you that in the other
text, St. Paul is comparing the two states--life in the midst of his
children in the faith, and death; and he says, "I have a desire to
depart and to be with Christ, which is far better:" better than being
with you, my Philippians.

So that more must be meant than mere safe keeping in the Redeemer's
hands. We may surely say, that nothing less than conscious existence
in the presence of Christ can be intended. And if that is intended,
then very much more is intended also, than those words at first seem
to imply. Remember the contrast which this same Apostle elsewhere
draws. "We know," he says, "that while we are present in the body, we
are absent from the Lord: for we walk by faith, not by appearance: we
are willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the
Lord." That is, if we follow out the thought, this present state of
dwelling in our home the body is a state of severance from the Lord;
but there is a better state, into which we shall be introduced when
this house of the body is pulled down: and from the context in that
place we may add, much as we wish to be clothed upon with our new and
glorious body which is from he