eed not doubt that we shall
live again, because He was dead and is alive for ever more. This
Samson has carried away the gates on His strong shoulders, and death
is no more a dungeon but a passage. If we rest ourselves upon Him,
then we can take up, for ourselves and for all that are dear to us
and have gone before us, the triumphant song, 'O Death, where is thy
sting?' 'Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ.'

REMAINING AND FALLING ASLEEP

'After that He was seen of above five hundred brethren
at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this
present, but some are fallen asleep.'--1 COR. xv. 6.

There were, then, some five-and-twenty years after the Resurrection,
several hundred disciples who were known amongst the churches as
having been eyewitnesses of the risen Saviour. The greater part
survived; some, evidently a very few, had died. The proportion of the
living to the dead, after five-and-twenty years, is generally the
opposite. The greater part have 'fallen asleep'; some, a
comparatively few, remain 'unto this present.' Possibly there was
some divine intervention which supernaturally prolonged the lives of
these witnesses, in order that their testimony might be the more
lasting. But, be that as it may, they evidently were men of mark, and
some kind of honour and observance surrounded them, as was very
natural, and as appears from the fact that Paul here knows so
accurately (and can appeal to His fellow-Christians' accurate
knowledge) the proportion between the survivors and the departed. We
read of one of them in the Acts of the Apostles at a later date than
this, one Mnason, an 'original disciple.'

So we get a glimpse into the conditions of life in the early Church,
interesting and of value in an evidential point of view. But my
purpose at present is to draw your attention to the remarkable
language in which the Apostle here speaks of the living and the dead
amongst these witnesses. In neither case does he use the simple,
common words 'living' or 'dead'; but in the one clause he speaks of
their 'remaining,' and in the other of their 'falling asleep'; both
phrases being significant, and, as I take it, both being traced up to
the fact of their having seen the risen Lord as the cause why their
life could be described as a 'remaining,' and their death as a
'falling asleep.' In other words, we have here brought before us, by
these two striking expressions,