once from effort on
the outer world, and from communication from it. We may carry the
analogy into that unseen world. We know nothing about the relations
to an external universe of the departed who sleep in Jesus. It may be
that, if they sleep in Him, since He knows all, they, through Him,
may know, too, something--so much as He pleases to impart to them--of
what is happening here. And it may even be that, if they sleep in
Him, and He wields the energies of Omnipotence, they, through Him,
may have some service to do, even while they wait for their house
which is from heaven. But there is no need for, nor profit in, such
speculations. It is enough that the sweet emblem suggests repose, and
that in that sleep there are folded around the sleepers the arms of
the Christ on whose bosom they rest, as an infant does on its first
and happiest home--its mother's breast.

But then, besides that, the emblem suggests the idea of continuous
and conscious existence. A man asleep does not cease to be a man; a
dead man does not cease to live. It has often been argued from this
metaphor that we are to conceive of the space between death and the
resurrection as being a period of unconsciousness, but the analogies
seem to me to be in the opposite direction. A sleeping man does not
cease to know himself to be, and he does not cease to know himself to
be himself. That mysterious consciousness of personal identity
survives the passage from waking to sleep, as dreams sufficiently
show us. And, therefore, they that sleep know themselves to be.

And, finally, the emblem suggests the idea of waking. Sleep is a
parenthesis. If the night comes, the morning comes. 'If winter comes,
can spring be far behind?' They that sleep will awake, and be
satisfied when they 'awake with Thy likeness.' And so these three
things--repose, conscious, continuous existence, and the certainty of
awaking--all lie in that metaphor.

Now, then, the risen Christ is the only ground of such hope, and
faith in Him is the only state of mind which is entitled to cherish
it. Nothing proves immortality except that open grave. Every other
foundation is too weak to bear the weight of such a superstructure.
The current of present opinion shows, I think, that neither
metaphysical nor ethical arguments for the future life will stand the
force of the disintegrating criticism which is brought to bear upon
that hope by the fashionable materialism of this generation. There is
one ba