go there, because they know that they must go somewhere. But
their notions of what heaven will be like are by no means clear. They
have sung rapturous hymns in church or chapel about the heavenly
Jerusalem, and passing Jordan safe to Canaan's shore, with no very clear
notion of what the words meant--and small blame to them.

But when they think of actually dying, they feel as if to go into the
next world was to be turned out into the dark night, into an unknown
land, away from house and home, and all they have known, and all they
have loved; and they are ready to say with the good old heathen emperor,
when he lay a-dying--

"Little soul of mine, wandering, kindly,
Companion and guest of my body;
Into what place art thou now departing,
Shivering, naked, and pale?"

And so they shrink from death. They must shrink from death, unless they
will believe with their whole hearts the good news of Easter day. The
more thoughtful and clever they are, the more they will shrink from
death, and dread the thought of losing their bodies. They have always
had bodies here on earth. They only know themselves as souls embodied,
living in bodies; and they cannot think of themselves in the next world
with any comfort, if they may not think of themselves as having bodies.

And the more loving and affectionate they are, the more they will shrink
from death, unless they believe with their whole hearts the good news of
Easter day. For those whom they have loved on earth have bodies.
Through their bodies--through their voices, their looks, their actions,
they have known them, and thus they have loved them; and if their beloved
ones are to have no bodies in the world to come, how shall they see them?
how shall they know them? how shall they converse with them? It seems to
them in that case neither they, nor those they love, would be the same
persons in the world to come they are here; and that thought is lonely
and dreadful, till they accept the good news of Easter day, the thrice
blessed words of St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, which they
hear at the burial of those whom they love and lose. Oh, blessed news
for us, and for those we love; those without whose company the world to
come would be lonely and cheerless to us. For now we can say, Tell me
not that as the beast dies, so dies the man. Tell me not that as Adam
died because of sin, so must I die, and all I love. Tell me not that it