And yet is it _he_? Where is _he_ himself? Can
_he_ hear us? Can _he_ see us? Does _he_ remember us as we remember
_him_? Surely he must. He cannot be gone away--there he lies still on
that bed before us!"

And then we are ready to say to ourselves, "It must be a mistake, a
dream. He cannot be dead. He will wake. We shall meet him to-morrow in
his old place, about his old work. _He_ dead? Impossible! Impossible
to believe that we shall never see him again--never any more till we too
die!"

And then when such thoughts come over us, we cannot help going on to say,
"What is this death? this horrible thing which takes husbands from their
wives, and children from their parents, and those who love from those who
love them? What is it? How came this same death loose in the world?
What right has it here, under the bright sun, among the pleasant fields,
this cruel, pitiless death, destroying God's handi-work, God's likeness,
just as it is growing to its prime of beauty and usefulness?"

And then--there--by the bedside of the young at least, we do feel that
death must be God's enemy--that it is a hateful, cruel, evil
thing--accursed in the sight of a loving, life-giving God, as much as it
is hated by poor mortal man.

And then, we feel, there must be something wrong between man and God. Man
must be fallen and corrupt, must be out of his right place and state in
some way or other, or this horrible death would not have got power over
us! What right has death in the world, if man has not sinned or fallen?

And then we cannot help going further and saying, "This cruel death! it
may come to me, young, strong, and healthy as I am. It may come
to-morrow; it may come this minute; it may come by a hundred diseases, by
a hundred accidents, which I cannot foresee or escape, and carry me off
to-morrow, away from all I know and all I love, and all I like to see and
to do. And where would it take me to, if it did take me? What should I
be? What should I see? What should I know, after they had put this body
of mine into that narrow house in the church-yard, and covered it out of
sight till the judgment day?" Oh, my friends, what a thought for you,
and me, and every human being! We might die to-night, even as those whom
we know of died!

But perhaps some of you young people are saying to yourselves, "You are
trying to frighten us, but you shall not frighten us. We know very well
that it is not a common thing for a y