If we
only used our capacities we would take a more enlightened view of
death. We would see it to be the entrance into a more radiant and a
more abundant life not only for the friend that goes first, but for the
other left behind.

Spiritual communion cannot possibly be interrupted by a physical
change. It is because there is so little of the spiritual in our
ordinary intercourse that death means silence and an end to communion.
There is a picture of death, which, when looked at with the ordinary
perspective, seems to be a hideous skull, but when seen near at hand is
composed of flowers, with the eyes, in the seemingly empty sockets of
the skull, formed by two fair faces of children. Death at a distance
looks horrible, the ghastly spectre of the race; but with the near
vision it is beautiful with youth and flowers, and when we look into
its eyes we look into the stirrings of life.

Love is the only permanent relationship among men, and the permanence
is not an accident of it, but is of its very essence. When released
from the mere magnetism of sense, instead of ceasing to exist, it only
then truly comes into its largest life. If our life were more a life
in the spirit, we would be sure that death can be at the worst but the
eclipse of friendship. Tennyson felt this truth in his own experience,
and expressed it in noble form again and again in _In Memoriam_--

Sweet human hand and lips and eye,
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.

Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.

It is not loss, but momentary eclipse, and the final issue is a clearer
perception of immortal love, and a deeper consciousness of eternal life.

The attitude of mind, therefore, in any such bereavement--sore as the
first stroke must be, since we are so much the creatures of habit, and
it is hard to adjust ourselves to the new relationship--cannot be an
attitude merely of resignation. That was the extent to which the
imperfect revelation of the Old Testament brought men. They had to
rest in their knowledge of God's faithfulness and goodness. The limit
of their faith was, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." But
to resignation we can add joy. "Not dead, but slee