, the love we still possess, the gracious influences that
remain, and most of all the duties that claim our strength. The loving
women who went early in the morning to the sepulchre of the buried
Christ were met with a rebuke, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
They were sent back to life to find Him, and sent back to life to do
honor to His death. Not by ointments and spices, however precious, nor
at the rock-hewn tomb, could they best remember their Lord; but out in
the world, which that morning had seemed so cold and cheerless, and in
their lives, which then had seemed not worth living.

Christianity does not condemn any natural human feeling, but it will
not let these interfere with present duty and destroy future
usefulness. It does not send men to search for the purpose of living
in the graves of their dead hopes and pleasures. Its disciples must
not attempt to live on the relics of even great incidents, among
crucifixes and tombs. In the Desert, the heart must reach forward to
the Promised Land, and not back to Egypt. The Christian faith is for
the future, because it believes in the God of the future. The world is
not a lumber room, full of relics and remembrances, over which to
brood. We are asked to remember the beautiful past which was ours, and
the beautiful lives which we have lost, by making the present beautiful
like it, and our lives beautiful like theirs. It is human to think
that life has no future, if now it seems "dark with griefs and graves."
It comes like a shock to find that we must bury our sorrow, and come
into contact with the hard world again, and live our common life once
more. The Christian learns to do it, not because he has a short
memory, but because he has a long faith. The voice of inspiration is
heard oftener through the realities of life, than through vain regrets
and recluse dreams. The Christian life must be in its degree something
like the Master's own life, luminous with His hope, and surrounded by a
bracing atmosphere which uplifts all who even touch its outer fringe.

The great fact of life, nevertheless, is death, and it must have a
purpose to serve and a lesson to teach. It seems to lose something of
its impressiveness, because it is universal. The very inevitableness
of it seems to kill thought, rather than induce it. It is only when
the blow strikes home, that we are pulled up and forced to face the
fact. Theoretically there is a wonderful unanimity am