h the
landings, where were huddled some of the neighbors come to listen:

"And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me: Write--Blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord from henceforth ... But I would not have you
to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye
sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with Him.... For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God:
and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the
Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore
comfort one another with these words."

Courtland listened attentively. The words were utterly new to him. If he
had heard them before on the few occasions when he had perforce attended
funerals, they had never entered into his consciousness. They seemed
almost uncannily to answer the desolating questions of his heart. He
listened with painful attention. Most remarkable statements!

"But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of
them that slept!"

He glanced instinctively around where it seemed that the Presence had
entered. He could not get away from the feeling that He stood just to
the left of the minister there, with bowed head, like a great one whose
errand and presence there were about to be explained. It was as if He
had come to take the little child away with Him. Courtland remembered
the girl's prayer the night the child died: "Go with little Aleck and
see that he is not afraid till he gets safe home." He glanced up at her
calm, tearless face. She was drinking in the words. They seemed to give
strength under her pitiless sorrow.

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death!"

Courtland heard the words with a shock of relief. Here had he been under
the depression of death--death everywhere and always! threatening every
life and every project of earth! And now this confident sentence looking
toward a time when death should be no more! It came as something utterly
new and original that there would be a time when no one should, ever
fear death again because death would be put out of existence! He had to
look at it and face it as something to be recognized and thought out, a
thing that was presenting itself for him to be