Our treatment of the Saviour will return upon our own heads. What a
change will be made in the ideas which many sentimentalists had of holy
angels, when they see them executing the terrible orders of their King!
and what an illustration it will give of the severity of justice,--the
rigors of its execution being compatible with the pure benevolence of
holy angels, because of God. We are constantly admonished that the
punishment of the wicked will be a great part of the proceedings on that
day. It is called "the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
"Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousands of his saints, to execute
judgment."

* * * * *

All this serves to invest the death of a dear Christian friend, in our
thoughts, with inexpressible peace and comfort. He, with his Redeemer,
can say, "My flesh, also, shall rest in hope." If we are confident that
a friend is gone to be with Christ, death is, even now, swallowed up of
life; and now the thought of what the soul is to inherit, both before
and after the resurrection, and its contrast with the experience of the
lost, should make us joyful in tribulation. True, we cannot, by any
artifice or illusion, make death itself cease to be a curse. Full of
beauty and consolation as it may be,--nay, we will call it
triumphant,--yet nothing saddens the mind, for the time, more than the
sight of true beauty. In heaven things beautiful will not make us sad;
nor will the remembrance of a past joy, which so inevitably has that
effect upon us here. We are beholding a sunset. Day is flinging up all
its treasures, as though it were breaking to pieces its pavilion forever
and scattering the fragments; and now, when all seemed past, one more
flood of glory streams over the scene, but only for a moment; then comes
a last touch of pathos, here and there, like a more distant farewell, a
whispered good night. Have tears never come unbidden, do we never feel
sad, at such a time? Is not the whole of life, past, present, and to
come, then tinged with sombre hues? and all because the dying day
expires with such beauty and peace. Not so when a storm suddenly brings
in night upon us. Then we are nerved and braced; we hear no minor key in
the voice of the departing day. It is perfectly natural, therefore, to
weep over our dead, even when every thing in their departure is
consolatory and beautiful. It is interesting to observe that it was even
when he was on his wa