re is he?"

He is gone to heaven. Even the earthly house of his tabernacle is
dissolved; that part of him which was all of which we were cognizant by
our senses, is no more. We could not recognize it; to the earth, out of
which it was taken, it has, by slow degrees, returned,--as though every
thing earthly, belonging to him, 'must needs die, and be as water spilt
on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.' We travel to his
birthplace; there is the house where he was born; we meet those who grew
with him side by side; we are among the scenes which were most familiar
to him; he planted those trees; he collected those pictures; there is
his portrait, he rested here, he studied, he worked, he rejoiced, he
wept, in these consecrated places; but did we go thinking to find him
there? "Did I not say unto you, Go not?"

We shall surely make him real to our thoughts, if not to our senses,
where he lies buried. But we may as well stand upon the sea shore, where
we had the last look of a sea-faring friend, and think that those
waters, and those sands, and that horizon, will restore him. They only
serve to open farther the path of his departure; they lead our thoughts
away to dwell upon him where we imagine him to be. Nowhere does heaven
seem more real than at the grave of a friend; for we know that he has
not perished, and as we stand on that verge of all our fruitless search
and expectation, we are compelled to fix him somewhere in our thoughts;
but as he is nowhere behind us, we look onward and upward.

Our desire for departed friends, however natural and innocent, if it
resulted as we sometimes would have it, would prove to be unwise.

Suppose that those "fifty strong men" had found Elijah, or in any way
could have prevented his translation to heaven. With exultation, they
would have led him back across the Jordan to the company of their
friends, amidst the thanksgivings of the people. But, alas! for the
prophet himself, this would have been his loss, even had it proved to be
their gain. The opening Jordan, cleft in twain by his rapt spirit,
pressing its way to the skies, had returned to its course; and now the
fords of the river, with its rocky bed, would have required his laboring
feet to grope their way back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of
the chariots of fire and horses of fire, would have borne him again to
the dull realities of life; and there, rebuking Ahab, and fleeing from
Jezebel, punishing the pr