ts incurred. I can only express my regret if any have been
overlooked.

R. E. S.

_Easter_, 1896.

I.

"I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which
are asleep."--1 THESS. IV. 13.

There are moments in the lives of every one of us, when the mind is
irresistibly drawn on to wonder what our own personal future shall be, as
soon as life is over and death has overtaken us. We cannot help the
speculation. However bound by present duties and absorbed in present
interests, often, in quiet hours, in times of solitude or bereavement, or
under the sense of failing hopes or failing health, in seasons of sorrow
or of sickness, the mood takes hold of us; and it may be, we know not
why, our eyes turn with an anxious and a wistful look towards that
inevitable end which is surely coming upon us.

At such moments we ask ourselves, what will my lot be when the hand of
death touches me--even _me_; when all the light of life goes out, all
thought of this world's cares, all pleasant joys and hopes and desires of
time sink down and fade into the chill gloom and shadow of the unknown?
Such questionings, brought close home to our very selves, cannot but fill
us with very anxious fears and misgivings, as we either look back upon
the past, or think upon what chiefly possesses our minds and thoughts
now. Indeed, many of us cannot bear this forward glance, and refuse to
face it. We would fain brush the thought aside, and with some hasty
utterance of vague trust, of shadowy self-comforting hope that GOD will
be merciful, we turn sharply round and give ourselves again to the calls
of the life which is about us.

In this way, we Christians, we children of GOD, heirs of life and
immortality, learn to be terrified at death, which, as we are taught to
believe, ushers us into life; learn to associate it with trembling doubt
and shuddering dismay. But is this dread of death nothing else than the
natural instinctive shrinking, which the warmth of life feels at the
touch of its cold hand? Or is it not rather, in the case of most of us,
due to some false imaginations with which religion itself--that form, at
least, of religion which to-day encompasses us--has for many years
possessed and imbued the minds of men? Indeed, I believe it to be so.
The Christianity of to-day has too commonly accepted two untruths, which
yet it holds as truths.

1. One of them is this: That death ushers the soul immediately a