ger?'

'Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last!'

Nobody has ever read _A Tale of Two Cities_ without feeling that this
was the moment of Sydney Carton's supreme triumph.

'It is,' he said--and they are the last words in the book--'it is a far,
far better thing that I do than I have ever done!'

He had never tasted a joy to be compared with this. He was able to save
those he loved by dying for them!

_That_ is precisely the joy of the Cross! _That_ was the light that
shone upon the Saviour's path through all the darkness of the world's
first Easter. _That_ is why, when He took the bread and wine--the
emblems of His body about to be broken and His blood about to be
shed--He gave thanks. It is _that_--and that alone--that accounts for
the fact that He entered the Garden of Gethsemane with a song upon His
lips. It was for the joy that was set before Him that He endured the
Cross, despising its shame!

'Death!' He said. 'What of Death? _I am the Life_, not only of Myself,
but of all who place their hands in Mine!

'The Grave! What of the Grave? _I am the Resurrection!_

'_I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me
shall never die._'

He felt that it was a great thing--a very great thing--to be able to
save those He loved by dying for them.

III

'_I am the Resurrection!_'--those were the words that Sydney Carton saw
written on land and on water, on earth and on sky, on the night on which
he made up his mind to die. '_I am the Resurrection!_' They were the
words that he had heard read beside his father's grave. They are the
words that we echo, in challenge and defiance, over _all_ our graves.
The rubric of the Church of England requires its ministers to greet the
dead at the entrance to the churchyard with the words: '_I am the
Resurrection and the Life_;' and, following the same sure instinct, the
ministers of all the other Churches have adopted a very similar
practice. The earth seems to be a garden of graves. We speak of those
who have passed from us as 'the great majority.' We appear to be
conquered. But it is all an illusion.

'O Grave!' we ask, in every burial service, 'where is thy victory?' And
the question answers itself. The victory does not exist. The struggle is
not yet ended. '_I am the Resurrection!_'

'_I am the Life!_'--that is what all the echoes were saying as Sydney
Carton, cherishing a gre