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these two things were contemporaneous, the departing and the being with
Him. And surely he who thus spoke could not have conceived that a
millennium-long parenthesis of slumberous unconsciousness was to
intervene between the moment of his decease and the moment of his
fellowship with Jesus. How could a man prefer that dormant state to the
state here, of working for and living with the Lord? Surely, being with
Him must mean that we know where we are, and who is our companion.

And what does that text mean: 'Ye are come unto the spirits of just men
made perfect,' unless it means that of these two classes of persons who
are thus regarded as brought into living fellowship, each is aware of
the other? Does perfecting of the spirit mean the smiting of the spirit
into unconsciousness? Surely not, and surely in view of such words as
these, we must recognise the fact that, however limited and imperfect
may be the present connection of the disembodied dead, who sleep in
Christ, with external things, they know themselves, they know their home
and their companion, and they know the blessedness in which they are
lapped.

But another thought which is suggested by this emblem is, as I have
already said, most certainly the idea of awaking. The pagans said, as
indeed one of their poets has it, 'Suns can sink and return, but for us,
when our brief light sinks, there is but one perpetual night of
slumber.' The Christian idea of death is, that it is transitory as a
sleep in the morning, and sure to end. As St. Augustine says somewhere,
'Wherefore are they called sleepers, but because in the day of the Lord
they will be reawakened?'

And so these are the thoughts, very imperfectly spoken, I know, which
spring like flowers from this gracious metaphor 'them that sleep'--rest
and awaking; rest and consciousness.

II. Note the ground of this softened aspect.

They 'sleep through Him.' It is by reason of Christ and His work, and by
reason of that alone, that death's darkness is made beautiful, and
death's grimness is softened down to this. Now, in order to grasp the
full meaning of such words as these of the Apostle, we must draw a broad
distinction between the physical fact of the ending of corporeal life
and the mental condition which is associated with it by us. What we call
death, if I may so say, is a complex thing--a bodily phenomenon _plus_
conscience, the sense of sin, the certainty of retribution in the dim
beyond. And you have