denied the being of God; but
as long as He is, beat His saints small as the dust, scatter them to
the four corners of the earth, yet He will send forth His angels and
gather His elect again from the four winds, and lo! they are sitting
down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God: for He is
not the God of dead men, but of living men; and all live unto Him!"

Those who believe in God can easily take heart to look through the
mysteries of life and death and to discern glory through the gloom; but
the Sadducee did not stand in the line of the sunbeams that come from
the other world; no wonder it was dark to him.

Not but what our life is full of mysteries: birth and death alike
perplex us; the "Whence" and the "Whither."

He who has studied well his coming and his going, has written out two
books of his Bible: the Genesis and Exodus of his book of life.

Birth and death are alike mysterious; they are something like the vails
of the ancient tabernacle, each curiously wrought of purple and scarlet
and fine twined linen, but the vail of the most holy place had in
addition cunning work and tracery of cherubim. So with our birth and
dying--we may learn much from either; but death has the greater wonders
traced upon its vail, if we could but get into the right light to read
them. There is this difference, too, that, while the first vail is
moved aside that we may enter, and closes behind us so that we may not
tell from whence we came, the second vail is not drawn back but rent
from top to bottom, so that we do not lose our sight of the world that
is when we are made a part of the world that is to come.

It is through this rent vail that we are looking to-day.

It has pleased God that the first-fruits of our meeting should be laid
upon the altar; He has called our dear Arthur Neale to Himself.
Already it has been said over him, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust";
it remains for us to take up our testimony and say, "and soul to soul."

Dear Arthur Neale! it has been said that "one cross can sanctify a
soul," and he had many crosses; chiefest of all the fear of death. He
was something like Bunyan's Mr. Fearing, only his fear was physical,
and not produced by doubts as to his final acceptance. But it was
grand to see how, at the last, this fear of death, which is, in its
very nature, a solicitude for self, was transformed to care for others;
just before he passed away, he turned to the dear one watching beside