t they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father,
that their good things come from his hand, and are but an infinitely
slight foretaste of his love? Sickness, danger,--I know that they
come to many of us but rarely; but if we have known them, or at
least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in its graver,--
have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's hands,
that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing can
hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted
anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are
left wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if
there is no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths
around us, to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to
ourselves in this vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a
loneliness; and whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be
with our own hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be
felt. But consider that the things which we see around us cannot
remain with us, nor we with them. The coldness and loneliness of the
world, without God, must be felt more and more as life wears on: in
every change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a
friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every
additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,--the
deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly: we shall
gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that "God is not
the God of the dead."

And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the
living" grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far
from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who
live unto him, that he is their God, and that they are his children.
On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the
warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere
of their lives: they for ever feel his blessing. And if it fills
them with joy unspeakable even now, when they so often feel how
little they deserve it; if they delight still in being with God, and
in living to him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the
unerring witness of life eternal:--God is the God of the living,
and all who are with him must live.

Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the
minds of those who are dead: for it is of the very nat