hich are not seen."

But now, what is the secret of the equilibrium? We saw in our last
chapter what was the secret of the unruffled peace with which St Paul
could meet the exquisite trials occasioned by the separatist party at
Rome. It was the Lord Jesus Christ. And the secret of the far more
than peace with which here he meets the alternative of life and death
is precisely the same; it is the Lord Jesus Christ. He has no
philosophy of happiness; he has something infinitely better; he has the
Lord. What gives life its zest and charm for him? It is, that life
"is Christ." What makes death an object of positive personal "desire"
for him, matched, let us remember, against a "life" with which he is so
deeply contented? It is, that "to depart" is to be with Christ, which
is "far, far better." On either side of the veil, Jesus Christ is all
things to him. So both sides are divinely good; only, the conditions
of the other side are such that the longed-for companionship of his
MASTER will be more perfectly realized there.

We might linger long over this golden passage. It would give us matter
for more than one chapter to unfold adequately, for example, its clear
witness to the conscious and immediate blessedness in death of the
servants of God. We may ponder long what it implies in this direction
when we remember that its "far, far better" means "better" not than our
present life at its worst but than our present life at its holiest and
best; for, as we have observed already, it is "far, far better" than a
life here which "is Christ." Whatever mysteries attend the thought of
the Intermediate State, and however distinctly we remember that the
_disembodied_ spirit must, as such, be circumstanced less perfectly
than the spirit lodged again in the body, "the body of glory," yet this
at least we gather here; the believer's happy spirit, "departing" from
"this tabernacle," finds itself not in the void, not in the dark, not
under penal or disciplinary pain, but in a state "far, far better" than
its very best yet. It is, in a sense so much better in degree as to be
new in kind, "with Christ."

"Yes, think of all things at the best; in one rich thought unite
All purest joys of sense and soul, all present love and light;
Yet bind this truth upon thy brow and clasp it to thy heart,
And then nor grief nor gladness here shall claim too great a part--
All radiance of this lower sky is to that glory dim;
Far be