Death Vanquished

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” — Kev. i. 18.

An enthroned Saviour speaks I *’/,” says He, “am he that liveth!” (or, Living oney) Others have passed away: but I ever live, and ever love! I am now living I — a personal Saviour — “Christ thy life /” Art thou stooping over some treasured house of clay which the whirlwind has made a mass of ruins? 1 roused the whirlwind from its chamber, /appointed the startling dispensation, /ordered the shroud, and prepared the grave! Let not

* accident,’ ‘chance,’ ‘fate, enter into the vocabulary of thy sorrow. I am the Lord of death as well as of life, I have the keys of “Hades and of the grave” suspended at my girdle. The tomb is never unlocked but by

Me. Let others talk of the might of the King of Terrors. He has no might but bj m j permission.

More than this, — mourning one! I was DEAD.” I myself once entered that gloomy portico 1 I sanctified and consecrated it by my presence! — I was a tenant of the tomb. This now glorified Body was once laid by human hands in a borrowed Grave! Canst thou dread to walk the Yalley trodden by thy Lord? — to encounter the “last enemy,” which He fought and conquered. Death I — it has been converted by Him into a “parenthesis in endless life.”

“I am He that was DEAD” — “/ am lie that LIVETH.” What more could the Christian desire than this twofold assurance? On the Day of Atonement of old, the blood was sprinkled alike on the floor and on the mercy-seat; — the voice of blood arose from the floor below, and the mercy-seat above. So it is with the voice of our Elder Brother’s blood. It cried first from earth beneath, and now from Heaven. His dying love, is now ever-living — iraperishable and immutable as Hi3 own being I

As the Bow in the material firmament can never cease to appear, so long as the present laws of nature continue, and there is a sun in the heavens; so the Bow of the Everlasting Covenant, and all its blessings, can only fail when Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, ceases to shine, and ceases to be I With such a Bow overarching the future,- — one limb resting amid the cloudlands of life, the other melting its hues into the deeper shadows of the Yallej of Death, ^’’I will fear no evil for Thour 0 SA-VIOUR God, “art with ???e, thy rod and thy stafi they comfort me.”