Sleeping and Waking

Them aJsu sleep in Jesns will God bring with him.” — 1 TuES3. iv. 14.

Or, as tJ:iese words have been rendered —” Them also which are laid asleep in Jesus

We bid an earthly friend “Good night” in the pleasing expectation of meeting next morning. The saints are “laid asleep” in the grave of Jesus, in the sure and certain hope of meeting Him in the morning of immortality!

Child of God I weep not for those who have “departed to be with Christ.” It is with them “far better.” Think not of them as gone That is a word taken from the vocabulary of death, and which, it is to be feared, is often employed with many in tho heathen sense oi annihilation. Seek not “the living among the dead.” Think rather that the last sigh was scarce over on earth, when the song was begun in Heaven. The SjDirit winged its arrowy flight among ministering seraphim. Hear that voice stealing down in the soft whisper of Heaven’s miisie, and saying — “If ye loved me ye would rejoice because 1 said, I go unto my Father /”

The body, the casket of this immortal jewel, is left for a season to the dishonors of the tomb. But it is only for a brief “night-watch.” That dust is precious, because redeemed. Body as well as soul was purchased by the life-blood of Immanuel. Angels guard these slumbering ashes; — and the day is comm when God shall “send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other.” Oh, if there be “joy among the angels of God over one sinner that re2:)ent€th,^^ — what shall be the joy of those Blessed Beings over the myriads of rising dead, hastening at their summons to their crowns and thrones 1

Christian mourner! “Thy brother shall rise again.” Wish, him not back amid the storms of the wilderness. Be thankful rather that the wheat is no longer out in the tempest and rain; but safely garnered, eternally housed. Thou wouldst not, surely, if thou couldst, weep that blest one back from glory — ask him to unlearn Heaven’s language — and be once more involved in the dust of battle? Nay, rather “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Death is not an eternal sleep. “Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” Jesus is now whispering in thine ear the glorious secret hid from ages and generations, and which, was left to Him, as “the Abolisher of Death,” to disclose: “Thy dead shall live; together with My dead body sho.ll they arise.” He is pointing thee onward to that hour of jubilee, when the summons shall be addressed to all His sleeping saints; ‘■’■ Awahe and sing, ye thai dwell in dustP^

Oh happy day 1 when I shall see my Saviour God in alx the glories of His exalted

Humanity; and with Him, the once “loved and lost,” now the loved and glorified, never to be lost again I “The Lord my God shall come and all the saints with thee — Not one shall be wanting. In concert with those whose tongues are now silent on earth, we shall then Tinite in the lofty anthem, sung by the in-gathered Church triumphant — ‘’ 0 death where is thy sting? 0 grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who giveth ua the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ.”