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the familiar lessons of the past, urging us to a deeper consecration and a more earnest life, and testifying better than ever before to the preciousness of the Savior's love. Beloved, let us be followers of him, even as he also was of Christ: followers through the world, and out, and up, into that better life where there is fulness of joy forevermore.

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AND I HEARD A VOICE FROM HEAVEN SAYING UNTO ME, WRITE, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD FROM HENCEFORTH: YEA, SAITH THE SPIRIT, THAT THEY MAY REST FROM THEIR LABOURS; AND THEIR

WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM.

"BLESSED are the dead!" We give them tears; God greets them, "Blessed." We wrap the sable pall about them; God clothes them in garments of light. We sadly press the cold and silent lips; God hears the ransomed spirit hymning the hallelujahs of the skies. Verily, the Lord seeth not as we, and measureth happiness not by our lines and rules. "Blessed are the rich," we cry; "Blessed are the poor in spirit," falls down upon us from above. "Blessed are they that rejoice," we say in our troubled hearts; God whispers, "Blessed are they that mourn." "Blessed are the proud, and strong, and great," we shout along the streets; and heaven replies, "Blessed are the meek." God's estimate is true. No fancy deceives him; no gilding passes for gold; no outward show of joy or grief conceals the heart within. The end hidden from us, and misinterpreted, is present to his gaze. And the dead, who die in the Lord, are blessed. Theirs is a higher life than ours, full of intensity and vigor, crowded with blessedness, with no fear, nor sorrow, nor sin forever.

"Blessed are the dead!" It was not hard for the rapt Apostle of the Revelation to anticipate the attesting Spirit and answer, "Yea, blessed." He gained clearer visions of heaven than are opened to us, and stood the while in the midst of a desolation that by its contrast gave an added beauty to all he saw. A captive, on a dreary ocean rock, he looked from the narrow windows of his island prison and saw the streets of gold and the walls of jewels and the gates of pearl. He saw the throne, spanned by the rain

bow like an emerald. He saw the crystal river, and the tree of life. He saw the Lamb of God, "a lamb as it had been slain." And what had Patmos to compare with this? Why should he desire to linger where the only melody he could hear was the surging of the sad sea waves, when the harpers with golden harps bade him come and join them in their joyful adoration? If it is blessed for a prisoner to gain his liberty, for the weary to enter upon rest, for the lonely exile to meet his truest friends, then it was blessed We are not captives, nor desolate and persecuted in the world. Yet it is blessed to depart, when the Lord shall call us, for heaven is better than earth. The parting of disciples here is only for the remnant of the fleeting night. They meet above in the unclouded, eternal morning, and learn what that word meaneth, "Blessed are the dead."

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But let us not fail to note the limitation put upon these words, "Who die in the Lord." It is appointed unto all men once to die, but not all die in the Lord. To be in him is to have him for

the Savior, and the master of the life. Death has a lasting sting for all others, and the grave a victory over them. passport to paradise. to be known of him. house.

Dying is not a We need to know Jesus in the heart, and Then dying will be going to our Father's

Our

Mark, again, that the reward of the works of the Lord's disciples follows them. Their labors will be recognized and the Lord will reward his faithful servants. Now the day when we are rewarded for our work is not a sad one here. Why should it be beyond, where God gives the recompense? If our talents have been wisely used we need not dread the return of the king. lives are full of faults. But when we take refuge in Jesus these are forgotten, and we are treated as if we had been diligent and true. Blessed, then, are the dead who are greeted with the Master's approbation, "Well done, good and faithful servants; enter ye into the joy of your Lord."

But notice that it is assumed that Christ's followers will work. There is to be something when life is over for which they may be rewarded. The christian life is not merely an effort to keep the heart sinless it is a persistent work for the Lord. We have him for a pattern. "My Father worketh hitherto and I work," he said. My meat is to do." His was a career of ceaseless activity, and so is the disciple's to be. The christian is presented in the Gos

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pels not with folded hands, but with the burden and the yoke. The pound is not to be hidden in a napkin, but given into the bank, as for an austere man. The symbol of religion is not a bed, but a cross. The rest of heaven is for those who are wearied by their work. Hence the commission is "Go, preach." Go, work, strive, suffer, preach, as those who are in the world upon an errand: intrusted with a business which must be done before night comes. So that the history of the first disciples is fittingly called "The Acts of the Apostles." And when the master sees that we have worked long enough, and calls us home, it will be blessed to go and rest from our labors. Here is comfort beforetime for the heavy laden, and courage for the imperilled. The toil is not to be shunned, the stake is not to be feared. If we wear out, or if our enemies send us in a fiery chariot to heaven, "Blessed are the dead," for they "rest from their labours."

But it is not merely work which is required of us, nor mere endurance. In the Lord, and for the Lord, we are to toil and suffer. God does not put selfishness at a premium, but he makes godliness profitable. "Ye have done it unto me" is altogether more and better than "Ye have done it," merely. The rest of heaven draws its virtue from the religiousness of the toil. We think of heaven as a place where the servant will be free from his master, where the routine of our daily duties will be unknown, where the perplexities of life will not annoy us. It is even so. But to enjoy the rest we covet and expect, the service must be done for the Lord. Our stores and business, our homes and cares, must bear his image and superscription. We must make the place of our abode the outer court of heaven, where we shall have that spirit of love and devotion without which heaven would be of little worth. We cannot all toil in the same way. Happily the Lord can be served in many ways and in simple things, by Mary and Martha both, by the virgin mother and the bold apostle. But in some way we are to do a definite, deliberate work for the Lord; then we may hope to rest from our labors.

And another happy thing is, that we may create an influence while we toil which will work on when we are at rest, which may even become greater when we are not seen, perpetuating itself through generations which shall come after us. Blessed to rest in

the presence of the Lord, and to know that not in heaven only we are serving him, but also on the earth we have deserted.

You need nothing more than your memories, my friends, to tell you how admirably that man of God who has just left us possessed these requisites to immortal blessedness. He was "in the Lord,” and he worked for the Lord; and he has gone to his rest and reward, leaving behind him an undying influence. We might write upon the stone which will mark the place where his precious "Blessed are the dead."

dust reposes,

Many things have been said of him in your hearing, by those who have long been associated with him; and a further commemoration of his life and work may yet be made by another of his old neighbors and friends. In view of this there may seem to be but little for me to say. Yet we stood closer to him than others, and may tell over our thoughts concerning him, though others pay their tribute to his memory. In only a secondary sense we were his family. He was one of us. It is fitting, therefore, that now, when the visitors have gone and we sit by ourselves around our own fireside, we should talk about our father who has been taken to his other home and our other home. Friendship always per* mits, demands, the repetition of our recollections of the departed. The grave hallows the words and deeds belonging to their lives, and we are willing to have them often recalled to mind. I am sure, then, that you will be glad to have me say something more of him, after a simple and familiar manner, and will listen with indulgence if here, at home, I repeat some things which have been more publicly said before, and tell you many things which you have always known.

Without much formality, let me begin with the religious character of our man of God, then pass to his teaching, and the method and spirit of his life. In regard to his religious history and experience he was singularly silent. What took place in his own heart during his long ministerial career he did not disclose to others. Even in his last days he said almost nothing of his hopes and fears. But the main features of his religious life are easily discerned. He started with the idea of God,-the holy, the just, the kind, the God,-requiring the whole service and devotion of the whole heart. The Bible was to him, in the first instance, a code of laws, which he, as a man, was bound by every obligation to observe. It did not need a conscience as quick as his, nor a self-knowledge as thorough, to show him that his life was not equal to his duty. It matters nothing that his faults were hidden from

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