Out of the Deep | Page 7

they are in the full power, the full freedom, the full love and zeal of the everlasting life. If their hearts were warmed and softened by the fire of God's love here, how much more there! If they lived God's life of love here, how much more there, before the throne of God and the face of Christ!
And if any one shall say that the souls of good men in heaven cannot help us who are here on earth, I answer--When did they ascend into heaven to find out that? If they had ever been there, let us be sure they would have had better news to bring home than this, that those whom we have honoured and loved on earth have lost the power which they used once to have of comforting us who are struggling below.
No, we will believe--what every one who loses a beloved friend comes sooner or later to believe--that those whom we have honoured and loved, though taken from our eyes, are near to our spirits; that they still fight for us under the banner of their Master, Christ, and still work for us by virtue of His life of love, which they live in Him and by Him for ever.
Pray to them, indeed, we need not, as if they would help us out of any self-will of their own. They do God's will, and not their own; and go on God's errands, and not their own. If we pray to God our Father Himself, that is enough for us. And what shall we pray? "Father, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Good News of God, Sermons.
Is not that one thought that our beloved ones sleep in Christ Jesus enough? They sleep in Jesus, and therefore in infinite tenderness, sympathy, care, and love. They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Life, and therefore they sleep in Life. They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Light, and therefore they sleep in Light. They sleep in Jesus; and He is Love, and therefore they sleep in Love. And what better? This is better--that they who sleep in Jesus must surely awaken. For, as it is written, His is a quickening, awakening, life-giving Spirit, and so to sleep in Him is to sleep in the very fount and core of life and power. If from Jesus all our powers and talents come here on earth, surely He will give us more and nobler, when we sleep in Him, and wake in Him to a risen and eternal life. And more, it is written that them that sleep in Jesus will He bring with Him. At the last day we shall see face to face those we loved--and before that--oh! doubt it not. Oftentimes when Christ draws near our spirits He comes not alone, but loving souls, souls whom we knew in the flesh on earth, bear up His train, and hover near our hearts and join their whispers to the voice and inspiration of Him who loved us, and who will guide us with counsel here, and after that receive us into glory, where we shall meet those beloved ones--not as our forefathers dreamed, as meagre shadows flitting through dreary and formless chaos--but as we knew them once--the body of the flesh alone put off, but the real body, the spiritual body to which flesh and blood was but a husk and shell, living and loving more fully, more utterly, than even before, because it is in Christ who is the fount of life, and freed in Him for ever from hell and death.
And if you wish for a sign that this is so, come to holy communion and take the bread and wine as a sign that your bodies and theirs, your souls and theirs, are fed from the same fount of everlasting life--the dead and risen and ever living body of Christ Jesus, which He has given to be the life of the world.
MSS. Sermons.
We know that afflictions do come--terrible bereavements, sorrows sad and strange. There they are, God help us all. But from whom do they come? Who is Lord of life and death? Who is Lord of joy and sorrow? Is not that the question of all questions? And is not the answer the most essential of all answers? It is the Holy Spirit of God; the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; the Spirit of the Father who so loved the world, that He spared not His only begotten Son; the Spirit of the Son who so loved the world that He stooped to die for it upon the Cross; the Spirit who is the Comforter, and says, "I have seen thy ways and will heal thee, I will lead thee also, and restore