So we close our thoughts about the NEAR HEREAFTER, the life immediately after death. The FAR Hereafter—the great mystery of Judgment and Hell and Heaven belongs to a later section. Here we have been dealing only with the life going on to-day in the Unseen—side by side with our present life.

Ah! that wonderful Paradise land—that wonderful Church of God in the Unseen—with its vast numbers, with its enthusiastic love, with all its grand leaders who have been trained on earth. WE AND THEY together form the great continuous Church of God. We are all ONE LONG PROCESSION; they at the head in the Unseen. What a life it is! What a work it has!

Said I not well it was a Gospel of the Hereafter, a good news of God! It will make you solemn as you feel that character passes on unchanged. That is good; but it will do more. It will take away the sting and the horror of death. It is not the pain of dying that makes that horror when I come to die. After all, men bear far more pain without flinching. It is not merely the parting for the present with those I love. We have constantly to do that when they go to other lands without breaking our hearts about it. It is not even any doubt about a future Resurrection at the Second Advent. I may believe that, and yet get little comfort from it. That Advent seems so far away. It may be next week; but it may be 5,000 years hence, and meantime what of my life? Sleep, unconsciousness, darkness? What? No wonder I should shrink from that mysterious unknown.

But teach me the ancient Scriptural doctrine of the PARADISE life as it appears in the Bible. Teach me that in the hour after death I shall pass into the Unseen with myself, with my full life, my feelings, my character, my individuality, and in that solemn hour death will lose its horror. Is not that a Gospel?

In the awful days of bereavement it will bring God's peace, and it will bring elevation of character. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

"He is not dead, the child of your affection,
But gone into that school
Where he no longer needs your poor protection,
And Christ Himself doth rule."

You think of your boy as serving at one side of the veil, and you at the other; each in the presence of Christ. You think how he is being lovingly trained and disciplined. How all his abilities are being used in self-sacrificing deeds for others. Not in a glorified selfishness in thanking God that he is safe, though his brethren be lost. Ah, no! but in perfect self-sacrifice, even as his Lord. You think of him as learning to fight for righteousness—to help the weak, aye, mayhap, to go out—God's brave young knight—out into the darkness after some one who has missed of Christ on earth. Realize that and your whole life must perforce grow nobler. And realize that you will not have to wait for the Resurrection or the Advent to meet him and learn all.

When your death comes, he will be waiting for you. He has been praying and watching over you. He will tell you of all that has been happening. And together in Christ's loving presence, side by side, you will work and wait, and help your brethren; and look forward to the glory of the heaven that is still in the future. Is not that a Gospel worth the preaching—a Gospel to stir our souls and to comfort our hearts for those "whom we have loved long since and lost a while"?

Thank God for the blessed doctrine of the Paradise life!

Thank God for all His poor penitent servants departed this life in His faith and fear!