the enemy, living in his service, what profit is it to wonder whether God will destroy your soul hereafter? It is destroyed now; you are spiritually dead—dead, to use the striking language of the Apostle, "while you live."

My brethren, I think it would save us from many useless and therefore harmful speculations if we bore these facts in mind. I do not mean to say that they remove the harassing mysteries which surround this subject. They throw no light upon the awful question why some human beings are born, and live, and die, surrounded by every influence and association that can seduce them from their heavenly allegiance; while others from the cradle to the grave see only about them all things that are lovely and of good report. They throw no light on the solemn wonder, whether in some other world the Lord of life has new powers in store to bring to bear upon the darkened eye and the hardened heart, and whether the gate of death shall ever open to the summons of another conqueror. But they are facts which the Bible teaches, and which we dare not explain away They forbid us to speak or think or feel of the Lord of our life as if He were the Lord of death.

Let us pass on to the next clause of our text :

"and that He might deliver them who through fear of death were all their life subject to bondage." The Epistle from which my text is taken is one addressed to Jews; but no one of those who heard it would fail to see the application of these words to all men, whether Jew or Gentile. The fear of death is not connected with any special religion. It belongs to the constitution of our being. We are made to love life, and to shrink from annihilation. The rule is not the less a rule because it acts unequally under different influences. The fear of death may be aggravated by superstition, or diminished by it; it may be, as we know, cast out by a perfect love and hope; it may seem weaker in one individual than another, according as the blessings of life are many or few. But the horror of ceasing to exist is a horror incident to our human nature. The writer of this Epistle speaks of men as being in slavery through this fear; as if no one could be free to whom the anticipation of death was a fear. He says nothing of what follows death as being the source of terror. Had he done so, he would really have limited the scope of his words. For if the uneducated vulgar of heathen antiquity believed the fables of their poets, the torments of Ixion and Tantalus,

and all the material terrors of the infernal regions, the educated Greek or Roman prided himself on being free from such childish apprehensions. And yet the fear of death was common to all. The philosopher knew it and confessed it. He knew, as well as did the Apostle, that he was liable to this fear, that unless he could throw it off he was not a free man. The writings of the best of the Stoics which remain to us confess this bondage. The Roman satirist, discoursing on the folly of most human prayers, says, "If you wish to ask the gods for that which will be a blessing, ask for a brave spirit, unfettered by the fear of death: "

"Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem."

For he knew, my brethren, that there is no soul, however free from the superstitions of the vulgar, but sees upon all things, and feels upon itself, the shadow of the inevitable grave. The philosopher shared with the slave whom he despised the universal fear. And he felt it the more, not the less, that he was a philosopher. For though, as he thought, his philosophy made death itself a lighter evil to him than to the slave, in reality, by making life a nobler service, it deepened and intensified the shadows of death.

The very tenets which made death a less formidable enemy to his intellect made it a deeper, closer, horror to his soul. For thus does the God of life bear witness in us to Himself. Every effort at self-control; every victory over the temptations to anger, pride, and ill-will; every human affection which nature taught him to cultivate, must have brought to him new lessons, never contemplated in his system: he could not have learned the divine significance of life, without having deepened, in spite of the strong will which set itself another way, a sense that Death was an enemy, even while he believed that it was to be conquered, and could be conquered.

No! every Greek and Roman and Hebrew was in bondage to this fear; if not for what it might bring, then at least for that which it came to take away; if not because of the undiscovered country which lay beyond it, then for the "warm precincts of the cheerful day," from which it must needs remove its victim, as far as eye could see, for ever.

And to deliver his brethren from this slavery, says the writer of this Epistle, did the Son of God take upon Him the flesh and blood of His brethren, and Himself submitted to the enemy

of all mankind.

He died, not to remove the

necessity of death, but to deprive it of its sting; to rob the grave of its victory. Death remains --the last enemy, whose defeat is not yet; but seen in the light of Christ's revelation, and encountered in His spirit, its triumph is annulled. For the Christian's triumph over sin is a pledge and a foretaste of his triumph over death. The resurrection of the soul is earnest of the resurrection of the body. There is indeed an instinctive shrinking from death, which is part of our bodily nature, not of our spiritual,—the instinct of self-preservation, which we share with the beast of the field. But this cannot be called a bondage. There may come too a time when death is looked upon as a friend; when, in the progress of old age, the seal of death is already set in the failing limbs and faculties, and when the second childishness and mere oblivion makes life a practical death. But this is no argument against death being a curse; for the curse, in such a case, is already fallen, and departure means merely the kindly rest of mother-earth. Death is a curse still; but we are no longer slaves to it, when once we feel the stronger arm on which we may lean; the rod and staff which are at hand to comfort. And we may feel that

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