“I cannot make it seem a day to dread
When from this dear earth I shall journey out
To that still dearer country of the dead,
And join the lost ones so long dreamed about.
I love this world; yet I shall love to go
And meet the friends who wait for me, I know.
“I never stand beside a bier, and see
The seal of death set on some well loved face,
But that I think, ‘One more to welcome me
When I shall cross the intervening space
Between this land and that one over there;
One more to make the strange land beyond seem fair.’”
The continuity of life here and hereafter is a Bible teaching. There is no real break. Jesus said, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” St. Paul spoke of his death as his departure from earth, as if he were going to another country. He referred to Christians gone as “absent from the body, and at home with the Lord.” We should try to be Christians in our thought about dying. The trouble is that we so associate all our friend’s life with his body, that when it lies before us cold and lifeless, all of our friend sees to have ceased to be. But the body is not, never was, our friend. It may be cold, and our friend be living in rich and beautiful life.
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