mon? God,' she continued earnestly, 'would hae the greatest loss. Poor Nannie would lose her soul, and that would be a great loss indeed; but God would lose His _honor_ and His _character_. Haven't I hung my soul upon His "exceeding great and precious promise"? and if He would break His word He would make Himself a liar, _and a' the universe would rush into confusion_.' This anecdote reveals the true ground of the believer's safety. It is as high as the honor of God; it is as trustworthy as His character; it is as immutable as His promises; it is as broad as the infinite merit of His Son's atoning blood."--_J. H. Brookes, in "The Way Made Plain."_ If God, "that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26), set forth Jesus Christ as a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:25), and then should let one be lost who had been redeemed from all iniquity (Titus 2:14), would He not be as unjust in so doing as He would have been had He justified sinners without Christ dying for their sins (1 Cor. 15:3)? The blessed fact that the redeemed have as a present possession, here and now, eternal life, and that it is eternal, makes manifest another fact, that the redeemed are not unconscious, virtually out of existence, from death till the resurrection. The new life is eternal; it continues without cessation or intermission. Their bodies fall asleep; but their souls are still in conscious existence; it is _eternal life_. Paul makes this fact clear: "Whilst present in the body, we are absent from the Lord." "We are confident, I say, and well pleased rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord."--2 Cor. 5:6, 8. The same conscious life continues; it is eternal life. Again he makes it clear: "I am in a strait betwixt the two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better: nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful on your account."--Phil. 1:23, 24. The same conscious life continues, the eternal life. To depart and to be with Christ he says "_is far better_." But even this is not the perfect state. It is the soul without the body, enjoying eternal life with Christ. But God's perfect being is a being of redeemed soul and redeemed body enjoying the reward of its labor. The body will not be redeemed until the resurrection (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 15:42); and the soul, though enjoying eternal life and with Christ (Phil. 1:23) will receive no reward until the resurrection,--"Thou shalt be _recompensed at the resurrection of the just_."--Luke 14:14.