Reader! may this calm departure be yours and mine. "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. ... They REST." All life's turmoil and tossing is over; they are anchored in the quiet haven. _Rest_--but not the rest of annihilation-- "Grave! the guardian of our dust; Grave! the treasury of the skies; Every atom of thy trust Rests in hope again to rise!" Let us seek to have the eye of faith fixed and centred on Jesus _now_. It is _that_ which alone can form a peaceful pillow in a dying hour, and enable us to rise superior to all its attendant terrors. Look at that scene in the Jehoshaphat valley! The proto-martyr Stephen has a pillow of thorns for his dying couch, showers of stones are hurled by infuriated murderers on his guiltless head, yet, nevertheless, he "fell asleep." What was the secret of that calmest of sunsets amid a blood-stained and storm-wreathed sky? The eye of faith (if not of sight) pierced through those clouds of darkness. Far above the courts of the material temple at whose base he lay, he beheld, in the midst of the general assembly and Church of the First-born of Heaven, "JESUS standing at the right hand of God." The vision of his Lord was like a celestial lullaby stealing from the inner sanctuary. With _Jesus_, his last sight on earth and his next in glory, he could "lay him down in peace and sleep," saying, in the words of the sweet singer of Israel, "What time I awake I am still with Thee." "It matters little at what hour o' the day The righteous falls asleep. Death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die. The less of this cold world the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality."--MILMAN. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." This tells us that Christ forgets not the dead. The dead often bury their dead, and remember them no more. The name of their silent homes has passed into a proverb, "The land of forgetfulness." But they are not forgotten by Jesus. That which sunders and dislocates all other ties--wrenching brother from brother, sister from sister, friend from friend--cannot sunder us from the living, loving heart on the throne of heaven. His is a friendship and love stronger than death, and surviving death. While the language of earth is "Friend after friend departs-- Who hath not lost a friend?" the emancipated spirit, as it wings its magnificent flight among the ministering seraphim, can utter the challenge, "Who shall separate me from the love of Christ?" The righteous are had with Him "in everlasting remembrance." Their names "written among the living in Jerusalem;" yea, "engraven on the palms of His hands."