This is what all the scientific, theological, and psychical instructors that ever lived in the world have been striving to teach humanity through ages upon ages. But we still continue to cling to the natural “body”--not the spiritual--to the temporal, and not the eternal; and, despite both religion and science, we surround the episode of death with every sort of gloomy panoply and weeping protest against the Divine decree. Yet our men who have died at the front have died with extraordinary cheerfulness; it would seem that some God-given influence has surrounded them in the very midst of all the most awful ways of dying! Never a murmur--never a complaint--never a regret! Wonderful, and indeed miraculous is this, if we pause to think of it! It is as if they knew, or were being told, that there are many things in life worse than death! They face the Last Terror with a dauntless smile and unflinching eyes, and it may be that they see light where many of us, blinded by personal sorrow, are only conscious of darkness. Our Selves are the clouds which cover the sun. And while we continue to sit in the shadow and mourn for our absent, though never lost ones, it is well we should bear in mind that no life lived on earth, however long extended, is complete. No lesson is ever thoroughly learned, no accomplishment ever entirely mastered. No poet, musician, or painter ever produced a “perfect” work. Why? Because here we are only in a preparatory school--wider instruction is to come. The fullness of existence which is ultimately destined to be ours is an ever-increasing perfection and power which are at present impossible for us to conceive. Just as when we came into this world we had no knowledge beforehand of its natural beauties and delights, so in the same way we cannot, in our present condition, realise the “Shall Be” of the Hereafter. Our bodies, to which we attach such undue importance here, are composed entirely of particles or atoms which are constantly changing, and none of us possess the same body we had seven or fourteen years ago. That body has already suffered death--not by violence, but by change. The manner in which the change has been effected is not perceived by ourselves, yet it has occurred. Identity of person does not depend on the identity of these atoms; the individual Spirit is the same, despite the shifting forces or renewal of cells in its tenement of clay. Continuity, persistency, and individuality are eternal laws, and remake the vesture of the soul according to its needs. Therefore our beloved dead are not truly dead, for, “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”