Another sweet and holy word of comfort. We have seen Jesus putting His saints to sleep, as to their bodies; and here we see the same Lord Jesus Himself bidding them rise. No indiscriminate general resurrection this: "the dead in Christ" alone are concerned: they rise first. He who died for them knows them; and they, too, have known His voice in life: that same voice now awakens them, and bids them rise as easily as the little damsel at the "Talitha Cumi"! How precious is this glorious word of the Lord! How perfect the order! No awe-inspiring trumpet, "sounding long and waxing loud," as at Sinai of old, awakening the panic-stricken dead, and bidding them come to an awful judgment. Such the picture that man's dark unbelief and guilty conscience have drawn. Small comfort would we have for mourners were that true. God be thanked it is not. Their Saviour's well-known voice that our dead have loved shall awaken them, ringing full and true in every tone and note of it with the love He has borne them. Then the voice of the Archangel Michael, the great marshal of God's victorious hosts shall range our ranks. This accomplished, and all in the perfect divine order of victory, the trumpet shall sound and the redeemed shall begin their triumphant, blissful, upward flight. _Fifth_.--But the Spirit of God desires us to get and to give the comfort of another precious word. In no strange unknown company shall we who are alive and remain start on that homeward journey, but "together with them." Who that has known the agony of broken heart-strings does not see the infinitely gracious tender comfort in those three words, "together with them"? There is reunion. Once more we shall be in very deed with those we love, with never a thought or fear of parting more to shadow the mutual joy. In view of those three words it were simple impertinence to question whether we shall recognize our dear saints who have preceded us. Not only would such a question rob them of their beauty, but of their very meaning. They would be empty and absolutely meaningless in such case. Sure, beyond a peradventure, is it that our most cherished anticipations shall be far exceeded in that rapturous moment; for we can but reason from experience, whilst here the sweetest communion has ever been marred by that which there shall not be. How sweet the prospect, my sorrowing bereaved readers! We shall, as God is true, look once more into the very faces of those we have known and loved in the Lord on earth. They awake to recognition as Magdalene at the word "Mary;" not to a renewed earthly companionship, nor to a relationship as known in the flesh, as poor Mary thought, but to a sweeter, as well as higher; a warmer, as well as purer communion; for the tie that there shall bind us together is that which is stronger, sweeter than all others, even here,--Jesus Christ the Lord.