But stay! Does this really meet fully the present sorrow? Does it give a satisfying comfort? Is there not a lurking feeling of disappointment that certain relationships with their affections are never to be restored; therefore, in certain ways, "recognition" is not probable? For instance, a husband loses the companion of his life. He shall, it is true, meet and recognize with joy a saint whom he knew on earth, but never again his _wife_. That sweet, pure, human affection, is never to be renewed. Death's rude hand has chilled that warmth forever. The shock of death has extinguished it forevermore. Is that exactly true? Is that just as Scripture puts it? Let us see. We may justly reason that if, in the resurrection, relationships were exactly as here, sorrow would necessarily outweigh joy. To find broken families there would be a perpetuation of earth's keenest distresses. To know that that break was irreparable would cause a grief unutterable and altogether inconsistent with the joy of the new creation. Marriage there is not, and hence all relationships of earth we may safely gather are not there. But the natural affections of the soul of man have they absolutely come to nothing? That soul, connected as it is with that which is higher than itself--the spirit--is immortal, and its powers and attributes must be in activity beyond death. It is the seat of the affections here, and, surely, there too. Why, then, shall not these affections there have full unhindered play? Let us seek to gather something from analogy. Knowledge has its seat in the spirit of man, and here he exercises that faculty; nor does the spirit any more than the soul cease to exist; nor are its attributes therefore to be arrested. Yet we read of knowledge in that scene, "it shall vanish away." And why? Is it not because of the perfect light that there shines? Human knowledge is but a candle, and what worth is candlelight when the noonday sun shines? It is overwhelmed, swallowed up, by perfect light. It "vanishes away,"--is not extinguished, any more than is human knowledge, by the shock of death or change; but perfection of Light has done away with the very appearance of imperfection. Now is this not equally and exactly true of that other part of the divine nature--Love? _Here_ we both know in part and love in part. _There_ the perfection of Love causes that which is imperfect--the human affection of the soul--to "vanish away." The greater swallows up the less. The infinite attraction of the Lord Jesus--that "glory" which He prayed that we might see (John xvii.)--overwhelms all lower affections with no rough rude shock as of death, but by the very superabundance of the bliss. His glory! What is it but the radiant outshining of His infinitely blessed, infinitely attractive, divine nature,--Love and Light, Light and Love,--each swallowing up in their respective spheres every inferior imperfect