Is not that one thought that our beloved ones sleep in Christ Jesus enough? They sleep in Jesus, and therefore in infinite tenderness, sympathy, care, and love. They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Life, and therefore they sleep in Life. They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Light, and therefore they sleep in Light. They sleep in Jesus; and He is Love, and therefore they sleep in Love. And what better? This is better--that they who sleep in Jesus must surely awaken. For, as it is written, His is a quickening, awakening, life-giving Spirit, and so to sleep in Him is to sleep in the very fount and core of life and power. If from Jesus all our powers and talents come here on earth, surely He will give us more and nobler, when we sleep in Him, and wake in Him to a risen and eternal life. And more, it is written that them that sleep in Jesus will He bring with Him. At the last day we shall see face to face those we loved--and before that--oh! doubt it not. Oftentimes when Christ draws near our spirits He comes not alone, but loving souls, souls whom we knew in the flesh on earth, bear up His train, and hover near our hearts and join their whispers to the voice and inspiration of Him who loved us, and who will guide us with counsel here, and after that receive us into glory, where we shall meet those beloved ones--not as our forefathers dreamed, as meagre shadows flitting through dreary and formless chaos--but as we knew them once--the body of the flesh alone put off, but the real body, the spiritual body to which flesh and blood was but a husk and shell, living and loving more fully, more utterly, than even before, because it is in Christ who is the fount of life, and freed in Him for ever from hell and death. And if you wish for a sign that this is so, come to holy communion and take the bread and wine as a sign that your bodies and theirs, your souls and theirs, are fed from the same fount of everlasting life--the dead and risen and ever living body of Christ Jesus, which He has given to be the life of the world. _MSS. Sermons_.