Now think of this "unknown death." Has not Christ revealed to you that this terrible thing that you so fear for him who is gone really only means that at the close of this poor limited kindergarten stage of his history Death has come--God's beneficent angel to lead him into the next stage of being. Why should you be afraid? Birth gave him much, Death will give much more. FOR DEATH MEANS BIRTH INTO A FULLER LIFE. What a fright he gives us, this good angel of God! We do not trust his Master much. Do you say that you do not know what is before your friend--that it is a "leap off into the dark"? Have we not learned from Scripture already that it is much less of "dark" than come of us thought? And may it not be much less of a "leap off" than we think--only a closing of the eyes here and an opening of them there? May not the birth into that life be as simple as the birth into this? May not our fright be like that of Don Quixote when blind-folded he hung by his wrist from the stable window and they told him that a tremendous abyss yawned beneath him. He is in terror of the awful fall. Maritornes cuts the thong with gladsome laughter and the gallant gentleman falls--just four inches! May we not believe that God reserves just as blithesome a surprise for us when our time comes to discover the simplicity, the agreeableness, the absence of any serious change in what we call dying. I am not ignoring the pain and sickness of the usual death-bed. But these are not dying? The act of dying comes after these. These are but the birth pangs before the new life begins, the rough, hard bit of road that leads to "the wicket gate out of the city." Pliny, from much clinical observations, declares his opinion that death itself is pleasure rather than pain. Dr. Solander was delighted at the sensation of dying in the snow. The late Archbishop of Canterbury remarked as he died: "It is really nothing much after all." Dying itself may be pleasure rather than pain. We have all noticed that expression of composed calm which comes on the faces of the newly dead. Some say it is only due to muscular relaxation. Perhaps so. But perhaps not. One likes to think that it may be something more. Who knows that it may not be a last message of content and acquiescence from those departing souls who at the moment of departure know perhaps a little more than ourselves--a message of good cheer and pleasant promise by no means to be disregarded.[1] At any rate does not Scripture suggest to us in the story of Lazarus--of Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration--of the dying thief--of the spirits in the Unseen Life whom Christ visited at His death--that Death comes not as an executioner to cut off our departed one from life and love, but rather as God's good angel bringing him more than life has ever brought, and leading him by a path as full of miracles of soft arrangement as was his birth to heights of ever advancing existence.