A pious man once appealed in distress to the late Rev. Dr. John Hall: he said he knew his soul was saved, but he was afraid of dying. Dr. Hall asked him, “But you are not dying now, are you?” “No,” he said, “but I know that I must die some day.” “Ah, well!” replied the doctor, “we hardly need dying grace until our dying day.” “As our day so shall our strength be”—the bravest soldier may be nervous contemplating the battle, but in the action he finds not only courage but exhilaration. So, if we learn to live from day to day, we may well put off fear of death or dying until our dying day has come, and then we may find that there is nothing to fear. For the present, what we have to consider is life, and what it may mean. There are two ways of looking at life: one regards life as the changes that take place in the body from birth to death. The body is always changing, being almost all renewed at least every seven years. Old hair is constantly falling out, to be replaced by new; we cut the excess growth of the nails, and rarely stop to think that the nails we have to-day are not the same nails we had a few weeks or months ago. We get rid of dead skin, and our skin constantly renews itself, and so we feel no worry if we cut or scratch it. We say quite complacently, “Oh! it will heal up and new skin grow.” The whole body fades and is renewed. It is not, then, the changes in the body that we fear. We accept this series of physical changes as physical life, for we know that, if the changes stopped, life would stop also; but we must also recognize them as death, for the beginning of each new stage is the death of the previous stage. Thus death is steadily going on in ourselves, at the same time that life continues, and we not only have no fear of it, but are unconscious of the process: our body is constantly passing from death to life, as well as from life to death, and we are not afraid of that; in fact, we never give a thought to it. Even from the physical standpoint man need not spend his best years fearing death. When we live so that death shall round out a long life, we shall have lost all fear of it. When we say that a person did not die a “natural death” we usually mean that he died suddenly and violently. But death from disease is not “natural” either, and in as far as we learn how to live aright, harmonizing the physical, mental, and spiritual natures, realizing that the perishing body is not all of us, we can avoid most of the fruitful sources of disease. As we learn what true life is, and how natural the eventual dissolution of the body is, we shall cease to tremble at it.